Shelley poured a lot of love and work into T.J.'s Eric Carle-themed party. She shares: We recently celebrated our daughter's 3rd birthday. T.J. loves the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so it was a fitting theme for her big day!

The kids arrived to activities set up in the backyard. We had two craft stations; first, they had canvases and squares of tissue paper, to make an Eric Carle inspired artwork. They were later embellished with the childs name and a butterfly, wrapped in cellophane and we delivered as their party favor. The second craft station was fruit stamping, using the fruit from the book! The kids made wonderful works of art and the colors really popped off the page!

The children also wiggled through a canvas tunnel and became beautiful butterflies on the way out! Handmade butterfly antenna's were given to each child!

Then the best part! Early in the morning we "hid" over 200 caterpillar foams and the kids went on a caterpillar hunt! This was truly the best part (who knew?). We could have had 2000 caterpillars and the kids would've loved it! We purchased magnifying glasses and glasses for the kids to wear in their search, and they all looked absolutely incredible!

We all then headed inside for a reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by my Mum (who came in again from Australia to help with the event!).

The kids (and their families!) loved the buffet table. Every food from the book was there, each with custom signs! The cupcake ice cream cones were the hit. We made them into cupcakes, so we could set them on the buffet table and not worried about melting ice cream!

T.J.'s cake was a huge hit! Again, completely homemade! It was 5ft long, but only the head was edible (who needs THAT much cake?) we covered plastic bowls in buttercream (numerous shades of green, for effect!) placed it all on shredded paper!

The party was a huge hit! We would be lying if we said this wasn't a lot of work, but we enjoyed the process throughout the year!

Thanks Shelley!

(Images: Reader Shelley)