For my daughter's first birthday party, we did the Elmo theme since he is her idol.  I made the connection of hearts and Elmo because "Elmo loves you", and it worked very well being that Valentine's Day was just three weeks prior to her party.  The invitations took us two days to make on the computer!  I went to the party store and got the 8 pack of Elmo invitations. I cut out the front picture on it, which was a picture of Elmo with his hands raised and it said "It's Party Time" above his head.  I scanned it on my computer, and we put it in the top center of the invitation.  We chose a red slanted like border to go all around the invitation like this: ///////. The invitation was the size of a 5x7 photo.  The font we chose was of course in red ink and looked like child handwriting. Frankly the invitation literally looked like Elmo wrote it himself! The party was held at a restaurant, so for placecards I found a white placecard with a red border all around; I put Elmo stickers on each one on the left side and glued red foam craft hearts (all different sizes) to each corner tip on the right side. I found a big red foam heart at the craft store and glued one of her invitations on it, put the foam heart on a plate stand and used it as a "centerpiece" for the placecard table.  There was small red heart shaped confetti sprinkled on every table, in addition to Elmo party hats and Elmo blowouts for all of the kids. I got balloons for centerpieces for each table, which included six latex balloons in a variety of colors: red, orange, yellow, etc., and I actually found a Mylar heart-shaped Elmo balloon that read "Happy Birthday" to top each balloon centerpiece. For party favors, I filled red gift bags with things such as a "Happy Birthday Elmo" coloring book, Elmo stickers, and an Elmo souvenir cup filled with candy that included a red chocolate Elmo lollipop. Each souvenir cup was wrapped in a cellophane bag with a red curly ribbon.  To decorate the outside of the bags, I bought the Elmo wall decorations that I found at the party store (they are 12" in diameter and there were four different ones in each pack) and glued them to each bag. I had a friend of mine make paper labels on her computer for me that had a picture of Elmo to the left and _____'s First Birthday to the right. I glued that label above the wall decoration on each bag as well. I found an Elmo piñata that was like a three tier cake with a picture of Elmo at the top, and used that as a centerpiece for the party favor table instead of as a piñata.  All of the Elmo favor bags were around the Elmo "piñata" centerpiece, and there was also a bouquet of the Elmo balloons behind the three tier cake centerpiece along with a Happy Birthday Elmo banner. We did have a separate pull ribbon Elmo piñata filled with candy.  For the cake I found these little Elmo faces and a friend of mine told me about edible character decals that many bakeries have.  I found an Elmo's World edible decal and along with the little Elmo faces, I gave these items to the manager of the restaurant.  I used a red and white #1 candle. The restaurant fitted everything beautifully on the cake and they also put chocolate strawberries all around! At the end Elmo came for a visit and each child got their picture taken with Elmo and got to take a Polaroid home with them.  My daughter was so thrilled to see Elmo in person and all over the room in decor. Everyone had a great time and everything looked fabulous!  Elmo all the way!