Cookie Monster & Elmo Party With Guest Blogger, Angela of the The Mommy Stories

A big thank you to Angela from The Mommy Stories for this awesome photo filled write up on having a Cookie Monster & Elmo inspired party!

**All photos by Angela Avery

 

our little sunshine's Cookie Monster & Elmo party!

I am pretty sure when I was pregnant with one of my children I stumbled upon this blog post by Annie's Eats and said to myself, I MUST have a Sesame Street party someday!

(My sister wrote out her welcome Happy 2nd Birthday Addisyn chalk announcement. So cute! She wouldn't let go of her new shopping cart for the picture.)

Then I had a daughter who was totally obsessed with what she called Elmo (really Cookie Monster) her entire second year of her life. So, voila, Sesame party it was!

However, I'd also had the idea of a You Are My Sunshine party. It was the song my mom used to sing to me as a baby and now I sing to my daughter, so I thought it was sweet to do a party. She's also so sunny, smiley and happy, it was fitting for her. When she showed her true love for Cookie Monster and eventually the real Elmo, I decided, why not, let's just combine two themes?

It was fun this way actually. I was a bit nervous, not sure if it would tie together. We made it work super fun, all for her, of course. What worked with doing the two themes was not going over board on either one. I didn't do all the many, many ideas I found on Pinterest. I just did a few for each theme and it came together great.

 

(She wasn't impressed to have to stop and say "cheese" in the middle of playing that morning before guests arrived!)

We luckily were given this adorable Cookie Monster shirt from her cousin. I got the headband at Target last summer. The tutu my mom found at a consignment sale, so adorable. Who doesn't like tutus for a girl's birthday party?! The tights were also given to her from her big cousin, she wore them last year at her birthday, too. So cute.

I loved how her outfit said everything about her... she's a Cookie Monster lover, enjoys food like he does, bright and sunny like her outfit and totally girlie, yet with sneakers on to signify she's ready to run and play with the big boys if she needs to. This is totally my daughter. 

We decided on a morning pancake breakfast because that would cover the You Are My Sunshine theme, as well as pancakes are one of Addisyn's favorite foods. I loved doing a breakfast party. We set everything the night before and only had to entertain the kids for maybe two hours in the morning before the party. Then the party was over at their nap time, so they went right down. It was a great timeframe. We started the party at 9 a.m.

We sent an Evite invitation online. I love these, they're just easy and a good way to keep track of who can attend. The invitation read:

Addi is our sunshine, our only sunshine, she makes us happy when skies are gray... and she is also in love with Elmo and Cookie Monster! Join us for a sunshine morning breakfast, brought to you by the letter A and the number 2. Come hungry for pancakes and more sweet treats.

I work in a middle school. I knew I wanted the letter A and the number 2 somewhere for my daughter's party, to match Sesame Street, however I'm not artistic at all. I knew where to go - I asked the art teacher to send me an artistic student. She sent me a sixth grade girl who listened to my ideas and then ran with it. She created that sign above, "Addisyn's Street" for the door to the party. I loved how cute and Sesame Street-like it looked. Just a sweet touch, and I was super glad I didn't have to attempt to make it myself :)

We had the party at my grandparents' house that we rent out in the summers. It was perfect, large, open, nothing in it since it's a rental house. We had plenty of space inside and out on the deck for everyone. Love that I didn't mess up my own house, too!

I set up this table for the kids. Unfortunately, maybe 4 of the kids actually sat at the table. It was just so busy and everyone was running around. I thought it looked cute though, oh well!

This banner below was made by the wonderful Jessie Estes. She gave it to me for my son's fishing party a few months ago, and it worked perfectly with our color scheme for this party, too. Loved it! I got so many compliments on it, and had to admit I wasn't the one who made it :) 

Another Dollar Tree special! I got all of the cups and plates, table cloth, silverware, etc. from the Dollar Tree.

The blue and white straws I found in the dollar bin at Target. Loved them!

The cone hats were a MUST in my mind. I just kept picturing all of my young birthday party pics, we always used to wear cone hats. I ordered them on Amazon, two packs for about $10 I think it was. Again, only a handful of the kids actually wore the hats. Oh well, I tried to be cute!

