Winter Hula Girl Party 6yr - Luau Punch

My daughter turned six in January and she wanted a Hula Girl party. Well, it was not easy to plan a Luau party in January when it's 30 degrees outside! I found it somewhat difficult to find luau supplies in our party stores during this time of year, but this was still one of the best birthday parties we have done! The kids had so much fun and so did the parents. Here is what we did:  

INVITATIONS: Amazingly, good Hula girl invites were hard to find! Most of the ones I saw in the stores were more for luau or had a hula girl that looked too sexy for a 6 year old birthday party! I did see some cute personalized invites online but they were $1 a piece plus shipping and with 20 kids to invite, I didn't want to spend that much. So I made my own! I bought a 20 count package of bright pink cards and envelopes at Michael's for a total of $9. I searched online until I saw a cute hula girl clip art and I printed the picture, traced the outline onto some white paper and let my daughter color 20 copies of the hula girl with her colored pencils and crayons. Then we used a Cricut machine and some coordinating colored papers to cut out the word ALOHA twenty times (you could also use stickers or precut letters from Michaels). We glued the Hula girl picture on the left side of the front of the card and the word ALOHA going down the right side of the picture. It looked great!

On the inside, the invitation said: Palm trees and sandy beaches are really far away, So we're bringing Hawaii to us to celebrate a 6th birthday! (child's name), the island girl, invites you to surf on over for a Hula Girl Luau (Date, time) at the Isle of (Last name) (Address). At the bottom, I wrote: The Hawaiian fun includes crafty hula skirts, flower leis, dancing the limbo, learning to Hula and passing the coconut! Hawaiian snacks and Pizza at 2:00. I downloaded a Hawaiian symbol font and at the very bottom of the page I had a row of tikis, coconuts, flowers, hula girls, totems, palm trees and other Hawaiian symbols.  

DECORATIONS: We made the AWESOME Tin can Totem Poles.  My daughter and I had so much fun making them. We put them in the two pots outside our front door. I bought from Oriental Trading a Hula girl sign for outside as well. We put 12 Aloha balloons (Oriental Trading) all around the family room and I also got a garland of hibiscus and lanterns, I think from Oriental Trading or from Hobby Lobby, which we strung around the bar in our kitchen. Then, I got some large pieces of cardboard box from some local Auto Body shops (ask for the boxes that hoods come in) and I cut out 2 large palm trees and panted them with craft paint (use a clip art image as a guide for how to shape them). I used a third large sheet of box to paint a giant hula girl, just like the one on her invitations. I added two palm trees on either side of her and we put her right in front of the sunroom window (to block the image of snow outside!). Then, we put the two individual palm trees on either side of that, and it looked like she was on a palm tree beach. And I made a giant sun (at my daughter's request) which we put over the fire place on the mantle. WE had hibiscus tablecloths and for some tables we also used hawaiian print beach towels. I bought neon green and pink napkins and plates at Walmart 99cents for packages of 20.  

FOOD: We went very simple and easy with a platter of red and green grapes, strawberries, cut up pineapple, cheese cubes and ham cubes. The entire plate, except for the ham cubes, was empty at the end of the party! We also served Hawaiian pizza (Ham and pineapple) from a local pizza place. I made two types of punches, both of which were hits. The first was Hawaiian Lemonade: mix together 6 oz can of frozen lemonade, 12 oz can of apricot nectar, 12 oz unsweetened pineapple juice, 12 oz ginger ale, 6 oz of water. YUM! The second is a Fruity Punch: Mix together 4 cups orange juice, 4 cups pink lemonade, 1 12 oz can of pineapple chunks with juice. Then add a few strawberries sliced in half and 1 naval orange(Peeled and in sections). Fill the pitcher with ice and serve.  

CAKE: I made an ice cream cake. These are VERY easy to make! All you do is make a sheet cake in whatever flavor you want, cut it in half and remove the top half of the cake. Then, use ice cream (in any flavor you want) that comes in the old fashioned paper cartons that you can pull down all the sides, and slice pieces about 3/4 inch thick and lay them out on the bottom half of the cake.Make sure you cover the entire bottom half of the cake. Then, you can add crunched oreos, chocolate chips, whatever you want, and then replace the top half of the cake. Immediately return to the freezer for about 10 minutes to let the ice cream harden again. Remove from the freezer and continue with decorating your cake, remembering to return to the freezer frequently so the ice cream doesn't melt.

For the Hula girl cake I used white icing as a base. I then used light blue tinted icing on the top third of the cake for sky. I tinted the light blue a little darker and put a little bit of water below the sky. I then used light brown sugar sprinkled on the bottom section of the cake to look like sand. I used dark brown icing for palm tree trunks and green icing for palm tree branches, put on with a pastry bag and the special cake -decorating tips. I put a couple of birds in the sky, and lastly I piped on a green hula skirt, a tan body head legs and arms, brown hair and pink lei to make a hula girl standing on the sand. Not easy, but it came out cute! I wrote Happy Hula on the bottom and the cake was done! Keep in the freezer until just before serving.  

FAVORS: As each child arrived, we gave them a Lei (purchased from Oriental Trading), they got a temporary Hibiscus tattoo (Oriental Trading) and we sent them to the craft table to make a hula skirt (see below). When they left, each child got a goodie bag with a hibiscus print (Oriental trading) with three homemade cookies inside: one pineapple, one palm tree and one state of Hawaii cookie. I bought the cookie cutters online for 99cents each I think, and made them with a sugar cookie recipe. YUM! We frosted the cookies: neon pink with green word Aloha on the Hawaii state cookie, yellow body and green top on the pineapple cookies and brown trunk and green top on the palm tree cookies.  

CRAFT: Hula skirts were too expensive for 20 kids, so instead I bought Hula skirt kits from Oriental trading (12/$9.99 instead of $4 a piece). The kids really enjoyed this, but it did require help from moms and the glue didn't hold real great. I would suggest buying decent green ribbon instead of using the ribbon the kit comes with (it tore easily) and stapling on the crepe paper strands and flowers instead of using glue. Otherwise, these were great and looked very cute on!  

GAMES: FUN FUN FUN! First I downloaded some fun Hula and Limbo music from Amazon.com MP3 downloads, for about 99cents each. Make sure you get Lovely Hula Hands, the Hukilau song, Under the Limbo stick and Limbo Rock. I bought a blow up limbo stick from Ebay and they did the Limbo and they had a great time! Then I had a video loaned to me by a friend called Be a Hula Girl, and they learned a Hula dance and then I turned the hula music on and they danced the Hula. I was amazed at how mesmerized the kids were and they really remembered what they had learned. My mom lives in Miami, so she sent us a coconut and we played Pass the Coconut using the Hula music. This is played just like Hot Potato, except with a coconut. I think this BY FAR was the favorite game. Many of these kids had never even seen a real coconut before and the one we had still had milk inside! The last game we played was Hula Hula Coconut (Duck Duck Goose!). They really enjoyed this one too. 

The kids had a great time and so did the parents! It really is possible to bring Hawaii to Georgia in the middle of January! Happy Hula!