Andy's Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Party

 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:

Video1 and Video2

 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
 
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.
 
With some instruction from me, John actually made all these with a hot glue gun!

Happy Birthday little man. I love you so much!