Recently our littlest boy turned one! We did a Very Hungry Caterpillar inspired birthday for him, and it was the cutest party I have ever done! I loved this book when I was little, and I have been itching to do this party for years! My first son had a Car birthday party for his first, and I saw some invites for a VHC party AFTER... so I had to wait 3 more years to throw this cute-fest!
With some internet searching, I quickly realized how expensive official VHC party supplies were (they are no longer offered at Target, where I originally saw them). So we had to make our own, and it was super easy and fun. Luckily, I have a very computer savvy, design-y husband who will make whatever I throw at him, so he was able to scan the book and print images for the party, with whatever wording I wanted. He also made our invitations and thank you notes! I'm not really sure how people can charge for designs and printables that use images from copyrighted books... but I'm also no legal expert. Anyways, I want to offer our files so other's can easily print them for free to throw a cute party too, so that is one reason for this post! I will post pictures below of how we did our party, and then you can download the prints if you want!
For our food table, we purchased all of the things the Caterpillar ate in the book, and offered them as the snacks for our party. We stuck the labels on the food trays using the images from the book. It was adorable and I'm slightly obsessed! (I am sorry for the bad lighting, it may have had something to do with the green and red streamers covering all of the natural light)
We used grapes for the blueberries, and you can't see them, but we cut out tiny pie shaped slices from cherry poptarts for the cherry pies.
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The table cloth we used was "watercolor polka dots" from Party City. It was perfect for our theme, and way cheaper than official VHC stuff because it was on super sale!! I loved it, and thought it worked really well. You can find it
here.
For our signs, which I absolutely loved (even the imperfect-ness of them, because that is so like Eric Carle), I bought some Freezer Paper and set out to make them at about 1am the night before... I mean the week before, because I'm that organized and on top of things. I bought a pack of cheap sponges, and cut circles out of them, then sponge painted different colored circles on... YES! You read that right... I 1990's sponge painted the night away! Then I just taped on cut out images from the book. I also taped images onto the table cloths. It pained me to throw away the sign you see above... it was just so cute!! But that's what pictures are for, I suppose.
The cake table! A category 5 hurricane hit here later that day, but it does look oh so peaceful right here, doesn't it? I just went with green iced cupcakes. And yes, I am painfully aware that the sign and the streamers are not centered.... You read how late I was up sponge painting, right? We also put ice cream in a bowl at cake time, because every caterpillar needs ice cream.
The gift table. The banner is from Target, I got it for a Dolla! Also, for our party favors, we handed out butterfly nets with stickers and sixlets in them. It was a hit, and they were only a dollar at Target. We also printed "thanks for coming to my party" cards with a fat Caterpillar on them. My husband loves the fat Caterpillar.
One last touch, the party hat! Again, we printed and taped these images to regular party hats, and it was super cute (and Big Brother Approved! BBA for short). Well That was our VHC party, and you can download all of the files we made below, for free. I am not posting our invitations, because I pretty much copied the exact same layout from someone on Etsy, and don't want to get in trouble... but the Thank You's were all my husband's idea (notice the use of the fat Caterpillar).
For the same font used in the book, click
here.
For printable decorations from the book, hat signs, food signs, and thank you cards, click
here.
