Lilo's Very Hungry Caterpillar 2nd Birthday Party

Two years ago yesterday, at around 5 in the morning, my little caterpillar Lilo was born at home, upstairs in our bedroom. He has been a hungry caterpillar since that day and has grown into a big caterpillar indeed. He is also already spreading his wings as a butterfly and we love him so much for all he is.

For his second birthday, some really lovely friends of his (and their amazing mummies/daddies) came to our house to celebrate yesterday. I had planned a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed party after the well-loved book by Eric Carle, and researched the many Pinterest boards and blogs on the subject extensively before starting on the different aspects of the party a few weeks ago.

Lilo wears his antennae and butterfly wings for the party

I am glad to say that fun was had by all, especially the birthday boy. Here is what we did.

The house was decorated to reflect the very hungry caterpillar themes, with a hanging lantern caterpillar on the wall, a balloon caterpillar on the banister outside and a butterfly I made out of recycled milk bottle plastic and Sharpie markers (see here for instructions). I ordered plates, bowls, cups (and themed stickers and badges for the party bags) online from The Pod Company, and bought the Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric from Hobbycraft. Our upright piano was a good out-of-reach display "table" for the sweet food.

 For the food, I basically followed the instructions laid out in the book by Eric Carle and we had all the food featured in the story (apart from ice cream, which I swapped for jellies, as we were having the party inside the house). Here is a list of the food that I prepared that was on offer:

• Apple
• Pear
• Plums
• Strawberries
• Orange segments
• Watermelon
• Slices of Emmental cheese
• Slices of salami
• Gherkins
• Chocolate cake (with red glace cherries on top)
• Cocktail sausages
• Lollipops
• Cherry pie
• Cupcakes 
• Jellies

I also added French bread slices and homemade sausage rolls to bulk it up a bit.

I printed out food pictures from the book from this website and stuck them on matching coloured card and lollipop sticks to go on the different bowls and plates of food.

I designed the birthday cake, completely inspired by this one and this one, using Annabel Karmel's birthday cake recipe. It was a really yummy sponge that didn't really need filling with jam and was moist just eaten by itself. I baked one for the caterpillar in a Bundt tin and the other in two round tins. I prepared the fondant decorations for the cake 1 week ago, which gave them time to harden.

I prepared the fondant decorations a week ahead

The round cakes were covered with marzipan and then iced white and decorated with the fondant icing shapes and little polka dot decorations I got from the supermarket.

Decorating the round cake

I cut the ring-shaped cake and made it into a caterpillar by covering with different colours of green fondant icing for the body and red for the head. There is also a layer of marzipan under the icing.

The finished hungry caterpillar cake

The cake seen from above

We played a game called "Feed the hungry caterpillar" - I painted a caterpillar face on a canvas and cut out a hole for the mouth. Then we had the children throw caterpillar felt food into the mouth hole.

Caterpillar felt food I made 2 weeks ago

Feeding the caterpillar

We also played musical statues and pass the parcel. I had wrapped a little wooden caterpillar (worm) in brown and gold tissue paper to pretend it was a cocoon.

I had set up a little craft table in the kitchen with a sticky contact paper covered tray. Exploration boxes containing recycled milk bottle lids colored green and red and green and red pompoms were there for the children to create their own caterpillars.
There were also plenty of pens, crayons and copies of the Very Hungry Caterpillar colouring sheet I found on the Eric Carle website.

The party bags for the children to take home contained:
- A very hungry caterpillar sticker sheet
- A very hungry caterpillar badge
- A bag of sweeties
- A bag of homemade red and green make-your-own caterpillar play dough with googly eyes and pipe cleaner antennae inspired by The Imagination Tree
- A very hungry caterpillar activity sheet (for older children)

Party bag for all children to take home

We all had a fabulous day and even though all the preparation was a lot of effort, it was really worth it.

Five Ornament Craft Workshop and Three Different Christmas Bakes

Boy, have we had a crafty day today! This morning I had volunteered to lead a one hour Christmas craft workshop at the French play group that Ju and Lilo have started attending recently. This involved showing seven children aged between 18 months and 8 years old (as well as their parents and the teenage co-host) how to make a selection of Christmas ornaments.


As the age range was so wide, I chose to go for five different activities:
- Card collage, using snowflake motif hole punchers and various colours of cards and marker pens - perfect for making cards, present tags, table place markers...

Card collage and cut out

- Pipe cleaner ornaments - very simple tree decoration

Heart-shaped pipe cleaner ornament

- Coloured light tree ornament - made by punching out snowflake shapes in a tree shaped card, then glueing coloured tissue paper behind - a lovely decoration for a window

Really pretty snowflake shapes shining through with vibrant colours

- Stained glass effect window decoration using recycled transparent tub lids and Sharpie markers

Stained glass effect ornaments make the most of the winter light

- Little angels made from card, cotton wool and nylon tights - instructions for these are from Red Ted Art and can be found here

Cute little angel

Everybody tucked in to the activities, adults and older children tending go for the last two activity types (but not exclusively) and the younger children for the first two. For one hour, there was a whole lot of crafting going on at my friend's house, who was kindly hosting this workshop.

The children are very focused and creative

Most children had made at least two finished products by the end of the workshop.

Angels and a card collage and drawing

Ju made a 3D collage using green card paper he cut with his crinkly scissors and glue; he also made a pipe cleaner ornament for the tree, in the shape of an apple. Lilo mostly enjoyed climbing everywhere, watching my friend's goldfish swim and hugging giant teddy bears.

This afternoon, back at home, we made stained glass window honey cookies. This involves making cookies with the centre cut out, which is then filled with crushed boiled sweets.

Star shaped cookie with the centre cut out

Ju cuts a heart shaped cookie

Lilo enjoys sorting the boiled sweets into different colours

Cookies with the crushed boiled sweets, ready for their final baking to melt the centre

The crushed sweets melt in the final 4 minutes of cooking time, creating a stained glass window effect, which is very Christmassy indeed. These cookies would make fine ornaments as well, but we chose to make them to eat tomorrow with our friends as we are having a special Christmas gathering at home.

Stained glass window effect cookies all ready

However, as the honey cookie recipe was - to say the least - a bit of a nightmare (it didn't hold its shape during baking, possibly because the dough need refrigerating before baking), I won't give you a link to the recipe. If you want to re-create these, I would suggest using your best sugar cookie recipe, i.e. one that holds its shape. I had to rescue mine by re-cutting them with cookie cutters when they were almost cooked, before putting the crushed up boiled sweets to make the stained glass "window". I could really have done without the hassle. Still, they ended up very pretty and impressive as well.

On top of all this, I also made a white chocolate and cranberries panettone.

White chocolate and cranberries panettone

And as if I hadn't been busy enough, I also made these super cute Rudolph cupcakes using this recipe for chocolate cupcakes and my own design for Rudolph's head: brown and red fondant icing for the face and nose, cut-up mini marshmallows and black gel food colour for eyes, and plain chocolate antlers I piped on a silicone sheet using a cut-up plastic freezer bag and then left to set. I think the boys are going to LOVE those.

Guess who?

Kitchen still needs a good tidy, so I'm off to do that now!