Hungry Caterpillar 1yr - Crepe Paper Worms

We threw a party based on the Eric Carle book The Very Hungry Caterpillar" as my daughter was really into books and loved this one especially.  

For decorations I colored some butterfly wings on pieces on white cardboard and folded them in the middle to give them a 3D effect. I made butterfly bodies out of yellow felt and put a strip of cardboard inside to make them rigid added a big pompom head and also attached green pipe cleaners (which I twisted around pencils to make it "swirly") with little pom poms on the ends for antennae. I hot-glued these together and put them on my ceiling with push pins. I made 3 different sizes on butterflies ranging from 12" to about 3' and I made 9 altogether grouping them in 3's around my house. I purchased solid color beach balls in red and green and hot glued them together as red-green-green-green to look like a caterpillar..the hot glue worked great! I also put pipe-cleaner antennae on these and used that colored foam to make eyes and a nose also attached with hot glue. I had 1 large one of these and 2 small ones. I found a "Very Hungry Caterpillar" sticker book with huge stickers with pictures from the story mostly food pictures and I stuck these to my sliding door windows. They looked great.

On the windows in the front of my house I used 2 different colors of green crepe paper and cut varying lengths and taped them to look like grass and then cut 12" circles as caterpillar body parts taping them above the grass to look like one giant caterpillar extending from my front window around the corner to the window on the side of that same room. I also added a red caterpillar head at the beginning. I cut letters say "Emily is 1!" and put these in the front window centering the "1" in one of the circles of the caterpillar. I bought balloons in red green purple and yellow and found mylar butterfly balloons too. I hung the green streamers from my lamps by tying a piece of green yarn and placing it so it went around the lampshade about 2 inches from the bottom. I draped the green streamers in alternating shades of green at different lengths over the yarn and it looked really neat with the lamps on. I also draped the streamers in other places.  

For food we had the food from the story. Watermelon fruit pickles salami cheese. I made one big tray for fruit and one for meat cheese and crackers. The party was at 3pm so we were just doing snacks along with the cupcakes. We cut holes in the watermelon apples pears strawberries cheese pickles and beef stick to look like the ones in the story. That was probably my favorite part of the whole party! It looked just like the caterpillar had eaten through everyone's food!

I collect fiestaware and happened to have 1 red plate and 4 different green plates so I made a caterpillar out of these by adding brown legs and caterpillar "fuzz" to the tops of the plates using double-stick tape and that colored fun foam again. I had 15 red cupcakes and 45 green ones placing them on the matching 4 plates to make the caterpillar. I also placed eyes and a nose made from foam on the head with toothpicks stuck into the cupcakes. It was cute and I received many compliments about that and it was really easy!

I also had a small cake for Emily that was simple round with a caterpillar on the top. We had red cran-raspberry punch with green sherbet floating (very caterpillar like!) and I had a few jars tied with coordinating ribbon with gummy fruit slices inside. We had big red tubs outside with other drinks and water.

Since the party was in June we had planned to have most people outside but it ended up raining so we just slid the drink tubs up close to the sliding doors so people didn't have to really go outside to get drinks. I just bought plain red plastic cups and plates and green and yellow napkins.   I had planned on doing more games but with the weather turning bad and knowing we would have 60 people in our home there wasn't going to be much room. I did have a plastic kiddy pool in the living room filled with plastic balls like a mini-ball pit and that was a big hit. All the babies loved it!  

Also for the guestbook we hung a clothesline in our living room zigzagging across the house into the kitchen a dining room high enough to not be in the way and hung 75 8" circles from it with clothespins. I had instructions hung on the wall that asked people to take a circle and write a message to Emily on it decorate it put their name on in and hang it back up. The circles were all different colors and I had a red caterpillar head at the beginning it looked like a huge caterpillar banner snaking through my house! And it was fun to see how everyone decorated their circle as I had put out sequins & glue markers lots of stickers and crayons for people to use.  I would say the expense was probably mostly in the food and balloons because most of the décor I did myself with stuff I had around the house.

The party was a a huge success Emily loved her cake and everyone said they had a great time. I even heard "this was the best kid's party I've ever been to!" from one of the adults which made me feel like all the effort was well worth it. "