Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Party

So this is what I've been doing over the past two weeks.  My parents and my sisters and their significant others came to visit (from the East Coast and Wisconsin) and they rented a cute place near us in Dana Point.  While they were here we did a lot, including taking them to the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach and taking a late afternoon whale watch to see the blue whales off Dana Point, as well celebrating my sister and her boyfriend's engagement. Needless to say it was a busy week and to cap it off, we finally had the twins' Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party.  It was awesome and we had a great turnout of local friends and family (including TWO sets of twins), although it was kinda hot to have an outdoor party in the park. Note to self - next year have an early evening party.  Let me share with you all the fun food and decor we put together for the party with a TON of help from my sisters, their significant others, my folks and the hubby...

Very Hungry Caterpillar Pizzas!! - One Pepperoni and the other Eggplant

Very Hungry Caterpillar Watermelon Bug Juice (Fresh watermelon puree strained, Cran-Rasp and Fresca)

Fruit and Cheese Trays a la Very Hungry Caterpillar (with grapes as stand-ins for plums)

Fruity Pebbles Marshmallow Krispies, meant to be in butterfly shapes but couldn't find a sharp-enough cookie cutter to do the job...

Our two Caterpillar Cakes, using the Nordic Ware Caterpillar Cake pan.  One was a Snickerdoodle Cake with Snickerdoodle Frosting (recipes can be found here ) and the other was a lemon cake with lemon frosting (made with fresh lemon juice and zest).  Creatively decorated by the Aunties!!

Cupcake display with the Eric Carle-inspired letters that I posted about previously to spell out the kids' names

Grape caterpillar skewers made a cute bouquet in a re-purposed Edible arrangements basket.  I decorated the basket by placing a half round of green foam in the basket and sticking squares of red tissue paper into the foam, to make a red flowery base.

As for decor - we did a paper lantern Caterpillar.  I made the face by glueing felt to the red lantern.  I also had an Eric Carle Happy Birthday Banner (that no-one took a pict of - but it is store-bought anyways)

And for favors, you may remember I posted a WHILE back about these bug jars favors made from baby food jars.  Well, I made a few changes. First of all, I scratched the chalkboard paint.  It didn't stick really well to the glass and started to peel.  I ended up printing the kids' name in Eric Carle-inspired letters and modge-podged them to the jars.  It ended up much cuter than chalkboard.  I also glued a piece of white felt to the inside of the cap to cover the jagged sharp edges of the bug breathing holes.  I just made sure to not obscure the holes with glue in case anyone actually uses it as a bug jar.  Each was filled with one packet of Sour Patch Fruits and some sour gummy worms.

I also had the caterpillar bubble jars that I posted about a while back.  The kids at the party seemed to like them.  In addition my husband MADE a set of cornhole boards (decorated in Steelers colors, gag) and I made two sets of bean bags from duckcloth that my artsy sister Wendy decorated.  Can you figure out the symbols?

Greyson seemed to approve:

Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Invitations

How cute did our Very Hungy Caterpillar invitations turn out?! These were pretty simple to make. I got the card stock already in the shape of an apple at Michael's.  I already had a rubber stamp that says Party Time and I made the invitation section by grabbing a photo of the VHC off the internet and printed the invite on some light green card stock.  I then used the Dot painters Like Do-A-Dot to stamp the different colored circles on the perimeter of the invite.  Add a butterfly sticker and use a regular hole punch to add some hungry caterpillar munch holes and that's it!  

Eric Carle-Inspired Letters using Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Picasa

The crafts for the boys' Very Hungry Caterpillar-themed birthday continue with these Eric Carle-inspired letters that I want to use as cake toppers.  

I've written a tutorial on how to create these letters using the common programs Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Picasa.  

Creating Eric Carle Letters with Microsoft Powerpoint, Word and Picasa

Download Paper Cutout Font free here http://www.petflow.com/invite/uu8703518 and install into Microsoft Word

Open new document and change font size to size of letters you want – I used about 400 point.  You can also resize later.

Type your word and leave extra space around the letters

Using snipping tool capture each letter individually and save.

Import into Picasa.

Use the image processing tools to convert your letters to Pencil Sketch (optional) and save.

Open Microsoft Powerpoint

Insert one of your saved Sketch letters. Size it larger or smaller as desired.  In the Drawing menu select the scribble tool. Trace over your letter.  Doesn’t have to be perfect because you are going to cut these out later.  After completing the tracing, format the line to be about 2point and black if desired. (i used a red line here for illustration purposes)

Insert your Texture Background  (SEE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW) onto the page.

Find your traced letter and bring it to the front (right click and bring to front)

Place it over your Texture Background.

