Birthday Party

Several weeks ago, I eagerly began planning Harrison's 2nd birthday party. Since he loves Elmo, we thought it would be fun to have a Sesame Street themed party. I found this on Etsy ; the creator emailed me the finished file and I was able to print them out as photos which I then mounted to yellow card stock.

We had an idea of getting Harrison a train set for his gift, but pricing out the train table, trains, tracks and accessories, it turned out to be an expensive endeavor! To make this project more manageable, we recruited some help from our party goers. I made a "wish list" on the Toysareus website and on the back on the invitation we invited our guests to help us build Harrison a train set. Thanks to all our family and friends! This photo only has a few trains on it; the next day we had to buy some big baskets to store all the pieces (ignore the pot, that shouldn't be there!)

Take notice of the butcher paper on the walls; I used crayons and drew pictures from "Elmo's World" including Dorothy the gold fish, shade and the family portrait.

Since our party consisted of infants to 5 year olds, I didn't do much in the way of games other than "pin the nose on Elmo" as you can see below. We let the two oldest kids go first, tying a tie around their eyes. Emma hit it spot on, we were very impressed. Then Will did the exact same thing... Michael said teasingly, "hey, are you guys cheating?" to which Will immediately said, "I could see it right there in front of me!" It's really cute on video. At that point, I took Harrison (unblindfolded) and spun him around in circles 3 times in the hopes of making him a little dizzy but he hit the nose right on the mark too, what a surprise!



After some pizza (Elmo's favorite food!), it was time for cupcakes and a Happy Birthday serenade. I found these cupcake toppers on Etsy as well and she customized them to include Harrison's name. Unlike the night before, Harrison knew just what to do when he saw these beflamed candles coming his way!

And of course, he already knew what to do with the cupcake... eat all the frosting off the top first!

As my enthusiasm overtook me during the planning stages, I insisted that we all have character T-shirts. Long story short, Harrison now has three Elmo T-shirts. My dear, loving husband is so patiently indulgent... papa bear got the most manly, street thug looking Oscar he could find; mama bear wore Grover with the street sign written in Chinese; Harrison wanted nothing more than Elmo of course... ah, just right.

 I made gift bags for each of the kids with a Sesame Street coloring book and mini pop up book, some snacks and luggage tags that I made. I don't have a "finished" photo handy but I tied an Elmo balloon to each bag, with the strings measured at different levels so you can see each balloon clearly; this was placed at the entry way so there was a bevvy of smiling red faces to greet party goers.

I slipped one of these photo cards into each bag (I wanted to affix it to the back but I printed them too large)...

After the party, mom took a longer nap than Harrison. At the end of the day, Harrison slipped on his new Buzz and Woody jammies, talked to us about having fun with Will, Beckett, Emma, Amelie and Jaden, played with his trains and went to sleep a happy, two year old boy.