For my daughter's first birthday party we chose the Sesame Smiles theme because she adores SS, mainly Elmo.  We both have large families so we rented a space at the community center.  To rent a person to 'be' Elmo would cost $150, so for the same price, we rented the costume (hubby was Elmo), got a 'he knows your name Elmo' that says our childs name several time and other phrases, including the birthday song, and rented the space at the community center. Not everyone arrived at the same time, so we had coloring pages and Elmo memory games set out on the tables.  Once everyone got there, Elmo made his grand appearance.  We played the Elmo's World music upon his arrival and he was carrying the Elmo doll in his arm.  He pressed it when he picked up our daughter so it would say the phrases for her to here. Let's just say she wasn't too fond of Elmo (or a 6 foot Elmo, any way)at first. She admired him from afar, however. Anyway, when he was done with his dance, he gave the doll to our daughter and we hung a pinata for everyone to smack and had pictures made with Elmo. He started off the birthday song (which is on the doll) and we gave our daughter her little cake.  I had a make your own monster cupcake station for everyone else. I used the hair/grass tip from my icing kit and frosted 'hair' onto cupcakes in red, blue, green, and pink.  Laid out bowls of mini marshmallows cut in half, mini chocolate chips, licorice strings (separated), and orange jelly beans cut in half. They used these to decorate their cupcakes to look like oscar, zoe, elmo, and cookie monster.  We had ice cream in individual cups (easy breezy)and the other food was already set out when people got there. That consisted of goldfish in a goldfish bowl (for elmo's goldfish), chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies, jello jigglers in shapes of g and 1, and a fruit and veggie tray. For the drinks, you can buy juice boxes with sesame street characters (4 for $1 at the dollar store) and other sodas, and we put them in a big silver garbage can with ice (we filled up the bottom with paper and lined above that with plastic so there wouldn't be so much ice).  We drew oscar on green foam board, cut out eyebrows, eyes, etc. and taped him to the outside, back of the garbage can with a bubble saying, 'go ahead, get a drink, i dare you.'  For goodie bags I got red, yellow, blue, and green paper bags (5 for $1) and filled them with crazy straws, mini frizbees, bag of mini cookies, and a SS Pez dispenser.  Folded them over twice, punched two holes and strung blue, yellow, red, and green curling ribbon through with a note saying thank you for coming to her party.  For the kids under 3, I put the pez dispenser, cookies, elmo balls, and ss sunglasses.  For the adults, I printed SS characters on paper and wrapped them around Hershey bars with a thank you for coming to her party. I put these in a basket and tied curling ribbon around the handles and gave them out as they were leaving.  For decorations, I used some of the things we already have at home.  I won the Sesame Smiles partyware from Ebay, so that was covered.  My daughter has the collection of SS plushies, so at the different tables, I took three of the plushies, put the back to back and had a couple of balloons coming from the middle.  For the centerpiece, I bought a plain elmo face balloon and tied it to a small can of black olives covered in tissue paper.  I twisted layers of tissue in a circle and put the can in the middle. To kind of cover the can, I curled strands of curling ribbon and laid it in the middle, so Elmo's face was coming out of a cloud of tissue and curling ribbon.  At the four corners of the room I had balloon boquets made from the four colors (2 balloons of each color) tied at various lengths to a can of veggies. I placed this in a gift bag with tissue coming out of the top. Our daughter was wearing an elmo face outfit that we purchased at KMart.  It was rather boyish, so I trimmed it in white ribbon with hearts.  Before he was Elmo, my husband and I wore Elmo face shirts.  All in all, that was probably a bit overboard with the shirts, but it was kind of funny.  She liked it, anyway.