Luau time!

Hi Everyone, I am Marianne! I am really excited to share with you all today a party I planned for my cousin last month. (And it involves some food too!)

A while ago My aunt asked me if I would be in charge of planning my cousin Cammi's 7th birthday party. I agreed to and I'm glad I did! I'm going to take you step by step into Cammi's party in case you want to throw a party like this too or just see some cute ideas. Cammi wanted Bright colors, so I thought of a Luau theme! I worked great.

1. Invitations. I started by looking for invitations on Etsy and I found Pink Pickle studio's etsy shop. I loved their cute Luau invites so we ordered those. You can see them HERE. We just printed them out at cosco and then hand delivered them or emailed them.

2. The set up. We had the party in Cammi's backyard. We set up 2 tables and lots of chairs for where the kids would eat. We got the cute table clothes at Party city.


3. Food! The party was at 1:30 so we made it simple and just did snacks and cupcakes. The kids loved the food! We had: Tropical juice pouches, Rainbow goldfish, Cheesy sun chips (Cammi's request), A fruit rainbow, and cupcakes!



My mom made this fruit rainbow out of different fruit and marshmallows... Don't you just want to eat it?!



4. The cupcakes! I am SOO happy with how they turned out! I found the idea at Family fun's site. They took a long time to make but were really yummy.




Here is the recipe in case you want to try making these cute fish! I got the recipe from Family fun and was very impressed with it.

You will need:

• 24 cupcakes (I did half chocolate & half vanilla)
  
• vanilla frosting (I just used a butter cream recipe I love)
  
• food coloring (yellow, orange, blue, green)

• M&M's
• candy fruit slices
  

Directions:

1. Spoon 1/3 cup of the frosting into a ziplock bag ( I used a piping bag) and set it aside.

2. In a bowl, tint 1/2 cup of the frosting with yellow food coloring. Evenly divide the remaining frosting among three more bowls and tint one portion orange, one blue, and one green.
   

3. Frost the first group of colored cupcake fish, then press four rows of identically colored M&M scales into each as shown ,you'll need two 1-pound bags of M&M's altogether. ( I just bought one of the huge bags of M&Ms) Add 2 red M&M lips.

4. Snip a corner from the frosting bag, then pipe a frosting eye onto each fish and press a brown M&M on top. Repeat with the remaining cupcakes and frosting, then assemble them into a fish shape.

5. Attach a candy fruit slice onto five or six of the cupcakes as shown.

I had this idea then to make Cammi a Rainbow fish! She was the only one who had it and it was a special birthday treat for her.

5. The activities. We split them up into 4 different groups and the rotated to each different activity

Activity #1.. Limbo! Sorry no pictures...

Activity #2 Digging for treasure!

We bought a kiddie pool at Walmart, bought sand at home depot and filled it with fun prizes from the 99 cents store! The kids loved this activity and thought it was so much fun!



Activity #3 Donuts on a string! It was very fun for everyone.
Activity # 4 Games with Hula hoops and balls!
I was in charge of this station. All I did was come up with a few quick games with the balls and hula hoops, but everyone had fun. They also blew bubbles and danced to Hawaiian music!



6. Pinata time!

Here is the cute fish pinata we bought at party city. We filled it with candy and let the kids hit away!


7. The party buckets
We found sand buckets that were a great price and filled them with some fun stuff. Like their own canteen/water bottles, rubber duckies, a Hawaiian kit to make a bracelet, bubbles, a noise maker, candy from pinata and the prizes from sand digging. They also got a Lei at the beginning of the party from the birthday girl.


The Birthday girl was very happy and I hope she had a great birthday! ( I just had to take a picture with her and the amazing clouds in the background!)