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I finally have the pictures of the favors from Marxo's party. I think they turned out really well - even if my mom and I were up most of Friday night / Saturday morning sewing tulle onto the bottom of those food covers (great idea I had, huh? THANKS, MOM!!!)

First, a picture of the caterpillars. One of these formed into an actual chrysalis yesterday!

During the party, we didn't let anyone know about the caterpillars until the very end. Then I went around and told the kids that we were going to make a craft. All the little kids came running, but there were three older boys there (Fellan's age) who are too cool for that now. They asked me what kind of craft we were going to do. I told them we were going to make flowers. "We don't want to make flowers!"

These are the floral tubes with a "wick" made of rolled up paper towel and, of course, some beautiful flower petals that were cut out by my dad, my brother, Squared, and my mom. (nobody was immune from this task-master!) I had to figure out some way to make them stand up, so they're stuck through the bottom of some Dixie cups.

After all the little kids made these flowers, I told them that they will use these flowers to feed their butterflies because they were all going to get some caterpillars to raise. About 10 seconds after I said that, the three older boys magically appeared at my side saying, "We want to make some flowers!!!" My how things change when little boys and bugs are involved...

And in order to hold the butterflies after they emerge, we told the kids they would have to have a butterfly cage. Voilà! La pièce de résistance:

It's hard to see, but you can kind of tell that there's a little bit of an overlap of the tulle in the middle of the bottom. After much discussion with Squared and my mom, we added two pieces of tulle to the bottom and they overlap. This way, the butterfly is prevented from sneaking out, but you also have access to get the chrysalises chrysali cocoons into the "cage" and then let the butterflies out when it's time to release them.

I think all the parents were pleasantly surprised with the party favors, too. :)