How to Plan an Elmo Birthday Party!

Reese loves Elmo, so it was obvious that the theme for her 2nd birthday party would be Elmo's world.  I researched online for hours trying to get ideas for the best Elmo themed party!  Here is our party plan:

Invitations:
 
I bought these Elmo invitations online.  This is just an image I found online of course, not her actual invitation.

Food:

We decided to keep it simple for food so that no one would be slaving away over the grill or in the kitchen during the party.  Since Elmo's favorite food is pizza we decided to grab a bunch of Little Ceasar's Pizza.  It was a huge hit and a $5 each for a large pizza it didn't break the bank.

 

We also made potato salad, pasta salad, fruit tray and veggie tray.  The fruit and veggie trays were made in the shape of Elmo's face.  Here is the fruit tray we made, and when I say we I mean my sister Mary. ;)

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the veggie tray, but it was very similar.  We used grape tomatoes from the garden, olives and carrots. 

For drinks we had soda, beer (yes we are in Wisconsin) and Elmo juice boxes for the kids!

Cake:

Of course we had to make an Elmo cake!  We also made 50 Elmo cupcakes since we had quite a large guest list.  For the cake I used this cake pan:

Baking the cake was incredibly easy and I was so proud of myself for not screwing the cake up when taking it out of the pan.  The hard part was decorating the cake.  Luckily I had my awesome and unsuspecting friend Breanna over that night and she decorated the entire thing!!  

A note for anyone who will be making this cake: it takes a TON of red food coloring.  We had to make a mad dash to the grocery store right before it closed to get more food coloring or else we would have ended up with a pink Elmo!

Here is a photo of the finished cake:

Thanks again to Breanna for doing such a great job decorating it!

Games/Activities:

 We were expecting about 12 kids at the party.  Most of them were around 2 years old and a few were older.  I wanted to have some fun games and activities for the kids during the party so no one was bored.  Here is what we did:

• Coloring table: I got a few Sesame Street coloring books and boxes of crayons at the dollar store and setup a coloring table. 
• Play-doh table: I got about 12 cans of play-doh and set them on a table.  This was a huge hit because most of the little kids (including Reese) had never played with it before.  They ended up using the crayons and sticking them into the play-doh.  
• Bean bag toss: I actually made an Elmo bean bag toss game.  It took me forever, but it turned out great and the kids loved it.  I'll post a tutorial later.
• Pin the nose on the Elmo: I used red poster board to draw an Elmo face.  Then cut out orange nose and had the kids (and adults!) pin the nose on the Elmo while blindfolded.  

Overall the party was a huge success!!  We had over 50 people all in our backyard celebrating as Reese turned 2!