The Very Hungry Caterpillar 1st Birthday Party

I had to dig way back into my computer hard drive but I found Shane's first birthday party decorations to share with you today. Sadly, I don't have every little detail of his party photographed but I did find most of the decorations to share and hope you enjoy seeing how we celebrated our first little mans 1st birthday. If you missed it, you can read about Keith's Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Starr 1st birthday party from last week here.

For Shane's first birthday I picked one of our favorite books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a theme. Shane loved reading that book at the time and it has always been one of my favorite children's books of all time. In fact, the copy you see in the pictures below was given to me from Brian the first Christmas we were dating. We just love The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

On our mirror that is on the wall right by our dining room table I made giant paper rosettes in green with one red one to look like a caterpillar. I used tissue paper that I had on hand and folded and stapled them together for a quick decorative burst of color. 

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I printed two copies of the food that was mentioned in the book: cupcake, lollipop, sausage, watermelon, a slice of cherry pie, and cheese. Next I cut the images out and glued them back to back with string in between and hung them from our chandelier. 

I set a few decorative touches such as printed signs and copies of the book on coffee and side tables so people could set their food down and continue to see the theme. 

For party favors I purchased jelly beans that had the same bright colors as the book and wrapped them in cellophane and tied it with a bright green ribbon. 

I added a Thank you sign that said "Thank you for inching along to Shane's 1st Birthday" with the party favors. 

That Christmas my brother gave me a cute gift that let you make banners with letters and the colors and print were perfect to spell out happy birthday for the party.

On the tables I cut out leaves that were print outs from the book and I used some pre made labels I found online that had wording from the book to mark the food. 

I made vanilla cupcakes and red velvet cupcakes for the party so that the dessert was a bit more finger friendly for the little ones. I also had coffee, tea, water, and some juice for the kids. Shane's cupcake had a number 1 on it. The cupcake stand I made the night before out of a boot box, a shoe box, and the box that my cupcake liners came in and I simply wrapped in some leftover Christmas wrapping paper. 

For food we served a selection from the book. Each bit of food had labels with wording from the book and we made a wild looking center piece of flowers and ribbon in bright colors. We had salami, cheese, crackers, pears, oranges, plums. 

We also served strawberries...

and pickles...

and oranges so guest could eat their way through the book just like the Caterpillar.

I have such fond memories of being exhausted after this party but feeling like all the work was worth it. Poor Shane had an ear infection, we had family from out of town attend, and we had 27 guest at his party! It was such a special day and I love being able to look back at pictures and remember how we celebrated Shane turning one!