A Very Hungry Caterpillar 1st Birthday

Part 1:

I started planning Brooklyn's first birthday many months ago! I decided on The Very Hungry Caterpillar theme! I love that book, and Brooklyn does too! I know Brooklyn will always want some sort of pink, princess, girly themed birthday in all the years to come, so I went with a gender neutral party theme! Having the party theme come from a book made planning super easy and fun!

With Brooklyn's birthday being so close to Thanksgiving it was hard trying to figure out when to have the party.  We went with November 17, which is 9 days before her actual birthday but it worked best! Another struggle was trying to decide what time to have the party.  I know a lot of kids take naps in the afternoon, so I didn't want to do a late afternoon party.  But, Brooklyn also still takes a morning nap so I was torn on what time to have the party.  We ended up having the party from 10am-12pm.  I wasn't serving enough food to consider it lunch so that is why we had it right before lunch.  I ended up waking Brooklyn up at 5:30am the day of her party so she would go down for a nap around 8am.  It worked out great!!

We rented a room at the Liberty Community Center, which was so nice to not have to worry about hosting a party at my house!  We had food from the book and caterpillar and butterfly crafts for the kids! It was a great party!

This is the invitation I ordered from Etsy.  I love it!

 Here are the craft tables that were set up! I saved egg cartons for months and had family members do the same.  I spray painted them green for body and one red for the head.  Kids could add eyes, pipe cleaners and pom poms! I also had clothespin butterflies. Color a coffee filter and stick it in a clothespin.  Add a pipe cleaner for antennae! Also, I found a Very Hungry Caterpillar printable and just made a lot of copies and set them out for kids to color!

 Kids working hard on their crafts!!

 Decorations!! My mom found the high chair at a Consignment sale and she spray painted it green for me!! It turned out exactly how I imagined it! Perfect! 

 I paid a pretty penny for Brooklyn's outfit but I love it! I found it on Etsy!

 Here is a picture of the room before we started decorating and after! We just added all colors of table cloths, all colors of balloons and sprinkled some colorful dots on the center of the tables and it was perfect! Not too much decoration but enough to make it fun and festive!

The caterpillar cupcake cake!! Turned out amazing! The red caterpillar head was Brooklyn's smash cake and the body was cupcakes for the party guests!

 

 The first picture is the only picture taken of the Watch Me Grow Caterpillar.  It had all of Brooklyn's monthly chair pictures-it turned out so cute! I love it! My mom also made a picture board of favorite pictures of Brooklyn from her first year! It turned out great! I also had a Very Hungry Caterpillar book for everyone to write a birthday wish for Brooklyn in. 

Food Table! We had everything the caterpillar ate in the book! Apples, oranges, plums (we used grapes), strawberries, watermelon, cupcakes, cherry pie, chocolate cake, salami, sausage, pickles, ice cream cone (we just had ice cream cone stickers-less mess!) and lollipops!

My balloon wreath that I worked very hard on! I thought it would be fun to make one, but it was time consuming and a bit expensive-didn't realize how many balloons I would actually use!

 

Part 2 coming soon....