more than 9 to 5...my life as "Mom": Our Very Hungry Caterpillar Turns One!

For Noah's first birthday party, I decided to go with the Very Hungry Caterpillar theme. I didn't really do a theme for Ethan's 1st birthday party, since he wasn't really into anything at that point, but wanted to do something more exciting this time. After a little Pinterest hunting, I found some Hungry Caterpillar parties and thought it would be perfect! Noah is our little guy who is always hungry and can't get enough of anything and everything he can get his tiny hands on! Perfect theme for him!

I started the theme with the invites, which I posted about a month ago. As I said then, I made a main invite and then an alternative too, since assembling caterpillars was taking forever!! :(

Shortly after mailing out the invites, things got crazy around here when we closed on our house, the movers packed us up and we moved in, all in a week's time! The whole unpacking thing definitely cramped my plans for working on the party the week before the big day, but fortunately I managed to pull it off in time (with help from my wonderful family)! After a lot of decorating, shopping and food prep, the party came together that day, a little behind schedule, but not bad. Fortunately, our party guests were all family, so no big deal. :)

Here are some pics of the party decorations and food. I made a banner for the birthday boy, to hang above the "Saturday" table (all the foods the Hungry Caterpillar ate on Saturday). The cake consisted of a 6-inch head (to become the birthday boy's smash cake) and a cupcake body. My sister taught me how to pipe icing and I decorated the head. She helped me out by completing the body (she's much quicker than me!). Behind the cake sat the fruit bowls, one for each of the fruits that the caterpillar ate Monday through Friday (apples, pears, plums, strawberries and oranges). Thanks to my dad for cutting up a TON of fruit! I also made a homemade fruit dip (one large jar of marshmallow fluff, one 8-ounce block of cream cheese and 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon) to accompany the fruit. The Saturday table had all of the foods from the book. Chocolate cake (I used whoopie pies), ice cream cones (I stuffed these with cupcakes), cupcakes, lollipops, cherry pie, watermelon, pickles, sausage, salami and swiss cheese. For Sunday, the caterpillar ate a green leaf, so I made some Caprese skewers (half a cherry tomato topped with a basil leaf and a ball of fresh mozzarella, drizzled with some balsamic vinegar). Those were super tasty! For the mantle, I (with my mom's help) made a balloon caterpillar. I made another banner to hang here that included a picture of the birthday boy at each month, from one month to one year. On top of the mantle sat the favor buckets for all of the kids. I wrote their names on the bucket with a permanent marker and stuffed them with a hungry caterpillar coloring sheet, a journal, a pack of crayons and a thank you from the birthday boy for attending the party. I also designed labels to put on the water bottles (thanks again, Mom!) to personalize them for the party. These were placed in an open cooler with colored balloons full of water that had been frozen. These acted as ice to keep the drinks cool. Thanks, Pinterest! It was a lot of work, but I thought everything was super cute and it was lots of fun to design and plan the party.