My son is only turning one but he loves Elmo!  I might have went overboard but here is what I did.  The party is catering to 50 children and 50 adults. First the invitations were sent out and designed by an incredible lady on Ebay  who designed them with a photo finish, with my son's picture and elmo holding blocks spelling his name. At the bottom of the picture it said, brought to you by the letter t" and the number "1". I got them sent to Walmart and paid only 19 cents for each invite. I only spent $25 on invitations.  My party is going to be outside with 5 main tables (red for elmo yellow for big bird orange for ernie green for oscar the grouch and blue for cookie monster.  A big balloon with each character is going to be put in the center of each table. For appetizers I am having red orange green yellow and blue jello eggs that I got from the JELLO website. I am also having goldfish and chips for the children.  For the adults I am having fruit and carrots.  I am ordering 25 boxes of pizza.  For each table I have 2 gallons of each color Hawaiian punch. For the games we are playing Journey to Ernie (where I hide Easter eggs around the backyard some filled with candy and a few with Ernie stickers inside.  There will be 5 winners for this game. For the Big Bird game I made big feet out of cardstock and punched 2 holes and tied 2 long strings. The children have to slide their feet in the loop on the cardstock and race! For the Cookie monster game I had 2 big clear jars with a picture of cookie monster in the front and had both children and adults guess how many.  Each adult and child that one got to take home the jar!  For the Oscar the grouch game I had 2 green containers from the dollar store and put a picture of oscar the grouch on them. Children had to stand on a line and toss pieces of crumpled newspaper into the container.  Those that made 3 shots in got to pick from a bunch of prizes (which I also got from the dollar store). Last for the Elmo game we played pin the nose on the Elmo and hit the Elmo pinata. Each child was given a bag with their name on it to catch the candy.  I hired a DJ to play songs for an hour. Then Elmo is going to come and take pictures in front of the gate which I decorated with Sesame Street scene setters.  I am using my poloroid camera to take the pictures and then each child is going to get a card which I made from red cardstock. Inside the card will be a birthday picture of my son (taken at Kiddie Kandids) and a note that says Thanks for coming to my 1st birthday party- TY.  The children will also get personalized bags which I bought from Oriental trading.  I ironed-on a sesame street picture and let each child sign a bag when they arrived. Inside the bag I put playdough sharpener candy sticker crayons (for their coloring books and a Snuffalufagus blowout. The adults each got a personalized Hershey Nugget wrapped with Ty's first birthday and the date.  I bought 3 cupcake holder trees for the cupcakes that I am decorating with Elmo pieces in the middle and sprinkles all around in Elmo cucpcake liners.   I will be serving the cupcakes with little dixie cups. For the adults i purchased a small cake from BJS. After the magician performs he will give each child a bag of cotton candy and then we will open the presents.  I requested that all presents be in monetary form to put in myson's 529 educational savings account. he is only 1 so he doesn't know what a present is. Thank God! I went hard but it's his first year of life and he's worth it all!!!!"