Sunny Day: a Sesame Street Inspired Second Birthday Party

Description

A Sesame Street inspired brunch party with a basic color palette of golden yellows, gray, and white. Inserting the characters into the decor added pops of red and blue as well.

Design Inspiration

The first tv program we watched with our little girl was Sesame Street. It’s a program that I grew up watching and loving, so I felt like I knew and trusted it. Needless to say, my daughter loved it too! She quickly learned all of the characters and some of her first words were their names (or her version of them). It was so sweet and exciting to see her form an attachment to her new Sesame Street friends. By about 18 months, I knew there was no way around having a Sesame Street inspired 2nd birthday party if I wanted her to absolutely love her special day!

I was motivated by the challenge of creating a Sesame Street inspired theme that still met my requirements of chic and pretty. My inspiration came from the show’s theme song: “sunny day, sweeping the clouds away…”

Decorating Style

Fresh, Stylized, and Contemporary.

Project Details

Despite the theme, the day of the party was not sunny at all. The sun never made an appearance… not even a short one. Elmo himself did make an appearance though, and that more than made up for the sun’s absence. The event was beautiful and it was a fantastic celebration of our baby girl turning 2. It was kind of magical to see it all come together and to share the day with our family and friends.

Party styling, invitations, and coordinating printables for the party were designed by me (www.a-la-mo.com or www.etsy.com/shop/partyalamo). I had the invitations printed by vistaprint.com and then hand glittered them.

Guests were greeted at the front door by a custom Callie Street lamp post. And before you ask, I’ll tell you that it is actually operational. This was definitely one of our more crazy DIY party projects. I think the word my husband used when I approached him about it a week before the party was “insane”. In the end, it was completely worth it though! Tutorial here: http://mysimpleobsession.blogspot.com/2012/04/sesame-street-post-sign-tutorial.html

I created an instagram photo collage in the shape of a 2 with pictures from throughout the year. Tutorial here: http://www.a-la-mo.com/2013/05/29/diy-number-photo-collage/

The Sesame Street tissue poms were fairly simple to make with dollar store tissue paper and construction paper. They were inspired by these from PomPomMomma on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/listing/79238107/sesame-street-inspired-party-poms?ref=shop_home_active

I created Sesame Street trivia cards and placed them on the tables for the adults to flip through. They contained interesting facts about the show and also about the birthday girl. The trivia made good conversation starters for the adults that weren't chasing after their toddlers.

Seeing as how it was earlier in the day and most parents don’t want to load their kid up with sugar just before nap time, I kept the dessert table fairly simple. Homemade funfetti and chocolate cupcakes, decorated sugar cookies, and favors were just enough to make the table festive and satisfy the sweet tooths that were in attendance. I roughly followed this tutorial for the cupcake stand: http://www.annies-eats.com/2010/08/19/how-to-make-a-cupcake-tower/ The huge paper sun was made with some guidance from this tutorial: http://frogprincepaperie.com/2011/12/tutorial-paper-cone-christmas-wreath-how-to.html

The favors were customized with a street sign with each child's name. They contained coloring books, crayons, crazy straws, a SS memory game, whistles (all the parents loved those, ha ha), and Earth's Best Organics SS apple bars.

All photography by the lovely Hillary of Stills by Hill Photography www.stillsbyhill.com