Chi's Birthday Special

Well, most of you have already seen the pics of Chi's Elmo Special birthday, but I've not nothing else to blog about. So here goes...

ELMO INVITATIONS

The face, nose and mouth are made of chart paper. The eyes are googly eyes glued on to foam circles. I designed and printed the text on Microsoft Word (I desperately need photoshop!) and stuck it on the invite. I worked late into the night cutting a zillion circles finishing the invites and I knew they looked decent when Chi woke up the next morning announced 'OH sooo many Elmos!!!' :)

BIRTHDAY BANNER

I cut a zillion more circles in orange and red out of chart paper, strung them together with ribbon and glued on alphabets cut out of white foam.

WARNING: VERY time consuming... do not attempt unless very jobless!

CHI'S FAV SONGS ON CD

Sesame street has taken over our child's life. If not on DVD, then she is watching videos on YouTube. So I thought a CD with most of her favourite songs would be perfect for the goodie bags. I know Chi would approve :)

BUBBLES FOR THE BABIES

Bubbles are a huge hit with our lil munchkin too... so I designed some labels on MS Word, printed them out and converted store bought bubble bottles into personalised gifts. Cute no? :)

PARTY HATS

Again, designed and printed labels on MS Word (YES! I need PHOTOSHOP!) and glued them onto store bought plain party hats. Trés simple!

GOODIE BAG TAGS

These bag tags were originally created to be name tags. Then I changed my mind and found a better use for them. I drew the Elmo face on a red circle (yes! more cutting was involved!) and glued on googly eyes and an orange pom pom for the nose.

GOODIE BAGS

I designed and printed the Sesame Street 'Thank You' sign... you guessed it on MS Word!, glued them onto gold gift bags and viola!

THE SESAME STREET WELCOME

I created a simple sign for the door, to go with the theme. (At this stage our printer ran out of ink and new cartridges had to be procured overnight!). The cute wreathe is just the Easter Bunny making an early appearance :) 

THE STREET DECOR

The CHIARA alphabets are just coloring sheets printed from http://www.sesamestreet.org/ , colored in and cut out.

The Tissue Paper Pom Poms are made out of paper napkins! (I couldn't bring myself to measure and cut tissue paper... patience was wearing thin at this stage!). Go here to figure how to make them. I would say using tissue paper might be wiser, cause cutting a huge wad of napkins is a Herculean task!

The Buntings are just orange, red and yellow triangles glued onto string.

I removed most regular display pieces and placed Chi's soft toys with birthday cards she had received around the sitting area. The number '2' from her foam playmat was also put to good use :)

PIN THE NOSE ON ELMO

I used felt cloth to make this easy game for the party. I must admit that Elmo looks a little mental... but by then I was quite mental too... so I couldn't have cared less!

THE ELMO CAKE!

I thought I would make my life simple so, I baked 2 cakes with readymade cake batter, but had to throw it all away due to some stupidity on part of a very stupid person.... ME!

Anyway, I ended up baking 2 chocolate cakes from scratch, iced them with plain vanilla buttercream icing and decorated the cake with homemade marshmallow fondant. Didn't realise that getting a red color would be so tough.... I must have used half of my precious Wilton Gel color in the process! Only pink cakes for Chi henceforth!

Making 'ELMO' was another disaster! I have never made characters out of fondant so didn't know what to expect. Well for one, I realised that this fellow one was never going to sit on his own! The fondant was too soft and he would just keep going all limp. This explains the 'casually leaning onto the cake Elmo'. Must mention that he started out quite slim, but somehow gravity seemed to be working overtime in his case and he would end up with a huge paunch! So I poked a toothpick right through his chest and camouflaged it with a tie. Another toothpick went through his head and the gruesome evidence was covered with his nose! Anyway, I managed to make something that looked remotely like Elmo's uncle and decided to call it quits! 

MICHELLE'S CHATTAMBADE

The menu for the adults consisted of Chattambade, Meat puffs (minced meat stuffed into pastry sheets) and Pav Bhaji. I do not have any pictoral evidence of the food, but I swear I did feed my guests!

COOKIE MONSTER WITH COOKIES

I had also created these Sesame Street characters out of toilet paper rolls and placed them all over the food table.

The kids menu included Cookie Monster's favourite - Chocolate Chip Cookies, Jelly, Fruit Kebabs, Fruit Yoghurts and Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches.

CANDY SHOP

My tiny candy bar couldn't withstand the attack of the little monsters (read kids). The fact that our tiny guests were all toddlers, they ended up playing with the candy instead of eating it :) The idea was to have every child fill themselves a bag of candy to take away. Things didn't go according to plan :S

THE BIRTHDAY GIRL

Chi was an absolute angel through the evening. She sat in her chair with a lollipop and behaved like a little girl :) I was quite amazed that she let her cabbage sized hair band stay on for the entire party!  She wasn't scared by all the noise or the people. She gracefully accepted gifts, frowned at a boy who tried to blow her candle, cut her cake, ate jelly and chattambade and gave away goodie bags and loads of kisses :) 


My little baby now announces 'I am TWO years old!'. 

Precious. Precious. Precious. 

Well, that's the party update. The mother then rested for 3 days!