The birthday girl's seat! Her awesome Cookie Monster hat was hard to find. Most Sesame Street things are either for first birthdays or all Elmo. I found this at a random party store I found in New Hampshire when just driving by. Love it :)

A funny thing that emerged when planning was the color scheme of yellow (for sunshine) and blue (for Cookie Monster), which are my husband and my wedding colors. Our daughter was born the day before our anniversary, we call her our anniversary baby, so it was fitting that her party was with these two colors!

For treat bags, I made them simple. We were having an Easter egg hunt where the kids would get treats in the eggs, so I wanted the bags to be smaller. I also am always aware of not giving people tons of junk or extra things to just add to their already-packed house full of kids' toys, so I tried to pick things I thought people would really use.

I had these paper bags in the kitchen and last minute before the party decided to put the treats in them, drawing a sun and their names on each bag. It was so simple, I loved it!

I'm usually a little overboard with party planning, I liked that with this party I scaled back a little bit on my creativity and Pinterest-ing. I couldn't do all of the bigger ideas I had because we chose to invite so many kids this time. I can do more when we don't invite so many people, but we loved having more people at this one. It worked out great!

Inside each bag the kids were given a box of Sesame Street crayons and some Crayola bath soap, both found at the Target dollar bin. Then each child got a Sesame Street coloring book, "Sunny Days," perfect for our Sunshine party. I found those at Dollar Tree and Target. We threw in some eggs, too.

For food we had everything you can imagine at a breakfast! We had SO many compliments on the food. It was awesome. My husband did an amazing job cooking. The best part was we prepared everything the night before, only had to cook pancakes and throw things into the oven that morning. It was so easy.

We had two platters of French Toast Creme Brule, my husband's family recipe, SO yummy! I made an egg, cheese, mushroom, peppers, onions, etc. bake casserole. Then we had cheese and grapes, watermelon, chocolate chip cookies (of course, Cookie Monster's favorite!), Panera muffins and croissants, danishes, etc. We also had chocolate chip pancake muffins with maple syrup (back left corner with Elmo cupcake toppers in them), these were yummy but the wrapper stuck to them, unfortunately. Then bottom right of the above picture we made banana cupcakes... slices of bananas, spread peanut butter over it, top with coconut and a blueberry. So cute!

Then there was Cookie Monster made out of blackberries and grapes, with yogurt eyes! LOVE this :) We made a small version since blueberries aren't in season right now. My sister made the Cookie Monster and the sunshine cheese platter. Love how these turned out, so cute, easy to make, and looked awesome.

I had been looking for a You Are My Sunshine sign for months, just hadn't found one reasonable enough. Two weeks before the party I was scrolling Facebook and found this on Sassy Steals. LOVE that site!

I made the blue notecard signs for a few of the food dishes that morning. I was proud of myself going another simple route here. Usually I type up notecard signs for food, they look cute, but then get tossed out, I don't think many people care about seeing them. This time, I went simple and just wrote a few out, not for each food, and it looked fine and was helpful to identify what certain foods were.

My husband made this adorable pineapple spread. So cute!

 

I didn't get a great picture of it, but we had a yogurt and pancake bar of toppings (shown below on the counter in front of the stove).  We put out two kinds of yogurt and some granola, then we had the following toppings for either pancakes or yogurt:

• blueberries
• strawberries
• raisins
• peanut butter
• sprinkles
• chocolate chips
• cranberries
• coconut
• cinnamon 
• 3 kinds of maple syrup (blueberry, strawberry and plain)

For the cake, I knew we didn't really want to give out cupcakes at 9 a.m. so instead we had mini muffins for the kids or cinnamon buns. For my daughter, I made a simple stack of pancakes cake! It was very messy, so non-traditional, but worked great, she loved it!

I just put 4 pancakes stacked on top of each other, sprinkled with rainbow sprinkles and strawberries, with whipped cream. Then I added her candles, done! It was a messy cake, but she smiled, it worked.

