A Very Hungry Caterpillar Party

Yesterday I put on a Very Hungry Caterpillar party for my kids. Their birthdays are close together and it seemed sensible to put all my energy into one party rather than try to do two. I needed a gender neutral theme and Pinterest had given me plenty of Very Hungry Caterpillar ideas...

For the invitations I wanted something with a handmade element. I had seen a few leaf invitations online and so got my son to do some fingerpainting.

There was lots I could do in advance. I got to crocheting a beanie for my caterpillar (who was turning 3). He saw a google images search for caterpillar hats and saw a caterpillar suit and that was it. He wanted a caterpillar suit. See more about the suit here. I also got an early start on some butterfly wings for my 1 year old. I used polypropylene (like the cover of a notebook) and glued strips of tissue paper to it. It took a long time but they looked great and can be reused!

I came up with some craft ideas, possibly ones I'd seen before (the Pinterest/blogosphere is like that). So we had fingerprint caterpillars and tissue paper and peg (clothespin) butterflies.

I also bought some coloured card and got my son doing some fingerpainting, which I cut into circles and sewed together to make a garland.

Food was easy to plan. Everything came from the book and I made signs just in case people didn't know the book as well as I do!

There were apples, pears, grapes instead of plums, strawberries, oranges and watermelon...

A cheese plate with swiss cheese, salami and pickles...

cupcakes... (hummingbird cake with cream cheese icing)

 
Butterfly fairy bread...

And I didn't get photos, but we served 'sausage' (cocktail frankfurts), 'cherry meat pie', lollipops (which didn't go down so well with my mum who is very protective of her carpet!) and caterpillar shaped lollies. I had ice cream cones and fairy floss to serve as the 'ice cream cone' but we completely forgot to serve them...
Mum also made crumbed chicken caterpillars which were delicious.

I made two cakes. A caterpillar shaped lolly cake for the kids (which took me about an hour and a half all up!) Lolly cake is apparently a NZ regular. We don't have eskimo lollies/fruit puffs in Australia so I used wacky watermelon clouds. The sour flavour really did not go with the biscuit/sweetened condensed milk cake, but it was only for the kids! Next time I'd use marshmallows or Clinkers I think...
I coloured the coconut with food colouring (before sprinkling it on) and made the eyes, nose and antennae from white chocolate ganache sprinkled with coloured coconut. The feet are just cut straight out of pieces of dark Lindt chocolate.

And a chocolate cake that was inspired by the 'one piece of chocolate cake' featuring a layer of choc chip cheesecake... I used this recipe but made it in an oven tray, and did the cake in just one layer. Also, I grated the chocolate in a food processor instead of using chocolate chips and topped it with ganache.

I think it was lots of fun for everyone (it's hard to know! I was running around doing things the whole time).

And I nearly forgot, for the favours I ordered long thin clear cello bags on eBay and filled them with green M&Ms with a red raspberry for the head. I also attached a thing of bubbles for fun.

It was definitely fun to plan. Though I'm very happy my life can return to normal now...