Chaos With Charisma: Can You Tell Me How to Get To Sesame Street?

Prepare yourself for pictures galore. When it's your baby's first birthday it's hard to cut back, they're all special.

I had so much fun planning and preparing for Graham's special day that it was almost equally as fun to relive and reminisce with all the pictures.

I live for creating, decorating, and designing so after almost a complete year of a void in this area, I was ready to unleash my built up creativity on Graham's party.

Watching PBS was part of our morning routine almost every day. After finishing up Dinosaur Train at 9:00am, I would sing the Sesame Street Theme song with G before putting him down for his morning nap. Graham's "favorites" the first year consisted of balls and books which meant he wasn't very opinionated about a birthday theme, so Sesame Street just made sense.

Between Pinterest and Etsy, the planning can't get any easier. Time is really the only thing required for putting together all the decorations. I can't say creativity was even necessary- Just the ability to make tasteful decisions when browsing through all the Sesame Street options.

I fell in love with this precious invitation from MimisDollHouse on Etsy and pretty much went from there.

All of the decorations came in PDF printables that I was able to download and print at my house which made them easy to work on every night after Graham went to bed. I made sure to use Matte Photo paper so the colors turned out as vibrant as they looked on the computer.

I tried to stay within a budget so I made all of the tissue paper pom poms instead of buying the pre made kits. Dollar Tree sells all the colors of tissue paper in a 25 pack for a $1. After realizing that I could purchase tissue paper for $.04 a sheet, I feel silly that I've ever reused tissue paper in the past. (So silly that I probably shouldn't post this on the internet for everyone to read, but maybe there's another tissue paper hoarder like myself who just didn't know.)

I googled some DIY pom pom instructions and ended up going overboard on tissue pom poms all over the house. What can I say? They're cheap. They're easy to make, and they make a bold statement.

My favorite decoration was the 12 month photo banner of little Graham. I asked Brian if I could keep it up all year, but he veto'd that idea so I guess I'll just have to keep framing photos around the house of my little guy instead.

For thank you favors, I used the letter G and the Number 1 cookie cutters, to make sugar cookies.

I can't find the picture I took of the finished product, but here's what one batch of the G's looked like before putting them in the oven.

The MimisDollHouse Decorations honestly came with EVERYTHING I needed! It even included tented labels which made labeling the food easy.

For our main course, Brian smoked his famous Pork Shoulder. I don't have any pictures because it was completely eaten before I even knew it was off the grill.

Every Sesame Street cake I loved on the internet was made of fondant, but there's something about a one year olds birthday party and fondant that don't really mix in my mind. I was so excited when I found these precious Sesame Street Cupcakes. I found them on Annie's Eats blog which is amazing. She includes step by step directions for everything she blogs about and has so many great ideas worth bookmarking.

I found someone nearby who bakes cupcakes and cookies out of her house to recreate these cupcakes. She did a fabulous job and they taste as great as they look!

And here's where the birthday party photos start getting out of hand...

Mommy and Daddy are so excited to celebrate their little ONE year old!!

Daddy and Little G

Sweet Friends and Family

Weeeeee!

Aunts and Uncles, Nonna and Papa, and Cousins Galore

Case entertaining Kinslee. Or maybe Kinslee entertaining Case?

"Make a Wish!"

1.2.3, SMILE!

I think the pic on the top right is my favorite of the day. It sums up what I deal with on a daily basis....a teeny tiny monster with a stomach the size of Texas.