Hungry Caterpillar party prep: DIY Caterpillar Bingo

Here's my second completed project:  Hungry Caterpillar Bingo

I figured I would need more than a pinata to keep our young guests entertained.  I loved playing Bingo as a kid, so I created these Hungry Caterpillar themed bingo boards.  I placed different images from Eric Carle's book into each square.  Here are 11 different 4x4 Bingo boards that I created:

(Note:  Once again, I am not ashamed to admit that I am a big time copycat.  I used copied images to create my Hungry Caterpillar invite.  This time I copied quite a few of my Bingo images from Patty's blog.  Thank you Patty!)  

Hungry Caterpillar 4x4 Bingo

The weekend

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

(Thanks Kim for taking this photo.)

Hungry Caterpillar party prep: DIY Number Pinata

I just realized this week that September is right around the corner.  Eek!  Summer is slipping through my fingers.  Nooo!

Baby Chuck's birthday party is almost here.  I have all these marvelous DIY plans dancing in my head, but I have yet to fully complete one.  Fortunately, Kim is super crafty and creative.  I'm mucho thankful that she was able to help out.  

Here's our first birthday party project:  The pinata! Ole!  (Note:  I've never hit a pinata before, but the whole idea seems very fun.  What? You get to hit something with a big stick?  And it's ok?  And it spits out candy?  Sign my kid up!)  After looking through pages and pages of pinatas, I skipped the paper mache route in favor of cardboard (using this awesome set of directions).  I'm not sure how sturdy the structure will be since we used flimsy cereal boxes.  Luckily, only a couple of young kids will attend our party, so I think it'll be ok.  *Crosses fingers*

I'm not going to lie.  It was loads of fun to make, but it took a looooong time.  We could only work at night when Baby Chuck was sleeping.  (Unfortunately, that meant that we were both also exhausted too.)  Having Kim as my slave helper really helped.   If you were to try this project, I recommend that you get yourself a Kim too.

Here are some photos from our efforts:

I added thicker cardboard to reinforce my flimsy ones.

This was all we were able to accomplish the first night.

Note the ice-cream in the background.  We needed to keep our energy up.

We started from the bottom and then slowly worked our way up.

Delirium sets in.

This is all we accomplished the second night.

And then when I work up the next morning , our pinata was magically completed!  Just kidding, we finished it after another night of work.

Now I just have to fill this baby up and then we can see it in action. 

We like to party

During the Summer, our town hosts small Sunday get-togethers in the park.  They serve free food and drinks.  Plus, they hire a dj to play music.  Week after week I kept meaning to go but something always came up.  This past Sunday Kim, Baby Chuck, and I finally joined the festivities.  It was  a lot of fun.  We ate delicious food, people-watched to our heart's content, and even got roped into a little dancing.

Boy oh boy, West New Yorkers sure know how to party!

Love em and leave em from Pink Stripey Socks on Vimeo.