Freddie's Very Hungry birthday party

Freddie turned two last week (!) and just like with his first birthday, we had a theme ready-made around food... thanks to his love of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (and his own well-known love of eating). You know when the caterpillar eats through "one slice of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon"? Menu PLANNED.

We had lots of family over to celebrate Freddie's day and lots of fun with the cuteness and tastiness of it all - the piece de resistance of course being the custom cake made by my dad. Thanks to Eric Carle's description of it being a piece of chocolate cake in the book, I got to request Poppy's all-time best cake flavor - chocolate cake with Oreo mousse filling - and then he topped it with the adorable piped chocolate decorations and dots. I was pretty pleased with the rest of my decor too - had considered buying some cute cutouts/clip art like these from Etsy, but then I happened upon a $2 used copy at the library, and I just made the cutouts myself from the book! Used them to make a little banner, food placards for the buffet, and wrap decor for the utensils/pie stand. 

I did have some other good Etsy finds though, with Freddie's party tee, the balloon bouquet (which we broke up to decorate different places including the back yard and lost several to the wind before I got photos, oh well), and the polka dot garlands. Had to get polka dot plates too! Oh, and some easy favors with Jelly Belly and mini M&Ms to mimic all of the dots with on-theme stickers to close up the little baggies. All in all, a colorful and yummy and fun celebration of our sweet and silly boy.