Luau Party 11yr - Dress-up Relay

For my sister's 11th birthday party, we decided to have a luau theme.  

INVITATIONS: I got on Microsoft publisher and used the blank publications feature; I got a Hawaiian border off of clipart.com and also a Hawaiian dancer from there too.  I then included all of the important stuff like date, place, time, rsvp, etc. 

MINI DECORATIONS: Using construction paper, I made bright colored lanterns by placing the two pieces together, folding in half "hamburger" style, cutting them until I was about an inch away from the edge, unfolding them and then refolding them "hotdog" style and then stapling them at the edges. I made about 6 of these and hung them from the ceiling. I also made pineapples and coconuts using construction paper as well. We then took 2 false trees that we already have in our house (you can get those @ like Wal-Mart for about $20) and used brown balloons as coconuts. Over the door we wrote "ALOHA" on a piece of with poster board using bright colored markers and then attached leis to the poster board similar to beads that would hang over a door. We also put "ALOHA" in random places.  MAIN

DECORATION: On one of our walls, we used a blue tablecloth to be the sky. We then used cardboard to be the sand. On the "sand" we used 5 green poster boards cut into grass shapes on the bottom, and then made flamingos using 3 hot pink poster boards going along the bottom. We also put hibiscus flowers in between the 3 flamingos. On the sky we simply used large yellow construction paper for a sun, and 3 white poster boards for clouds. This decoration cost about 20 overall. (All things used in this decoration were from a dollar store) 

WELCOMING OF GUESTS: The birthday girl, with a balloon and a small list of questions, welcomed guests. On this list were questions they had to fill out about themselves and then put into the balloon; later that night, one girl would pick a balloon, read the info about the person and try to guess who that person is. They were also given a bandanna made from pink or orange fabric.  On the pink bandanna it said "hoku" which means star in Hawaiian, and on the orange one it said "mahina" which means moon in Hawaiian. These were the different teams that the girls were going to be on. My sister invited 7 girls, 8 including her. 

FOOD: When everyone arrived, we ate in our backyard and had hamburgers with chips and dip, Hawaiian punch and fruit kabobs, which included apples, bananas, strawberries and kiwi. These were delicious. The cake was a simple cookie cake from Wal-Mart that said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY CORTNI". 

GAMES: The first game we played was one of the funniest things I have every seen. It was called "dress up relay". We went to goodwill and found a male outfit, which included: a hat, a shirt, pants, shoes, and a tie.  The female outfit included: a hat, dress, shoes, purse, and a necklace. We split the 4 girls from each team on different sides of the yard, and they had to put on the outfit, run to the other end of the yard, take it off and hand it to their partner, who did the same thing. The team that finished first won. We did this twice so that both teams could experience both outfits. IT WAS HILARIOUS.

The next game we played was an obstacle course.  First the girl had to throw a softball into a basket about 10 feet away; then they had to throw bean bags into a tic-tac-toe set and get a tic-tac-toe. They then had to spin around a softball bat 5 times by placing their head on the end of it. They then had to search through a sandbox and find a quarter among about 5 other fake coins. You can add more to this, but the girls thought this was just as fun. Finally, we did a scavenger hunt. Basically, the riddles were: Question- I separate you from your neighbor. Answer- fence. Simple, but we put them in difficult positions. After you found the next clue, there was a puzzle piece attached. After you found all the clues, you had to put the puzzle pieces together and tell what it was. I just drew a surfboard on there to go with the theme. The puzzle was made out of cardboard. We then had a water balloon fight.     

CRAFTS: after a tiring array of games outside, we went inside and did some crafts. The first was we took some plastic mugs (from Card and Party Factory) and had the girls decorate them with fabric paint and paint pens. After they dried we would later use these to drink strawberry daiquiris and eat popcorn when we watched a movie. We also made hemp bracelets. They also decorated their goodie bags.

CLOSE TO THE END: After all was done, it was about 12, so we just had the girls drink their daiquiris, eat popcorn and watch movies. The next morning, we had a cereal and more fruit kabobs for breakfast, and then gave them goodie bags. The goodie bags consisted of their crafts, candy, and lip-gloss. My sister said that they talked about it for about a week and said they couldn’t wait until Cortni’s 13th and 16th birthday. Oh, boy.