Spencer’s Sesame Street Birthday Party

Our baby boy, Spencer, turned 3! To celebrate, we rented out a shelter at our local park and had a Sesame Street bash! All the decorations were hand-made. So were the cupcakes & his own special smash cake! This was a very inexpensive themed birthday party! Total cost for 50 goodie bags, 48 cupcakes, 1 smash cake & decorations = approximately $70!

Spencer’s goodie bags turned out fantastic! It was filled with his favorite things: Smarties & crayons. We also included 2 photo magnets of Spencer that we made ourselves. Here’s a great link to how to make these fairly inexpensive magnets: How to Make Magnets. Tip #1: buy a 3/4″ circle punch cutter or you will hate yourself after about 5 picture cutouts! For more tips, check out my post about photo magnets found HERE. Thinking about other ways to package your DIY glass magnets? Check out this post HERE.

To make the goodie bags, I purchased treat bags used for lollipops or suckers (100 count for under $3 at Michael’s). I then made the label using Microsoft Publisher & Microsoft Word and printed it on white cardstock. The size is a standard business card. I created a “tent-fold” so that one side of the goodie bag had the “Thank You” message and the other side had one of my favorite pictures of Spencer on it. I filled the treat bags with 2 magnets, 2 Smarties & 2 crayons. I folded down the treat bags about 1/4″ and then stapled the folded business cards over the bag. All in all, the total cost for 50 goodie bags was around $20.00 (the majority going into the cost of making the magnets)!

A Sesame Street Party is not complete without the “Spencer Street” sign! This was made out of a paper towel cardboard roll, a yellow balloon & a terra cotta pot. Using the computer, I created the “Spencer Street” sign. I laminated the sign to make it more sturdy & also to create an edge to slip into a slit I cut into the carboard role. I just duct-taped the excess laminate to the inside of the cardboard roll! I blew up the yellow balloon (water balloon size) and tied a string to it. I dropped the string down the cardboard roll and pulled it just tight enough so that the balloon was snug against the top of the roll. I then duct-taped the string on the inside at the opposite end of the cardboard roll. I turned over a terra-cotta pot and duct taped the cardboard roll to the pot. I applied several layers of duct tape to ensure the cardboard roll (which is very lightweight) was securely attached to the pot. I took another piece of green cardboard stock and wrapped it around the cardboard roll to hide the duct-tape-work-of-art at the base of the cardboard roll. The cardstock was secured to the cardboard roll by using plain ol’ transparent tape (seam of course was on the back side of the sign post). Next I covered the base with this reflective tape. I don’t know really what it is, lol. Something the hubby got at the home improvement store. It was a bright & shiny silver tape. Silver duct tape would work just as good too! Spencer’s street sign was super easy and it turned out to be a fantastic table centerpiece for the goodie bag table! Total cost: 69 cents for a terra-cotta pot at Walmart, I had the rest of the supplies on hand.

Sesame Street characters are a must for his party! I made tissue balls and applied character faces to it! Really easy to make! I’ve seen online where folks are charging like $10 for each character tissue ball, that is crazy! I made all 8 of these (2 of each one) for less than $6.00!!! I used solid color cardstock to cut out the characters’ faces from. I used all-purpose craft glue to adhere it right onto the tissue balls. The 8 character tissue balls hung from the rafters of the shelter house between balloons…it was really perfect 🙂 Here is a great link on how to make the tissue balls (you will be smacking yourself having not done this before for a party): How to make Tissue Balls.

I made 10 table centerpieces using some supplies I already had on hand! I printed 2 pics of each Sesame Street character (the 2nd pic was a “mirror image” so that the centerpieces were double-sided). I found some old construction paper and glued the characters down to each side. I then glued the characters to a dowel rod that was stuck into a styrofoam cube. I glued down tiny squares of green tissue paper (the old “wrap tissue around eraser end of pencil, dip it in school glue and press the pencil down onto the foam trick”). I adorned each character with some leftover ribbon I had for other projects I had done. These were way cute and now that his party is over, we removed the dowel rods from the terra-cotta pots (oh, which were only 59 cents at Michael’s) and Spencer uses his character pieces as puppets! Total cost for 10 table centerpieces $6.90 (59 cents per pot & $1 for green tissue paper at Hobby Lobby), the rest of the supplies, I had on hand. I’ve had a lot of hits for Sesame Street decorations on my blog. I thought I would add Microsoft Word documents that contains the photos used for the centerpieces. All you have to do is cut out the front and back and put it on construction paper.