Note to self: wait until pancakes are cool before topping... it all melted! haha

Big brother wore his Elmo T-shirt for the special occasion!

Just a little reading in the middle of her party. Love this :) 

After the kids ate, we did cake, and then we did presents. I usually do presents and then cake, because I have a busy boy who after eating cake cannot possibly sit still to watch someone open presents. We did all the food first at this party though since it wasn't real sugary cake, it was all breakfast treats.

She loved all of her baby dolls and girlie toys :) So fun! 

Then after presents we went outside for a huge Easter egg hunt! Her party was the day before Easter Sunday, so of course I had to toss in a third theme to the party, Easter! Ha! I went a little crazy with themes this party, but come on, after I realized the party was right near Easter I thought, how can we not have an egg hunt? It was perfect. The kids LOVED it.

I got all 130 eggs at Dollar Tree for $5. We filled them with erasers, rings, balls, stickers, coins, jelly beans, and chocolate eggs.

We did two egg hunts, one for the 3 older boys (3-7 years old) because we knew they'd outrun the younger ones. They had their own section of eggs to find. Their eggs had lots of coins in them, real money. Then we did a baby and toddler hunt for the 10 months to 2 1/2 year olds. It was so cute.

We also had chalk and bubbles for the kids to play with outside as activities. 

Overall, a perfect party. We had so much fun, tons of food, so many people told us how great of a day it was, sunny and outside, egg hunt and yummy breakfast.

Can't believe our little sunshine is TWO!

Sorry I've Been Away. Here's a Coupon!

Hey there! You may have noticed that I've been away the past month.  We have just welcomed our baby girl, Ada June into the world, so things have been pretty crazy around here!

Now that (as my husband likes to say) we have increased our number of kids by 100%, and have TWO now, I have already learned a few things.  Of course, I'm going to share them with you:

1. I didn't know I could be so tired, and yet not fall asleep.  It is a miracle I'm not dozing off while walking around and going about my day.  Thank God for coffee.

2. It is amazing what friends and family do to help us new moms!  Our house has been filled with love, freezer meals, cleaning fairies, playmates for Atticus and of course snuggles for Ada.  Guys, my sister scrubbed my toilets and organized cloth diapers.  She took out garbage and mopped the floor.  All while watching  her two kids, plus helping out with mine.  It was the best.

3. I'm learning to cope with a messy house.  Now that my sister has gone back home to Maine, the mess is taking over again.  But you know, that's ok.  Toys are everywhere, but there is a smile on my son's face.  Laundry is in baskets everywhere, but at least its clean (most of it).  Dust is accumulating, but that's an easy fix.  Life is messy.  I need to be ok with that.

4. Remember those freezer meals I mentioned a minute ago?  Seriously, they are the best.  We have ziti, mac and cheese, chilis, soups, and more and it makes things so much easier when its meal time. Once things settle down, I plan on making it a weekly thing, filling my freezer.  Do you have meals you love to make and freeze? Please share!

5. I will look crazy for the foreseeable future.  I have bags under my eyes, crazy hair, probably a stain or two.  So don't be alarmed.  I'm a mom of two now.  

In other news, Crooked By Design was closed for a few weeks, but now we are back in action!  There are some new items and more to come. I sure hope you stop on my the shop and check it out!

 

Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies the Gluten Free Way

One of the most annoying things about gluten free baking is all the ingredients needed, and the small amount of yummy treats it yields.  Things tend to dry out fast and basically not be as delicious as the "normal" baked goods.  Last night, I wanted to make gluten free chocolate chip cookies, but didn't want to fuss with multiple flours a million ingredients.  I did something bold, my friends: I used the recipe on the Toll House Dark Chocolate Chips package, only I substituted the "all purpose flour" for Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Flour and added a 1/2 tsp of xantham gum.  That's all I changed and boy oh boy was it was a great experiment.

**A note about these chocolate chips: They don't say "gluten free" on the package, but do not have any ingredients that have gluten.  I am very sensitive, and ate them without any problems at all (except maybe the problem of wanting to eat a million of them)**

A couple tricks I found helped make this chewy and delicious:

1. Before putting the sheet of cookies in the oven to bake (use parchment paper!), put them in the freezer for 5-10 minutes.

