The Mom Life: Very Hungry Caterpillar Party

My baby turned 3 years old June 29th! *tear*

We went out to eat with my parents and Nate's on the Friday of her birthday. Then we invited everyone back to our place for cupcakes! And we invited close friends over to also enjoy some yummy caterpillar cupcakes.

The cupcakes that made up the caterpillar were my white cake recipe, with his head being baked in a giant cupcake pan. I made the cupcakes funfetti, too. :) The frosting is a basic butter frosting that I tinted light green. I added some green and blue stripes of food coloring to my piping bag before adding the frosting in so that when it comes out, it has swirls of color. Be warned, this does tend to help turn lips and tongues blue. :)

     We threw a big party the following weekend. As you can guess from the cupcake cake in the above pictures, Abby asked for a Very Hungry Caterpillar party. I was excited about this...and, I'll admit, a little scared. I mean, this isn't the kind of theme where, at the last minute, I can run out to Party City and get whatever I didn't get around to doing. A little intimidating, right? The whole decoration of this party rests on me. No pressure. ;)

     So let's skip ahead to party time. In mid-May, we reserved a shelter at a local park for Abby's birthday because that is one of her most favorite-est places to be. We figured even with 90-degree temps it would be okay because this place was seriously shaded. However, the week leading to the party, we saw record-setting heat. (I'm talking 6 consecutive days of breaking 3 digits.) ::slaps forehead:: Really?!?!? The day before the party, we decided to move it inside. (Thank you so much to Nate's parents!!!)  I had no decorations though! Everything I had been planning had been around an outdoor party! So the party budget had gone to food and presents and paying to reserve the shelter! Aaaah!!!

     Luckily, it turned out alright. I had already bought the cool polka-dotted tablecloth in primary colors the first time I saw it back in May in Target in the summer section. And I knew my menu was going to consist of foods from the book. The main food was originally going to be hot dogs, but that was when the party was going to be outside and not in 100+ degree heat. So we switched it up to pizza from Cici's -- can you say take-out 3 pizzas for $9.99? You can't beat that with a head count of guests nearing 30 people. I was going to get little Styrofoam coolers from the dollar store and paint them to match the theme for drinks. But then when I got to the dollar store, I found that the coolers were not as wide as I had thought. So I bought a couple large bowls that would be perfect for some water bottles and juice boxes on ice. Then I would still paint them. I used some serving stands and dishes that I had been given awhile back. So all seemed to be in order! Yay!

One of the bowls ready to be painted.

The bowl after I painted the dots around the rim.

After the dots, on one bowl I painted the sun from the story.

The painted sun bowl for ice and juice boxes.

The other bowl I painted with the caterpillar for ice and water bottles.

The backside of the caterpillar.

The front side of the caterpillar.

Here's how the table was set up. (The pizzas were in the kitchen.) We had some veggies and then fruits from the story. On the far side of the fruit is the cake with the drinks bowls at the far end of the table. The fruits had tags that I found these tags at Rachel's blog, Polka Dots and Puppies. They are seriously too cute to not print and use! So after printing them out, I cut them out and then used clear contact paper to laminate them. I taped some of the tags to lollipop sticks so that I could have them with the corresponding foods. The ones that don't have food to go with them, I placed around the table as extra decorations. So cute!

Here are some close-ups of the food dishes and tags:

"On Monday, he ate through one apple." So I used one apple as a decoration. :) I couldn't figure out what to put in the center of the veggies because I didn't want a dip...we were supposed to be outside remember? So I thought because the veggies didn't have tags (since they aren't in the story) the single apple would work to give this dish a tie-in to the theme.