The Moore, The Merrier: Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday

***I know I only posted this a couple of weeks ago, but I'm reposting because Kelly's Korner is hosting a share your kid's birthday party link system to help generate ideas for everyone. If you're new to our blog- welcome!

For Gavin's 1st birthday, we went with a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme. Beware, this post is going to have quite a few pictures. First let's start with the cake. I got the idea from here a cake someone else had done similarly. As soon as I can figure out the links, I'll post it.

And this is what it turned out to look like:

Making red icing is really, really hard. I know you can buy it already made, but I wasn't having much luck finding it. There's a good reason why we decided to have his cake outside (red and green icing don't mix with tan carpet and furniture.)

I actually liked Gavin's personal cake just as much, but the little guy wasn't having any of it.

In fact, he couldn't get past having the icing on his fingers and this is about as far as he got with his cake.

After the paint fiasco at Mother's Day, I'm really beginning to think he may be more of a paint brush kind of guy.

I made Gavin's banner using the die cut machine at work. I strung it with ribbon and taped the pieces on the back to each other. I think it did best hanging against a wall because of the weight of it.

Here's a little bit closer shot.

The kids' party favor bags were filled with a Very Hungry Caterpillar coloring sheet I downloaded from Eric Carle's website. I rolled them up and tied with twine. The bags also contained fruit shaped snacks, bug stickers, a mini pinwheel and were topped off with labels found on etsy.

For the adults, I bought these cute party crackers on sale. I first saw something like these on the Mr. Bean show. They're pretty popular in Britain. When twisted, they make a firecracker pop sound and there's a prize hidden inside.

I don't really have a wide shot of the backyard, but we set it up two large tents or else all of our guests were going to be large puddles of sweat in the 90 degree heat.

I had a station for all of the kids to plant a seed to take home. They decorated their pot with washable markers and bug stickers and before they left I tied them up in cellophane bags and red ribbon so that parents wouldn't have a bunch of soil dumped in their cars.

While the kids were planting, I scattered plastic bugs around the yard. One was a prize bug with a blue mark on the bottom. The child who won, got a large pinwheel lollipop. I think the kids really enjoyed the bug hunt. After some time of playing outside with the other toys and ball pit, we headed inside for refreshments.

For the food, I had prepared with the help of Nonna and Me Me the foods from the Very Hungry Caterpillar book. We had things such as a large fruit salad, watermelon, cheese and summer sausage, lollipops, cherry pie and chocolate cake brownies.

D. scanned in pictures from the book to put on the front of the table, and my mom helped me create an outside scene on top of the table using butcher paper and die cuts.