Sesame St. Party -2yr- Character Centerpieces

For my son Coy's 2nd Birthday Party, I have decided to do Sesame Street.  He loves Bert & Ernie... which is unusual, most kids like Elmo!  His party will be on June 4th, but I have already begun planning. 

I am making the invitations myself, using a lot of my scrapbook supplies.  I am stenciling all the information.  On the front it reads "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Coy's Party on Sesame Street" and I have decorated it with green and yellow cardstock, balloon confetti, red magic mesh, and Sesame Street stickers.  On the inside it tells the information (time, place, date) and on the top flap, I have placed a picture of him sitting with all of his monster plushies with the saying "Brought to you by the Letter C and the Number 2" with more stickers and confetti decorating the inside.  On the back, since I made them myself I wrote "Created with love, by Kristen". The envelope's are also going to be decorated with Sesame Street stickers.

I am planning for 40 people to attend my son's party.  My sister in law is making a Bert & Ernie cake, and she will also be making a small Ernie face cake just for Coy (I know, that is usually just 1st birthday's, but we do it for a lot of birthday's). I am holding the party at our local park, and it has 2 shelters, picnic tables, and is fenced in. It will be at 5pm, so I imagine everyone will be pretty hungry, so we are serving fried chicken (for the adults), hot dogs, corn on the cob (which we will put on the grill), baked beans, potato salad, chips and dip, and drinks. 

There are 17 picnic tables, and I will be using 1 for the food, 1 for the cakes, and 1 for the gifts.  On these tables I will be using the printed Sesame Street table covers, and the matching Centerpieces, along with some little characters that I found at the Dollar Tree.  We are going with the P is for Party line of Sesame Street decorations.  We will be using the dinner and luncheon plates and the dinner and luncheon napkins. I bought red and blue plasticwear to use instead of clear or plain white. 

I plan to decorate the shelters, which are shaped like a gazebos around the entire thing with crepe paper, and do the inside ceiling as well.  On the other 14 tables, I'm alternating table cloth covers red, blue, and yellow.  For centerpieces, since my son has the entrie collection of plushies, I will be using those attached to a balloon weight with a cluster of red, yellow, and blue balloons. And the monster will be a different color than the table cloth.. For instance, Elmo will go on a yellow or blue table, not a red one.  

I have also purchased the shaped mylar balloons, and I will be attaching them to stakes to push down into the yard with more clusters of balloons. And the balloon clusters will be coordinating with whichever Mylar I use for instance, if it is Ernie, since Ernie wears a red and blue striped shirt, I will use red and blue balloons. We have found, Ernie, Bert, Bert & Ernie together, Oscar, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Zoe, Grover, Elmo and I found round Mylars with the Count on them. I would like for the whole "gang" to be there!

The length of the fence will be drapped in crepe paper in coordinating colors of yellow, red, blue, green, orange, and purple.  All together, we are having 150 balloons blown up.  The drinks, I am going to put in a garbage can, like Oscar the Grouch.   We are going to play "pin the nose on Elmo" and "how many cookies in the cookie jar" (in honor of Cookie Monster) and "goldfish in the bowl" (in honor of Elmo).  We will be having lots of small children, so I wanted things that would be easy for them. 

For favors, I have purchased bubbles with personalized labels with ducks on them (in honor of Ernie), and I have printed coloring pages off of a website to make coloring books, and made up a Trivia to go in the coloring book as well.  I also printed out extra characters, colored them, cut them out, and pasted them to the front before copying.  They will get the souvenier cups to match the theme, Grover activity pads that I have found at OTC, crayons, and some other little odds and ends in their matching gift bags,  I have been trying to keep up with the Sesame Street theme, but stuff to give as favors with Sesame Street on it is hard to find in my area! I have also bought Bug Cathcers from the Dollar Tree, and they are always a HUGE hit.  I had them for my son's 1st birthday party and it kept the kids VERY entertained, so I decided to do it again this year. 

We are also having the party hats and the noise makers as well, the kids are the perfect age for those.  We will have 8 kids that are 3 or younger, and 9 kids that are in the ages of 3-8.  My son will be wearing a Sesame Street shirt, and I have asked in the inviations for everyone to wear their Sesame Street colored clothing!  The shelter has an electric outlet, so as our guests arrive, I will be playing music from Sesame Street.  One of my son's gifts this year, is going to be a goldfish. He loves them when we go into a store that has them, so we are going to get him the whole set up for his birthday Maybe he will name it Dorothy in honor of Elmo!! I'm also making a sign to go onto the front of the fence at the gate to resemble the Sesame Street light pole. I have also found many of the characters that are balloons on sticks, so I am purchasing them, and placing them at the entrance to resemble them "greeting" our guests!  

I want everyone to "feel" like they are really on Sesame Street, I insinuated that in the inviations, so I am going to really try and make Sesame Street come to town!!