Repeat with several letters to make the most of the texture background and your ink!

Print on card stock and cut out letters.  Tape letters to skewers if desired.

Creating Eric Carle Texture Backgrounds using Eric Carle Graphics

(I used the Eric Carle Garland letters but you could even scan images from the books)

Scan the colors/images you like and save the images

Open in Picasa and crop one or two sections of the image and save those crops (you only need to do this if there are words or images you don’t want obstructing your desired texture…)

Open Microsoft Powerpoint.

Insert your images. Copy paste and rotate to create a solid swatch of your texture.  Group the individual elements (select all) and save as an image.  Now insert that image into a new Powerpoint page and crop found in the format menu) it to be square-ish if desired.  Save it.

a section of the purple texture i wanted to use

several patches of the purple crop aligned together

the final purple texture background image

Stayed Tuned in Early September to see these cake toppers in action at the birthday party!!

Birthday party crafts - PINTEREST inspiration PART 1

I was going to wait until all the crafts were done and i could take some lovely at-the-birthday-party shots but i am just way too excited about them not to share.  I am planning the kids' first birthday party and the theme will be The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I know, it's been done a thousand times but it is so cute and the book really lends itself to an easy party theme, what with all the food and such.  We're going to have about 12 kids or so from the ages of 1-12 so making gifts bags and activities that will satisfy everyone will be challenging. In preparation I jumped on pinterest and just for kicks looked up "baby food jar" thinking i could use all the baby food jars that the kids go through for something decorate-y.  Well, there are a ton of adorable crafty ideas, of course, for baby food jars and the two that I clung to were 1. BUBBLES and 2. favors.

For the bubbles I used these super adorable bubble jars from Victoria at vixenmade for a pinkalicious birthday party with the pipe cleaner wand.  Who knew you could use a pipe cleaner to blow bubbles.  But it really works!!

Now here is my version of Caterpillar Bubble Jars.  Basically I used green pipe cleaners to make the wand, punched two side-by-side holes in the top middle of the baby food jar, strung the end of the wand up through and down the second hole twisted around and secured with a dab of hot glue, making sure it lays flat. Then I cut a circle of red felt and made the eyes and mouth from green felt and yellow card stock and glued them on.  I also painted the rim of the jar top with green acrylic paint. I think i'll probably also paint legs onto the side of the bottle.  I am thinking about making my own bubble solution but haven't done that yet.  I found a couple of recipes to try from the blog Mom Always Finds Out.

 So for the party favors I used these pins as inspiration:

From KatherineMaries, this adorable Sunshine Easter party favor:

and these super adorable Lady Bug favors from Becca at The Life of Peanut, as featured in this apartment therapy post

So I thought - ok - caterpillars - bugs, how about Bug Jar Party Favors!!!  So what iI did was:

1. Paint the top of jars white

2. For the handle, punch side by side holes on each side of the jar top

3. Thread a green pipe cleaner down through one hole about an inch and then back up through the second hold. Twist around to secure. Repeat at the other end to make a handle

4. Paint a swatch of chalkboard paint on the side of the jar, to be able to write each child's name on it

5. Punch 4 holes in the top of the jar for "air holes" for bugs, of course

6. Fill with fruit-shaped candies like Jolly Rancher Sours, a gummy worm and a gummy butterfly

Voila - Very Hungry Caterpillar Bug Jar Party Favors!!

I figured that not every kid is going to use these jars to catch bugs but they might use them to store little things like barrettes or coins or whatnot so I didn't want to make them TOO theme-y.  Just enough to be adorable but multi-purposable.

So what do you think??  I am going to pinterest my own crafts and see how they get around the internet.  Hope you like them!!

More crafts to come (invitations, centerpieces etc) in Part 2

Permission was granted to use individual photos from other websites. 
Thanks to Becca, Victoria and Katherine!!

All other photos are property of www.experimentmom.blogspot.com. Please contact me at jenniferlgardner1@gmail.com for permission to use.

http://www.vixenmade.com/2011/08/pinkalicious-party.html

Star Wars birthday party

Yesterday we took the fam to a birthday party for my friend's son who turned 3.  His name is also Greyson!  He loves Star Wars and so his mom did a whole Star Wars themed birthday party.  She had Yoda cookies (made with the cookie cutter from William and Sonoma), Yoda soda, Dagobah Swamp (pasta) salad, pretzel rod light sabers and light saber wrapped utensils, black and silver table clothes and blow up light sabers for the kids.  These were a HUGE hit with the 2-10 year old set!!  Even my kids enjoyed them.  It was a great day in the park, even if we DID spot a female black widow spider under the lid of one of the nearby trashcans.