Luau Party 12-14yr - Hawaiian Music

Got a birthday in the dead of winter? I have the perfect party idea to beat the winter blues, a luau party! You decorate your house like a tropical paradise complete with tissue palm trees, an "Aloha" banner, jumbo foam parrots on perches, tissue flower lei garlands strung about, seashell candles on the tables, hang a cotton fish net in a corner and hang plastic crabs, star fish, sea horses, and lobsters in it. You can get fish covered plastic table cloths, and then an artificial grass table skirt around the edge.

Blow up a few beach balls and have laying around. Hang tissue tropical fish about the room. Have a large plastic seashell bowl for punch, complete with plastic coconut cups with paper umbrellas. Buy tropical fish tableware and plastic seashell plates for chips and dip. 

For party favors you can buy plastic sunglasses in neon colors, poly hawaiian leis, mini bottles of bubbles, tropical fish temporary tattoos, and plastic maracas. And you can't forget the invitations. You can get little hawaiian shirt invitations, or tropical fish invitations. Have fun with it and suggest that your guests dress for it. Suggest hawaiian shirts, bermuda shorts, sandals, beachcomber hats, and other fun attire. 

Foe fun games you can have a flamingo ring toss. You just need a plastic flamingo, and rings. If you don't have traditional rings, you can make them by using the long balloons used for making balloon animals. Blow 4 balloons up, take each one and make a circle, overlapping each end, and then twist to connect.

You can also have a tropical fish bean bag throw. Take a large piece of cardboard, cut out 5 circles big enough for a small bean bag, and then draw big tropical fish around each hole. Some can even have the hole as their mouth for fun. Then color or paint the fish in fun and wild colors. For the bean bags, you can use old socks, (clean of course!) just fill with rice, or dried peas, and you can either cut the sock down till it is a small enough size to fit easily through the hole, and sew the end, or just tie the end with a good rubberband.

If you have the room, you can also have a limbo contest. You just need either a pool stick, or a long pole of some kind, some fun music, like "Surfin USA", "Wipeout", and "Kokomo". Have 2 people hold the ends of the pole, starting high, and getting lower with each time around.  The great thing about this theme is it can be for kids or adults. When planning for adults, just add artficial green grass skirts, have some reggae music, plastic neon colored margarita glasses for drinks, have plastic palm tree toothpicks for any hor d'voures you may have, and maybe some fun tattoos or body paints for the adults to play around with. 

For the birthday cake you can make it in the shape of a giant tropical fish, complete with fruit roll-up scales. Or you can make a large sheet cake and decorate it like the beach. Frost 3/4's of the cake blue for the ocean, don't forget to make waves with white caps, and then frost the remaining cake a sandy color and then sprinkle on light brown sugar. You can put a jet skier on the ocean, or a plastic boat. put a few sunbathers on the beach, with a couple tissue drink umbrellas. You can customize it to whatever the birthday person likes about the beach most. There are a lot of cake ideas for this theme, like a giant crab cake, a tropical island cake, or even a giant margarita glass cake. Just be imaginative, and have fun! Heat up this winter with a tropical luau!