2. Under cook them a bit.  If you look at them and say to yourself, "just another minute or two" take them out.

3. Store them in a big Ziploc that is tightly sealed, so they don't dry out as quick.  The next day, mine are just as chewy as they were after cooling.  I froze half of them too, so I could take them out when ready and microwave them for about 20-30 seconds.  Delicious!

Keep Them Busy With a Simple Rainbow Craft

 

This morning, Atticus told me he wanted to do a craft.  He wanted colors, glue and cotton balls.  He also wanted a squirrel and a giraffe, but I didn't have those things handy.  It dawned on me that he hadn't done much with rainbows in the past, and what a no brainier to set him up with a good old fashioned rainbow project.  He was thrilled.

We started by talking about colors and where rainbows come from and then he just went to town on creating his own.  This is a great way to practice colors, cutting skills for preschoolers (though, he gave up on the scissors and helped me rip pieces of paper instead) and let them use their creativity with how they want the rainbow to look.  I found myself close to correcting him on the color order, but where's the fun in having someone telling you how to make your artwork?

Lobster Birthday Party with Guest Blogger Angela From The Mommy Stories

 

 

Looking for some great party ideas? My sister, Angela, from the Mommy Stories just threw her son (my big guy nephew, Owen) a lobster themed one, in honor of my dad's profession: a Maine lobster man.  Thanks, Angela, for showing us how to put the party all together, while keeping to a budget.

My little guy is FOUR!

We knew early on in the year that he'd have an ocean party fit for a lobsterman's grandson. Yes, that's right, my father is a true Maine lobsterman.

My son is pretty obsessed with his lobster traps, bait, and of course those old bugs, lobsters! He's into the boat the most. We visit several times a year on Frenchboro Island in northern Maine, off the coast of Bar Harbor.

We HAD to have a party like this because of his interest, but also because my son's middle name Joseph is after his Papa (and my stepdad, grandfather and then my brother's middle name, but who's counting?!). It was super fun to honor my father's career as a lobsterman through this party. I told him he was the guest of honor. 

My handsome guy FOUR years old!

We visited the Children's Museum and Theater of Maine in Portland just before Christmas and my son didn't leave the real lobster boat the entire time. He loved it so much! It had a hauler to haul up the traps of lobsters. There is also a touch tank upstairs with star fish and snails, etc. There is a large whale hanging from the ceiling, a pirate ship out back, and another speed boat to ride on. It's a perfect place for an ocean party. He is also very into make believe lately and pretending he's a real worker, so it was an awesome location.

We always have had parties at our house, and with an immediate family of 30+ that doesn't leave room for inviting any other friends. So this year we were excited to do it at a larger place to invite a few extended cousins. We still tried to keep it to just family since it gets expensive with the party packages and paying per person at the Museum, but it was fun for my son to be able to invite a few more people to his party to play with him.

I start all birthday party brainstorming with some good old Pinterest searches.

Here is my board that I created with ideas for this party. I hope you check it out, because there were TONS more ideas that I did not implement. I chose to keep this party slightly simple since the atmosphere of having the party at the Museum was going to be enough. The kids barely were in the party room, they ran around the Museum so much playing and having fun. So check out the board for more ideas, especially if you're having the party at home.

www.pinterest.com/angelaavery78/owens-4th-lobsterman-ocean-party/

I have to say I had a difficult time finding ideas specifically for what I was looking for. I found one lobster party... one. All others were swimming, pool, sea life, pirate, etc. type parties. I had to get a little creative.

I sent an Evite email invitation with this wording:
"Owen's turning FOUR, and he would like to SEA you out on the ocean with him catching lobsters and fish.

Join us at the Portland Children's Museum for some make believe fun, with lobsterman Owen. Check out the live turtles and fish tanks, steer the real lobster boat and haul some traps, even touch a live starfish or sea urchin. Our lobster boy will show you the ropes!

