Here is a caterpillar themed 1st birthday feature by Deepa Bansal. Deepa heads marketing for India at a Diplomatic mission. She lives in Gurgaon with her husband and 2.8 months old son Kabir. She loves to read, Spend time with kids per se..love music, art and craft and doing up her home…her typical weekend is spent with close friends or at home with Kabir and hubby. They plan things around Kabir’s interest like taking him swimming, music class. Or just making crafts at home..
More from her –
As an individual I have a creative bent of mind and like doing craft and art myself. My son kabir also has this quality (thank god 🙂 so we really enjoy doing craft as a part of our daily life…so planning his bday parties has been a lot of fun for me.
His first bday
theme: the hungry caterpillar
As a kid, I have always read books to Kabir. This has been an integral part of his routine. One of the first books I used to read to him was the Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carl so this was a natural choice for his fIrst bday as I wanted to do something which he relates to.
Kabir had already started showing interest in painting and coloring too and this theme gave me the space to plan a lot of actitvies for this bday.
We had moved to Gurgaon when he was 10 months old so we wanted to celebrate his first bday in the complex itself. We stay in Close North, Nirvana country, Gurgaon.
My husband and I were keen to use this opportunity to invite kids from our complex so Kabir has a lot of fun with kids his age.
Design and plan: The entire bday was planned by me. I did not use any event planner. I designed his invite myself and thankfully have a friend who works on photoshop so she convtered my design into an invite for print. I used a printer only for execution.
The invite was based image from the book itself. and the text was customised by me to read..
the front read: i learned to laugh and crawl
the sit and stand
now i can walk on my own ..but the fun has just begun
hungry for some fun.inch over to Kabir bday party..
look out world as I turn ONE
Decor : I personally do not like a lot of balloons ,as I feel its very common and makes it repetitive. so I only used balloons to make a caterpillar at the gate (entrance).
Inside I had a huge caterpillar running from wall to wall (made by me). I used paper and made fans of it with red as the head and green paper for the body. I got my printer to replicate the same in larger size for the party.
Other decor was cut outs of fruits which the caterpillar eats in the story. so huge cut outs were hung in the room.
My sis had put together a presentation with images from Kabir first year to a hired projection screen and speakers and played that before cake cutting.
Food: the theme was carried on to the food- I had cake with the caterpillar (obviously). Muffins were in the same theme of caterpillar too. There was food from the story: fruits, sausages,
Name tags read: on monday he ate..
tues he ate… again from the story itself.
Games: coloring butterflies and caterpillar pictures
Make your own caterpillar and butterfly- I had cut outs for craft which i had prepared before hand and gave glue to the kids to stick and decorate their own butterfly or make a caterpillar face/mask to wear
Photo wall: I had a big butterfly made, caterpillar body which i made at home and a flower (cut outs) one could wear the butterly and get pics clicked or put ones head in the middle of flower and get a pic. Wear caterpillar dress (made of chart paper) I had a string at the neck so one could hang it over the neck and it falls in front of you as a dress)
Post bday: I got all the cut outs home and used the caterpillar , butterfly and fruit cut outs to decorate Kabir’s room for one year…
Cups and plates for food: I got stickers printed with caterpillar images in the story and stuck on all plates as didnt get plates with this theme.
Glasses: got glasses with fruits on them so it fit with theme.
Caps: again with caterpillar image form book.
Give away bags: I made it myself at home with chart paper and satin ribbon for 80 kids over 2 weeks time. and wrote each kids name on the bag. I made grass with crape paper on the bag for desgin and made caterpillar with ribbon and stuck on the grass.
Kabir’s dress: I got a caterpillar printed on a T shirt and made him wear that.
I had hired vendors only for tenting and food and printing. Overall, it was a great feeling to have done all the things with my own hands for his B’day and he sure had a blast.
Vendors: printing: Arvi printers .
Catering: Binge, Gurgaon
Tenting: little angels, Galleria, Gurgaon
The Soirée Book 