Very Hungry Caterpillar First Birthday Party

This is SUPER late, but D turned one at the end of May, and we had a blast celebrating her first birthday party! When she was a few months old, she became very interested in a little Very Hungry Caterpillar rattle given to her, based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. For months, she loved playing with it and chewing on the little antennas. The teacher in me had planned to choose a book as the theme for the first birthday party. When it came time to choose a theme for the party, it seemed like a no brainer!

There were a few unique aspects to planning this first birthday party that I had to keep in mind. First, given that this was happening in spring 2021, there’d be a range of vaccinated and unvaccinated guests, so I was set on the party being outdoors unless it was absolutely bucketing rain. Second, it turns out D has a number of epi-pen level food allergies, so all foods needed to be safe for her to eat. (They all needed to be safe so that she could both enjoy them, and so that I wouldn’t stress about people feeding her something while I wasn’t around to give the OK). Food allergies definitely have a way of forcing you to find alternatives when you don’t want to skip something! In our case, her egg allergy was the tricky one, but more on that in a bit! Third, we had babies, preschoolers, and adults at the party – I wanted to have something fun for everyone.

Choosing the theme was the easy part – the rest of the planning quickly felt overwhelming though. I am 100% certain that I overthought a lot of it, but frankly, I’m glad I did. I wanted to keep everyone healthy (from covid, food allergies, and other general colds). It was also important that I be able to enjoy the party myself with D and her dad, rather than trying to run the party the whole time. Planning and prepping ahead of time truly allowed me to be able to relax, enjoy, and celebrate the fact that, frankly, I kept my first kid alive for a whole year. At the bottom of this post is a link for the party planning document I made to organize my thoughts as I prepared.

Food

The cake was a caterpillar, inspired by this blog I found on pinterest. I used this “depression cake” recipe for the head. D loved her slice of the cake! I used a gluten free cake mix and a flax egg substitute for the cupcakes, since a number of people at the party have gluten intolerances. I did enjoy frosting them! We also had a ton of leftover cupcakes, which have been perfect to freeze and keep for other parties we’ve gone to, when we need a safe dessert for D but the host can’t provide something. 

I also made egg-fee sugar cookies as the party favors. I used a number 1 cookie cutter (obviously!) and iced them to look like a caterpillar. Again, I got the idea here. I put one cookie each in a cello bags, again, to reduce the spread of germs. The leftovers also froze nicely in those bags!

Activities

We set up a few activities – one for the children, and two for the adults/whole family. I prepped little activity baggies for the kiddos to make a little caterpillar necklace – an idea I saw here. I used my Cricut Maker to print and cut heads, and the red circles.

Another little activity I had was more for the adults (or a whole family together). I left a copy of Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss for guests to write a little message to D. I’m actually thinking I’ll leave the same book out each year, and let people write a new message each year… That could be so fun many years from now to read all those different messages from loved ones over the years! I also kept that book near our instant camera, so that people could snap some fun photos of themselves and guests. I added those photos to her baby book. This was a great activity because it took a little pressure off me trying to remember to take lots of photos. I could relax and enjoy without needing to also be the unofficial photographer. I also displayed the height chart that I made, just for fun. People could check out how much D has grown this year.

Decor

For decor, I tied some green balloons to trees, with a red one on top, to look like a caterpillar crawling up the tree. (Similar to this but without the eye details – I apparently forgot to take photos of our trees!)  I also made a little banner out of construction paper (and ran it through my laminator for durability), and we hung streamers from the tent. I also decided to buy my own helium balloon kit rather than worry about getting to the store that morning to buy some. I’m sure it will come in handy for years to come.

Pulling it off

You may have noticed lots of the decorations seem to be in the garage… The day of the party, I couldn’t believe it. Usually by the end of May in Virginia, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have weather in the mid 70’s, if not 80’s or pushing 90. But I kid you not – the temperature dropped like crazy, all the way down to the 50’s! We actually asked my mom to pick up some disposable hot cups and lids so that people could have hot chocolate, tea, or coffee while we were outside. Luckily while it was overcast, the rain held off. I didn’t plan to display the food and cake in the garage, but that is what we did, so that it would be out of any potential rain. We even set up our big 20×10 Straight Leg Canopy for extra covered seating, and we actually needed to give people blankets! Inside the canopy we hung some streamers and balloons.

Even though we couldn’t change the weather, all’s well that ends well! We had a blast, everyone stayed healthy, and D loved her cake! 

If you like this book-themed birthday party, be sure to check out the other book activities I have for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Nibbles Colors!

Below is the link to download the free party planning document. It was so helpful for me to organize my thoughts – hopefully it helps you too!