Zella's First Birthday Party!

For my daughter Zella’s first birthday we decided to do a YGG theme because its her favorite show above all others and will squeal the highest pitch screech of joy if she spots a book or toy of any YGG character in a store. =)

I love party planning so I had a blast with hers and went nuts making stuff. I got lots of ideas from the Gabbafriends website and made a few of my own.

I borrowed ideas for the character themed gift bags, party hats, balloons (which I sadly didn’t get pics of), and Muno goodie bags, which I made by just getting images off Nick Jr. or online and adjusting them in Photoshop and printing/pasting on what I needed.

The birthday ‘splat mat’ was purchased also at Party City and I added images from Nick Jr. onto it to gabba-ize it.

I also wanted to do some outdoor décor, and found a set of green, yellow, and red paper lanterns for cheap at Party city and added Plex, Brobee, and Muno faces on each.

Her birthday bib also had a printed out Brobee picture on it with him waving a #1 flag on it. The image is apparently from a T-shirt YGG employees got, so it was hard to find, but so perfect!

Our food table was my replica of the Gabbaland table. I bought 4 colors of plastic tablecloths and a silver table skirt from Party City and assembled it to look like their floor/the Gabba table skirt. The backdrops were from Nick Jr and then enlarged, spray mounted on foam core, and I added some stands in the back so it could stand up. We decorated the windows, etc with stars and sparkles to look like the glittery jazz DJ Lance ejects from his hands or whatnot!

The Super music friends show TV cover was made from a big piece of foam core from OfficeMax, painted red, and I made construction paper cut outs of the speakers/buttons. It attached to my TV with 2 foam core straps and stick-on industrial strength Velcro. (which easily came off my TV later) If your TV set up is like mine, make sure to score the back carefully with a box cutter/X-acto so the cover can fold up and you can access your DVD player, controls, etc, under it. (Otherwise you’d have to remove the whole thing every time you want to change DVDs)

The piñata was a chore. I decided the idea of hitting Gooble with a baseball bat was hilarious, since he’s always crying anyway, so I was determined to make it, even though his body shape was challenging. I got tips from the piñata makers here on Gabbafriends along with some Google sites. I used paper towel rolls for the legs/arms and cut and stapled the hands into shape. The body was 2 balloons joined in the middle by thin, flexible cardboard to make it a tube shape but still hollow.
All the work was worth it because my daughter couldn’t stop giggling like a maniac when she saw him. We ended up never beating him up cause she liked him too much!

For her dress I originally planned on making one just like the show, but then I found that pink flower ribbon that screamed ‘Foofa!’ To me, so I had to make it a bit more festive to work it in. The Foofa design on the front was made in felt, and I used the pattern here on Gabbafriends. My husband and I wore YGG themed shirts bought online.

The cake + cupcakes: DJ Lance is her favorite character, so we decided to go with him for the cake. My husband drew up a cartoony version of him and made me a cake pattern of sorts. I used a football-themed cake tin from Michael’s to get the general shape, and trimmed off excess. I used fondant icing from Michael’s for the face, eyes, + teeth, and orange/black regular icing for the hat/details and used a star-shaped icing tip to get the fluffy hat look. Fine lines were drawn on with edible marker.

The cupcakes were for the toddlers (made with all-natural, low-sugar ingredients) and had a cream cheese/juice icing, so I was limited to my decorating. So I decided to go with subtle décor for making them each represent the characters. For the yellow ‘Plex’ cupcakes, I used red-ball appetizer toothpicks from Party City. For the Toodee ones, I melted white chocolate and put it in an icing bag and piped out her little cheek shapes and let it cool on wax paper before inserting them. Her nose is a black M&M. Muno has red + white M&Ms for his bumps/eyes. I made the dot on each eye with edible marker. Foofa cupcakes have fondant flowers with a yellow M&M. Brobee’s red spikes are red licorice and his eyebrow is black licorice rope. Keep in mind when making bright colored icing like red & green to use specific icing dye paste to color it or you will have dye flavored icing by the time you get it dark enough! (Especially for red!)

Her smoosh-cake wasn’t pretty or exciting; it was a gray little lump which was supposed to be her boom box cake but got too worn out to finish decorating!

Lastly, we got the Itunes YGG album and rocked out with it during the party, between playing episodes for the kids on TV.

It was Yo gabba gabba-tastic, but all the people who had never seen the show thought it was great too, young and old!

Thanks everyone for the ideas here on the site. Zella was especially grateful!