Rocking and Dancing at the Yo Gabba Gabba 1st Birthday Party

Let's dance the day away at the Yo Gabba Gabba birthday party! Toddlers, kids, and even teens and adults have come to enjoy this offbeat show that teaches lessons to music and dancing monsters!

First, your invitations. Nick Jr.'s website has a terrific invitation available for downloading but you can definitely create your own using the images of the monsters and DJ Lance Rock against any background you want, even your own house! Put all the details inside and let everyone know they should be ready to dance.

You don't need to recreate the whole set to have a Yo Gabba Gabba birthday party, but you should incorporate some of the colors and definitely have the monsters around! For example, you could cut out rounds from card in the monster's colors (red, yellow, green, pink, and blue) and simply affix eyes onto the card rounds. Since the monsters differ with the number of eyes they have aside from their colors, this is a great, graphic way to bring them into the party. You could also buy balloons in these colors and stick they eyes on with double-sided tape.

Have bunches of balloons in these colors all over the room and use silver ribbon for their strings. Cover some large cardboard boxes with plain wrapping paper and use crepe paper to make giant ribbons and bows for them. Set groups of them at the corners and have some balloon bunches anchored to them.

Decorate the kids' table with colorful tablecloths and in the middle of the table, have a few gift boxes again and a cutout of a character from Yo Gabba Gabba. There are also downloadable printouts on the website that you can use for this. Have white plates and utensils available for place setting and use different colored napkins on top, cinched with contrasting colored ribbons.

Party food could be variations of what Brobee likes eating, and it's all simple food! Chicken fingers with a dip, grilled cheese sandwiches or cheese sticks, lightly steamed baby green beans, and carrot sticks make up a colorful menu. Served with juice, it's a perfectly balanced meal. As a special treat, though, you might want to offer some round sugar cookies glazed with decorator frosting in the monster colors and topped with a marshmallow round and accented with a chocolate chip. Everything is glued together with drops of royal icing.

The cake table is especially important. Cover with some more colorful fabric and set the cake plate atop more gift boxes. If you have the time, make more of the colored rounds, but this time from fondant, with white and black fondant eyes and stick them around the sides of the cake. Make the cake look like the beat box DJ Lance Rock uses on the show. While blowing out the birthday candles, have “Happy Birthday” from the TingTings playing in the background.

Create a playlist of fun dance music and definitely make use of Yo Gabba Gabba's music, too! Have a dance contest as your main activity and give out prizes for each of the guests. Make up categories where they are best as they are dancing and call that out after the dance contest.

For favors, why not burn a CD of your playlist so the kids can continue the dance party at home? Put together some MMs, Lifesavers, and marshmallows to keep their energy up and top it off with a light stick. Pull everything together in a plain colored goody bag decorated with monster eyes.