We'll have fishy snacks, lobster cookies, and ocean water to drink. Come have fun - and of course prepare to work a little with Captain Owen!"

I was given by my wonderful friend Jessie Legere some fish and ocean bowls, signs, a table cloth and banner (that I didn't use because the Museum had already put this blue one down and written on the chalkboard), etc. So I went with her colors of blue and greens as ocean colors.

I found those fun polka dot napkins at Wal-Mart. My son decided the day before the party he HAD to have party cone hats, so Jake and the Neverland Pirates hats it was (Wal-Mart, $2.50 for pack of 8).

We did minimal food, just snack type things, because we knew the kids would be so busy in the Museum. The focus was not on the food, but on the activities. So we had the following food:

Tortilla chips and Goldfish crackers = fish and chips

Salsa = seaweed

sea cucumbers = cucumber slices

buoys = cantoloupe balls and grapes 

Pirates Booty

Shamu Whales cheese crackers

However, check out the Pinterest board I made, TONS of cute ideas for food if you were doing this at lunch time or not at a busy Museum like we did (Goldfish cracker shaped bread for sandwiches!)

Ocean water and grape juice

For treats we had confetti vanilla-based cupcakes with aqua blue frosting (that came with little fishies, which I didn't know until I got home from the store! Score!), topped with a Sweedish fish.

The birthday boy requested a chocolate cake, so we used the same aqua blue frosting, along with some gummy lobsters from Yummees candy store in Kittery, Maine.  (Don't worry, they ship, if you are having a Maine-themed party outside of southern Maine!).

For gift bags for our little guests my husband helped me make these lobster bags. Yes, they took about an hour with both of us cutting out those claws, but they were too cute not to make so we did it! I got the red bags, pipe cleaners and googley eyes for $3 at the Dollar Tree, then we found lobster pictures online and my husband copied these and cut them out.

 

Inside the treat bags we put a small bag of Pirates Booty, bag of whale and sea cheese crackers, a gummy candy stick of sea life creatures that my husband randomly found at BJs (so excited!).  I printed some coloring pages off of the computer (boats, sea creatures, lobsters, lighthouse, etc.). I always like to include things like that so if kids wanted to color at the party they could, for some quiet down time, but also as a fun way to really send home the theme of the party.

Then, my favorite part of the party, was the Sea Fish Bar (not sure what else to call this!). I found this idea on Pinterest, of putting out the various types of Goldfish crackers and letting kids fill up a bag of them. I then added in other treats to go with the lobsterman theme. Loved how this turned out!

Although, I'll admit, at a big busy Museum party it wasn't a great idea, only a handful of people actually filled up treat bags, they were too busy running around and playing. I ended up making up little treat bags for the kids to take home.

I got all the little red containers at the Dollar Tree for $2 total. 

I was so excited at Christmas time when I found these Goldfish cracker small plastic bags in New York, totally randomly. They were perfect! 

Herring = Sweedish fish 

We had such a great time! My little lobsterman loved his party, cake, singing happy birthday to himself, and of course all of the make believe at the Museum.

We had the kids go play while we set the party room up (you only get 2 hours in the room, setting up and cleaning up included). They played about 45 minutes, then came to the party room where we had snacks ready for them. We sang happy birthday, blew out birthday candles, served up cake and cupcakes, then moved right into the presents so we could get them back out to play more for the last hour or so of the party. It worked pretty well.

We asked people to sign the L is for Lobster book. It's fun to have books filled with notes from loved ones on our book shelf. I threw that in as a last minute idea, and so glad I did.

The birthday boy with his lobsterman grandfather! 

My husband found these adorable T-shirts at the last minute when he was picking up the lobster gummy treats. It's winter in Maine, not many tourists wanting summer lobster T-shirts, so they let him get one get one free, so 4 shirts for $20! So excited.

(exhausted at the end of the party. Not to self: take family picture BEFORE the festivities next year!)

My husband's says "Got lobstah?" Mine says "Crustacean Nation" and the kids had MAINE lobsters on theirs. 

A very (busy, hard working!) HAPPY birthday boy!