I love Birthday Parties. I came up with "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" after not really having any other good ideas, and seeing how much Andy' loves to eat. I had these 3 middle green hanging decorations in the basement, so I made it work.
DECORATIONS:
The border above the caterpillar I bought on Amazon.com, but I also saw them at the teacher store.
When the party started I had my brother and John test out a helium tank we had leftover from a few years ago. It worked, so they blew up some balloons and clipped them to our card hanger (from Ikea) in the shape of a caterpillar so when the kids left the party they could take a balloon (although we kind of forgot about it).
I also hung up pictures from a bulletin board set I found at the teacher store, changed the invitation and instead of saying the time/date information- said "thanks for coming" and used edcanvas.com to create a digital media "station". You can see the edcanvas of Andy's birthday party (including a youtube video of the very hungry caterpillar" and a PowerPoint of Andy's birth)
HERE.
I found a very hungry caterpillar printable
HERE, and included that as one of the stations. A lot of the caterpillars around the room had little call outs that mentioned what to do there. I laminated them so I can use them for future birthday parties.
Every time I put balloons outside to show that the party is here, they pop, so I hung the head of our crawl-through caterpillar on the fence, and the sun from the bulletin board set on the door.
One of the things I loved from the blogs I looked through was a caterpillar showing a picture of each month from Andy's life. I ordered some pictures along with the magnets I needed for Mother's day gifts and had this created a few weeks ahead of time.
We lucked out with an absolutely beautiful day. The colorful caterpillar in the middle (that is standing upright) was something I got with my rewards points for entering code
HERE at huggies.com, but I know it is available on Amazon.com too.
FOOD:
The food at this party was some of my favorite party food ever. The cake was made by Andy's babysitter Kristie. Some of her other cakes are
HERE. I thought the caterpillar cake was adorable.
She also made a smash cake for Andy with the caterpillars head, and I filled in the body by making cupcakes and using them as one of the things he ate through.
For the sausage, I used some "franks in a blanket" from Sam's Club.
I used salami and swiss cheese with butterfly crackers that I thought would be difficult to find, but Pepperidge Farm makes them and I got them at Target.
I think my setup turned out pretty sweet. I originally had an orange tablecloth, but the place mats I found at Ikea that resembled circles like a caterpillar ended up being cuter.
For the piece of chocolate cake I made brownies, and for the cherry pie, I bought mini graham cracker crusts and made cherry cheesecakes (a family tradition).
I only bought a few oranges and used cuties for the rest. I bought red grapes instead of plumbs.
The strawberries and apples were a big hit, so I got a lot of those.
The lollipops I ordered from Amazon
I got all the super cute food labels from
THIS blog for free.
SMASH CAKE:
Andy wouldn't wear the hat, but I thought it was kind of ugly anyway. Chad got some super cute pictures of him trying to take it off his head though:)
He was interested in the cake and the candle.
Here are two videos of him checking out the cake and digging in:
OUTSIDE:
Andy and Grandpa
Andy loved being outside.
Anna also came to the party, she is one week older than Andy.
I re-used the bean bag game from
Jay's 1st birthday party monster bash. Andy ate some finger foods with Grandma S.
He opened presents with Daddy.
The balloons were a big hit with him.
A little later he actually opened a present instead of just staring at all the kids:
He enjoyed putting the animals in the barn.
FAVORS:
For the party favors I decided to go with a collection of things the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate through, and a caterpillar made out of sixlets, a red fuzball and googly eyes. I included: Strawberry(fruit snacks), Sausage (beef jerky bites), Orange (cutie), Lollipop, Ice cream cone (these are actually bubbles shaped like Ice cream cones that I found at the dollar store (3 in a pack for a dollar). I included a straw and a note.
Jay helped me put the bags together, which was a ton of fun for him.
I designed some labels for the bags
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This is what I used for the
invitation only instead of "Thanks for helping us celebrate" it said the location and time of the party.
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With some instruction from me, John actually made all these with a hot glue gun!
Happy Birthday little man. I love you so much!