Big Birthday Bug Bash!

I have been so busy the last couple of weeks planning and putting on a birthday party for my kiddos!  It has been so much work but so much fun!  Want to see what we did?  Here's my invitations to the Big Birthday Bug Bash!  The grass hopper on top rocks back and forth on the brad and the caterpiller crawls across the front of the invitation!  I think they made the party look fun because we had all but one kid show up!  20 kids came to the party and it was a blast!

The Food:

Ice Cubes: I bought Nerds because I thought they look kind of like little colorful bugs.  I made blue Kool-Aid but only added half the amount of water to give the ice cubes better color and stronger flavor.  After about an hour in the freezer I pulled them out while they were slushy and stuck the nerds in the now half frozen ice cubes with toothpicks.  Then back in the freezer until complete frozen.  I then served them in sprite to make the sprite turn blue.

The Crackers:  These are my favorite!  I loved how they turned out!  I spread cream cheese on Ritz crackers and then cut cherry tomatoes into quarters, used olive slices for heads and chives for antenaes, and frosting for dots.  The kids didn't eat these very well but I loved how they looked!

The Cakes:  My Mom is so amazing.  This party could not have happened without all of her help and hard work.  She bought this cute little baking tin that made bees, butterflies, and lady bugs.  She made these for the kids and even frosted them all.  They were a big hit with the kids!

The Plates:  Here's the plates each kid got.  My Mom made jello flowers and pipe cleaners for the stems and leaves.  Such a cute idea.  Then a bug cake on each and a lady bug cracker.  Then a gummy bug too!  My little boy wouldn't eat his gummy, he thought they looked too real and too gross!  I bought grass hopper ice cream but it just didn't look so cute on the plates.  But a note for next time: even if it doesn't look cute, little kids expect ice cream at birthday parties. 

The Center Peices and Treats:  I made these little cups with some stamps I had.  The "Bugs and Kisses!" cups are filled with Hershey's Kisses and the "Worm Wishes on Your Bug Day!" cups are filled with gummy worms.  I decorated the table with little bug erasers.

The Tables and Crafts:

The Tables:  Before the kids arrived I set up their spots.  Each kid's spot had a bag I decorated with their names on them so they would have something to take home all of their goodies!  Plus it's hard for little kids to see some kids getting presents and they don't get any.  This way they all felt like they got presents!

The clear plastic cups had a little growing insect capsul in them so that they could grow their own bug, they each got a crazy bandz bug, a lady bug that they put their own spots on, a bug jar and magnifying glass to decorate, 10 cut peices of black paper to make a spider head band with googly eyes, buid-a-bug fruit snacks, and plenty of bug erasers.

The Games:

The Pinata:  I over filled this pinata because I knew there would be at least 20 kids coming and I wanted them to all get lots of candy, so I bought 2 of the big backs of candy to fill it.  Not so smart though because it broke after only about 5 kids got to hit it!  It was just too heavy!

The Leaf Walk:  Instead of a Cake Walk we pretended the kids were bugs and did a Leaf Walk!  I used my cricut to cut out leaves and stamps to decorate the leaves.  Each kid won and when they won they got to choose a toy bug.

Find a Bug:  I didn't realize my picture didn't turn out very well of this game, but it was still fun.  I made name tags for each kid and then about 10 feet of yarn ied to a finger puppet bug.  The kids were little so it was my version of a bug hunt, where they found their name then they followed the string to their bug.

Here's a couple of the cute little finger puppet bugs at the end of the yarn!

Heres' the kid-made bug jars, magnifying glasses, and the dots on the lady bugs.  We made the lady bugs out of red felt, a black pom pom for the head, googly eyes, black pipe cleaner for antenae, and filled them with rice.  We cut out sticky black felt with a hole punch so that the kids could make their lady bugs each unique.

We had such a fun party!  A HUGE Thank you to all of my friends and family who helped me with everything for it!  There is no way I could have done it on my own!