Blake's 2nd Birthday: An Elmo Party!

Finally, I'm getting around to posting about the big 2nd Birthday! Blake has been loving Elmo {or Melmo, as he says it} lately so I thought he would love an Elmo-ish themed party. To get some ideas I headed to {of course} pinterest. {where was pinterest when I was planning our wedding 6 years ago?!}

Invitations: I love invitations. But they can become pretty costly {and most people just throw them away} so this year I decided to try making something simple on our computer. It did help that I could look for ideas on etsy and pinterest. They were fun to create!

Goodie Bags: A while back I came across these square plain red gift bags at Target and thought they would make perfect Elmo party favor bags. To make them look like Elmo, I just cut out eyes, nose and a mouth from card stock and glued it on. {I'm not supper artistic so the one thing I loved about Elmo is he's really not that hard to create!} 

The decorations and food: The banner I made out of card stock and the frame I found at Goodwill and took the glass and print out and spray painted red and stapled ribbon to the back and and then used close pins to hold the pictures to the ribbon. The food I decided to keep simple this year. Since the party was at 3pm I didn't feel like I needed to provide a whole meal but I wanted something {because what's a party without food?!} so we just had veggies with ranch, fruit with {fruit dip}, crackers with a cheese spread and chips and salsa.

The Elmo: Isn't that the most awesome Elmo balloon you've ever seen?! It was huge! And Blake was terrified of it...

This is the closest he'd get to it and he was trying to claw his way out of my arms. It was probably a good thing he wasn't with me when I picked it up from the store or he might not have gotten in the car with it ha! Someone put Elmo in time out...

I'm glad Luke loved Elmo!

The cake: {just to warn you, this is a bit of a long story...} I ordered the cake from Market of Choice. Market of Choice is newer local grocery store in Corvallis that makes the most delicious cake ever. {I am serious, if you are ever near a Market of Choice stop and buy a slice of cake, you won't be disappointed.} 

When I called to talk to the cake decorator about what I wanted for an Elmo cake I was shocked when she told me that they couldn't draw Elmo's face on a cake because of copy right issues. All I was originally planning on was a square cake with Elmo's face on it. Pretty easy. So when I was told they couldn't do that I was at a loss. What was suppose to make my life easier {buying a cake, not making one} was now turning into a hassle! I called all over the place and searched every online website for something Elmo to put on a cake but nothing I found I really liked. The next idea was to have them just frost it and me add Elmo face myself to it but I am not talented when it comes to cake decorating and really didn't want to take on that job, ha! So we went for an Elmo inspired cake. The frosting on the cake is suppose to look like Elmo's fur and I made the little Elmo face topper out of card stock and also made the cupcake toppers. The says "Love, Melmo" because that is the way Blake says Elmo :)

After all that hassle, I think we ended up with a pretty fun unique cake! Which was supper delicious too!

Now on to the party pictures!!

 We were so lucky that it didn't rain! 

You never know what the weather is going to do in Oregon.

 The 

 Birthday 

Boy!

 Blowing out the candle

FaceTime with cousin T {who lives in Virginia}

 Opening presents... 

 He had a way better idea of what to do this year then he did last year!

The only minor problem was that he wanted to play with all of them as soon as he opened them :)

We had a great time celebrating with lots of family and friends! Thank you to everyone who came! It was a great day and I can believe our little boy is 2!