Sesame Street Party -2yr- Bella Dancerella Dress-up

My Daughter Isabel will be turning two and for her real birthday we will be going away on vacation. However, we wanted to celebrate with her playgroup before we left! Since we will be vacationing at Beaches and they offer Sesame Street Characters I knew I wanted to do A Sesame Street Theme party to get her in the mood. The group of kids range from 1 year old to 8 years old so I needed to be clever and also keep cost to a mininum! Here is what I have come up with! I think the kids are going to have a blast!  

To begin with I printed up computer invitations with Cookie Monster, Elmo, and Big Bird and it says:  "The Seasame Street Characters are here to say, It's time to Celebrate Isabel's 2nd Birthday" then of course it has the date, time, address. Under that I wrote: "Wear your bathing Suit so you can splash in Bert's Giant Bubble Bath!" then their is RSVP info and on the bottom I wrote: "This party is brought to you by the Letter I and the Number 2!"   My plan is to turn the backyard into Sesame Street! I purchased a 4 foot inflatable Elmo with a birthday hat on holding a present and banner that says Happy Birthday, from ebay for only $25. This will be what greets the kids. I will attach a handmade banner to his one hand and the other part of the banner to the fence high enough that you can walk under it. The banner says "WELCOME TO SESAME STREET". I made it with butcher block paper and painted the letters on it and added pre made scrapbook cut outs of the Sesame street Characters to it.  

The next thing you will see is a sign above a long child size table with a red table cloth and a plastic fish bowl filled with goldfish crackers! The sign reads," ELMO'S WORLD" On the table there will be paints, markers, crayons and plain brown paper bags with a letter of each child's name ready to be colored and decorated. These are their goody bags. They need to find the letter of thier name (examble I is for Isa will be printed on the bag. The letter I is a picture of Big Bird holding an Icecream cone. all of these I printed free of charge off www.sesameworkshop.org website) and then color it in. When they do this then they will get a bag of goldfish crackers to put inside. 

The rest of the yard will be divided into different sections. A kids inflatable pool will be filled up and I will put several bottles of bubble bath into the water. I also purchased 2 dozen 2" rubber duckies that will float inside. (EBAY once again.. only paid 30 cents each!)The kids can get in and out and splash around and keep cool since it is the middle of summer! This is Bert's bubble bath. each child will get to keep a rubber duckie!  In another area I have Zoe's Ballet & Music Studio. I have set up my daughter's "Bella Dancerella Ballet Bar", put up a mirror, and will have music and a instructional ballet video playing. A box filled with dress up tutu will be there for the girls to play with! ( I Bought the tutu's 6 for $10 on e-bay and they are adorable! ) Since there will be boys including my son as well, I have gathered all the musical instruments I have laying around the house and put them in a box so they can enjoy the area as well.  

Remember Mr. Hooper's Store? I took an old refrigerator box and cut a door into it, painted it, wrote Mr. Hooper's Store on it  and then took out all the kids play food and shopping cart… Instant store for them to play!  And then for the more calm… underneath the biggest shade tree I will set up Big Bird's READING NEST. I took an old matress and covered it in cheap light weight brown fabric. I hot glued sticks around the edges! I gathered all the Sesame Street books and puzzels I had ( and there are a lot!!!) and that will be a nice relaxing place to just chill out! 

Besides these free time activites we will  play Pin the Cookie into Cookie Monster's Mouth (made from blue poster board and the cookies are circles cut out of brown construction paper) everyone will receive a package of animal crackers as the prize, winning child will get a sesame street pail I got at the dollar store filled with cookies, we will also play the Oscar Trash Toss. I cut out Oscar from green poster board and taped him inside a metal trash can. Rolled up newspaper will be the balls. Every child will receive gummy worms (like Slimy Oscar's friend) and the winning child will get a small Oscar stuffed doll also from Dollar store. 

Pizza will be served as it is simple and actually the most cost effective! Sesame street juice boxes and for desert… Individual cupcakes iced in primary colors with Sesame Street rings displayed on a 3 teir sweet server! ( the ring decoartions as well as the serving display I got off ebay for a cheap price!

They even through in the elmo cupcake liners!)   The main take home gift for the kids will be the CD's I made! I downloaded 12 different Sesame Street songs and put them on CD's. I put the CD's in cases and printed out my own lables that read, "Thank you for coming to Isabel's 2nd Birthday" They came out really cute and only costed me $1 each!   Not too shabby a party for a last minute playgroup I think! My MOTTO is, "Keep it simple but keep them BUSY"    Hope this helps inspire someone else! I always love reading what clever things other people come up with!!!!