Here it is (click on the name and the file should download to your computer): Ernie, Big Bird, Count, Elmo, Oscar, Cookie Monster, Snuffalugasus, Bert & Super Grover.

We provided several character-themed snacks for the party guests! This was a tray of “Grover’s Grapillars”!  I skewered 5 green grapes sideways and applied melted chocolate eyes (dipped the blunt end of a skewer into the chocolate and daubed the eyes onto the grape). I also purchased 240 small condiment cups at GFS for less than $4. In front of each of the snacks, I had printed a picture of the Sesame Character on a sign saying what the snack was:

• Small cups filled with sunflower seeds for “Big Bird’s Seeds”
• Small cups filled with pretzel sticks for “Count’s Sticks”
• Small cups filled with cookies for “Cookie Monster’s Cookies”
• Small cups filled with gummi worms for “Oscar’s Worms”
• Small cups filled with goldfish crackers for “Elmo’s Goldie Fish”

Here are printable signs that you can put in front of the treats. There are two signs per Word document. You can fold to create a tent-fold and also a fold across the bottom (so if looking from the side, you created a tall triangle) making it easy to stand up and tape to your table. Serving Signs 1, Serving Signs 2 & Serving Signs 3.

Wish the picture turned out better! The Popcorn Cupcakes were a huge hit! It’s not really popcorn but mini-marshmallows cut up to look like popcorn!

It was really simple to make these Popcorn Cupcakes! First you have to make the sleeves. I printed the word “POPCORN” inside of an oval onto address labels. This part was kinda crappy…I hand cut all the ovals out. Then stick the Popcorn label onto each sleeve. With transparent tape, tape together the sleeve just tight enough that a cupcake sits in it without falling through. I strongly suggest cutting the marshmallows up in advance! For 48 cupcakes, it took almost 3 bags of mini-marshmallows. Many websites say to cut your marshmallows all the way through and smash them back together into random shapes. Turns out if you use FRESH mini-marshmallows and cut a “+” sign into one of the flat sides of the marshmallow (cutting halfway through; NOT all the way through), the four pieces will poof out and it will look like popcorn! I made normal size cupcakes and it took approximately 35 cut-up marshmallows for each cupcake. The white icing is a great filler for the gaps between the marshmallows. To create the buttered look, I added yellow food coloring to a small amount of water. With a pastry brush, I lightly brushed the yellow water over the marshmallows (don’t soak them, just dab on a very small amount of colored water). Everyone loved the cupcakes! Total cost: approximately $14 for 48 cupcakes (22 cents per sheet of scrapbook paper x 10 ~ 1/2 off at Hobby Lobby, $1.50 for each box of cake mix x 2 & for each tub of frosting x 2 & $1 a bag x 3 for generic mini-marshmallows). I had blank address labels and food coloring on hand already.

Spencer had his own special Elmo cake to smash up himself! This was super easy too (because if you haven’t figured it out, that’s how I roll). I baked 3 round cakes (again, Pillsbury Confetti) and layered the cakes. I smacked on a thick layer of white icing. With a flat spatula, I gently smacked the cake all over creating spikes in the frosting (to represent Elmo’s fur). It probably would make more sense to tint the icing with red food coloring gel but it takes just way too long to blend it all together. It just seems like you have to stir and stir and stir and stir and stir for hours to fully blend in food coloring. My lazy self was very happy to find they have this food color spray paint out now! 1 can of the red stuff was more than enough to coat the cake in red (found at Michael’s in the baking section)! I reserved some of the white icing to make two mounds of white frosting for his eyeballs. I also reserved a mound of icing for his nose which I reluctantly tinted with food color gel to make the orange (I really hate tinting frosting, can you tell?). Michael’s also has this too cool fondant thing going on! One large sheet of black fondant that is thinly rolled (less than $5) was what I used to cut out a 1/2 circle for his mouth, the 2 tiny circles for his pupils and the straight trim at the bottom of the cake. Hint: I used the 3/4″ circle paper-cutter to punch out the pupil circles! The first picture was taken shortly after applying the black fondant. After a few hours, the moisture in the icing softened the black giving it a more “icing” texture and less of a flat-black-I-stuck-a-piece-of-construction-paper-on-a-cake-look (as you can see on the next two cake photos). Spencer loved his special cake! Total cost for the cake: approximately $15 ($1.50 for each cake mix x 2, $1.50 for each tub of frosting x 2, $4 for red food coloring spray paint & $5 for one sheet of black fondant).

We also wore our family Captain America tie-dye shirts to Spencer’s party! How we tie-dyed the shirts is for another day! Spencer’s Sesame Street Bash was a HUGE success!