Ain’s 1st Birthday – Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Ain is now One! The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of my favorite books, and since Ain has had Very Hungry caterpillar toys since birth I thought it would be a great theme for his first birthday! If you are looking for some great ideas, check out my First Birthday Pinterest board – it’s full of Very Hungry Caterpillar themed ideas.

My sister Amy helped me design the cards I sent out to some family (others we just invited via facebook). Here was the inside of the inviation:

I didn’t get a picture taken, but on the drive up to the clubhouse I tied caterpillar balloons to posts, something like this (source):

The birthday boy, coming home from church, ALMOST ready for the party:

NOW he is set, in his very hungry caterpillar outfit (you can’t tell, but he’s even wearing a very hungry caterpillar cloth diaper! We also had baby legs, but it was way too hot for baby legs):

We were very blessed to have a full clubhouse of family and friends to celebrate his birthday!! Thank you to everyone who came – it was a very special day made even more special by those who were there! Thanks to my Dad for taking all these photos (I was running around and hardly took any myself)!!

Many family and friends spent time with Ain that afternoon, feeding him and helping him practice walking:

Are you curious what decorations we had?

This is what we did with the budget we had. Very Hungry caterpillar table:

Table Caterpillar: The caterpillar in the background was made from a red tissue paper pom pom I made, then 5 green lanterns from the dollar tree.

Tablecloth: Again from the dollar tree – I love how the bright colors matched the theme very well! Since it was such a big table, this was two plastic tablecloths overlapping.

Food: We had lots of veggies and fruit (and then we also served hot dogs = cheap). The hot dogs were not my favorite part of the meal, but we were serving 60 people on a budget! I made up rainbow fruit cups for the little ones, and then I had the first five days of what the caterpillar ate on display. My sister Amy made these cute labels to go along with the fruit:

Aren’t they adorable? I think they added so much to the table.

Craft table: My mom helped me organize and prepare the craft table. The kids had coloring pages and caterpillar necklaces to put together. Like this idea, from Buggy and Buddy:

Once we had eaten for awhile, we gave Ain his birthday “cake”. Since we are a family that is trying to eat more healthy and not introduce sugars to our son, Matt made a watermelon fruit cake for Ain!!

After Ain “blew out” the candle, we gave him a slice, which he LOVED:

Then, it was time to open presents!! Ain was immediately drawn to Winnie the Pooh (while Momma was distracted)!!

We had a lovely day – thank you family and friends!! We wouldn’t have had such a special day without you!!

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