Host a tropical bash with the tastes and colors of Hawaii.
Throw a colorful Hawaiian luau-themed birthday party full of flowers and fun activities for a girl and her friends. The party is best held outdoors during a warm time of the year, although you can also decorate inside to make it look like a beach setting if the weather is bad. Does this Spark an idea?
Invitations
Girls love flowers, so make tropical flower invitations for all the guests. For each invitation, cut a flower shape out of colored card stock. Cut a yellow center for the flower and write something like, "Hula on over to Debbie's 8th birthday party!" Write the time, date, location and other information on the flower petals. If invitations will be hand-delivered, make them more memorable by punching a hole in the corner of each invitation and tying it to an item for the guest to keep. Potential items include a bottle of sunscreen, pair of flip-flops or inexpensive sunglasses.
Crafts
As girls arrive, have them put together their own leis to wear during the party. Set up a craft table with scissors, string, many colors of tissue paper and 1-inch lengths of colored straws. Girls can cut out tissue-paper flowers and thread them onto string with straws as spacers. As another craft, gather glass bottles or jars with lids and let girls pour a variety of colors of sand into the bottles to make decorations that remind them of the beach.
Relay Race
Divide girls into two or more teams to compete in a hula relay. Set up one cone about 10 yards away from the starting line and another about 10 yards past the first. On each girl's turn, she has to walk or run while spinning the hula hoop around her waist to the first cone, jump through the hula hoop like a jump rope while running to the second cone, roll the hula hoop while running back to the first cone and spin it around her waist again on the final leg of the race.
Food
Serve dainty Hawaiian treats at the birthday party. Cut thin slices of melon and pineapple and use flower-shaped cookie cutters to make them into flowers. Thread flowers onto wooden skewers with a grape in between each flower. Make smoothies with tropical fruits and a splash of coconut milk for some Hawaiian flavor. Top off each smoothie cup with a miniature umbrella. For the cake, make a simple sheet cake. Cover half of it in blue frosting and the other half with white frosting and sand-colored cookie crumbs sprinkled on top. Place a few miniature palm tree figurines on the beach and write, "Happy Birthday Debbie!" with white frosting on the water.
Tags: birthday party, hula hoop, about yards, around waist, each invitation, first cone, make them