Bug Themed Birthday Party

For my little girl's second birthday party we had a bug themed party! I'm going to share with you now some of the things that we had/did. I don't have pictures of every single thing though! Now, we had two parties, we had one at home and one at a painting pottery place.

For the one at home we made some finger foods to snack on and cupcakes and dessert.
We had Ants on a Log and pinwheels to look like Snail Tails.

To make Ants on a Log just prepare some celery how you normally would and then spread some organic peanut butter on and top with some organic raisins to look like the ants.

To make Snails Tails you need tortillas (sun dried tomato, or spinach flavor make for funner colors), cream cheese (vegan, goat's, or regular), lunch meat like ham, and pickles. You just make the tortillas into the strips of sizes they need to be in, spread a thick layer of cream cheese, add the ham and the pickle and roll up into a snail tail shape.

Next up is our Wormy Apples

This was really simple to set up and made for really cute decoration. All you need is apples, and gummy worms. I set out a bowl of gummy worms and then put three apples with the gummy worms sticking out of them in front of it. To get the gummy worms into the apples I just used a knife to make a small hole in the apple and stuck them in.

For the dessert for the at home party I just made these cupcakes.
I made lady bug cupcakes, butterfly cupcakes, and simple bumble bee cupcakes.

 For the lady bug cupcakes I used a mini muffin tin. Just strawberry cake mix, vanilla icing dyed pink, and then gel black icing to add the dots.

For the butterfly cupcakes I used pastel cupcake liners in a regular sized cup muffin tin. I used golden cake mix for these and some strawberry too. Then I dyed the vanilla icing light green with food coloring, then broke a pretzel in half an stuck those in for the wings. After the wings were placed I dyed some of the vanilla icing a pretty blue color and put it in a ziploc bag with a hole cut in it to squeeze it out to look like the body of the butterfly. Finally I added a green or blue M&M on for the heads, and then used the black gel icing again to add antennae.

For the bumble bee cupcakes I used yellow cupcake liners in a regular sized muffin tin. I used golden cake mix for all of these. I dyed the vanilla icing a beautiful light yellow color with yellow food coloring and spread it onto the cupcakes as elegantly as I could. I did make one bright yellow with a tube of bright yellow icing too.

Note: I am normally very against kids and eating food coloring, but this was a birthday party for my daughter so I just went for it!

Next up is the game that I made to play. It's a bug dig!

To make a Bug Dig Game you fill up a kiddie pool with paper shred (Easter grass). I had brown, red, pink, and yellow because that's what we had already and couldn't find any more packages of brown in the stores. I would've rather had it all be brown so it looked like dirt, but whatever, the kids didn't care! Then I hid a bunch of bugs in the paper shred. I used packs of small bugs and centipede things that are sold at Dollar Tree around Halloween time, and a package of big bugs that I purchased at Joann Fabric's. The kids LOVED the big bugs, my daughter's holding one in the photo above.

For our party at the painting place this is how I set up the table. I wish I had a picture of everything in the goodie bags, but I can just explain what's in them I suppose!

I covered the table with a purple plastic table cloth. I laid out flashcards from an insect flashcards pack all around on the table. I also put some in 3 little bug paper holders that I found at the grocery store. There was butterfly paper plates, napkins, and cups from Dollar Tree. The plastic utensils were kept in a Zipoc bag. There was a lady bug timer out as decoration, the cake, and that little smiley face thing is a balloon holder for the butterfly balloons we had.
Now, for the goodie bags! I couldn't find any good bug bags, so we used these clear ones from Dollar Tree with different colored flowers on them. In the goodie bags was: bug houses, stretchy spiders, magnifying glasses, and bug books.

Now for a better picture of the cake

We had this cake made by a bakery at a local grocery store. They had the flowers on there made of icing. They stuck in some insect food picks and plastic rings. You can buy food picks and food rings of all sorts on bento accessory websites or Amazon.

Not the greatest picture, and I only have a picture of one of the chairs..but as a simple decor idea I attached a pair of butterfly wings to every child's seat at the painting place. You can purchase these butterfly wings at Dollar Tree in varying colors. They make a lovely addition to dress up/pretend play at home as well.

They got to paint some adorable little insect pottery. Since my daughter was the birthday girl she got an adorable big butterfly. The other children got to pick from dragonflies or snails/slugs.