The Best of the Elmo Crafts on the Internet

Because of the cost of name brand party favors, this Elmo party will be mostly DIY, and you can not have a theme party with Elmo (I never had a theme party when I was a kid) without an Elmo cake. Because I am not an artiste par excellence, I decided to pay a little bit of money for the Elmo Cake Pan from Wilton. Fortunately when I purchased it from Hobby Lobby, I had a 40 percent off coupon, so I was able to purchase it for about six dollars. As you can see from the picture, even a relative novice can come up with a pretty good creation with a little practice.

The cake came out of the pan beautifully. The depth of the pan was a little small, so I am making a sheet cake to supplement the cake. I am not going to try and do anything special with it, so I will probably just make a chocolate ganache as a frosting, and maybe pipe Gabriel's name and Happy 2nd Birthday or something cutesy.

Though his grandparents (on both sides) will shower Gabriel with presents, with us adding our fair share, I decided I wanted to make some home made presents for him. I was lucky to find this web site that shows how to make very cheap Elmo and Cookie Monster shirts and caps! The link is a tutorial to make some beautiful (and extremely cheap) hats for Elmo and Cookie Monster fans alike. I have found similar (not better, by any means) hats on the Internet for over twenty dollars. I used a stencil for mine (because I am not brave enough to hand sketch or paint the mouths), but they turned out equally as cute.

To keep the mass of children entertained, I was going to buy coloring books and crayons, and have people color their own Elmo and Cookie monster pictures, but having found the thousands (literally) of Elmo and Cookie Monster coloring pages available on the web, I just downloaded a few, put them into photoshop, and customized them for Gabriel's party so that he would have a giant birthday card at the end of the night, colored by all of his friends - and their parents.

When everything was said and done, the cake pan (running about 6.25 on sale) was the most expensive thing I purchased for the party, and although reusing it may not happen any time soon, I could probably sell it on ebay for what I paid for it. Very much a successful DIY Elmo theme party.