A hula Girl Party

Well, we have hit 5 years old and I do not know where the time has gone. Our Little Olivia is now a big girl or so she says.

This year Olivia truly wanted to visit Hawaii but we just could not fit that trip into our budget or schedules so we decided a Hawaiian themed party would be perfect.  It was a great party and Olivia loved it especially when she found out her Daddy had hired a couple Hula dancers to come and teach the party attendants how to dance.

We had a handful of fun party games also but I forgot to take good pictures so I will try to explain what we did.
1. Javelin Throw: I cut up a couple pool noodles as the javelins and hung up a hula hoop.  They had to throw the javelins through the hoop.
2. Coconut Bowling: I got a small round coconut (not easy many of them are not so round. :)) The pins where water bottles that I dyed the water blue to look like ocean water.
3. Hula Hoop contest: Who can keep the hoop going the longest
4. Bean bag throw:  I had three sand buckets that where at different distances.   Bean bags where thrown into the buckets for points.
The kids loved the games and the Dancers.

Every Party we try to have special things for each of the guests: this party our guests where greeted with grass skirts and leis to put on as they entered the door.  To get into the party room they had to go through a big grass skirt that was made out of a plastic table cloth.  I cut little strips to make it look like a grass skirt and it was a fun party decoration.

The kids table was set with little table decorations that I purchased from Oriental Trading Company along with the colorful coconut drinking cups. For our drink station I made Hawaiian punch:
1 jug of Hawaiian punch drink
1 jug of sprint
little scoops of raspberry or strawberry sherbet
( a trick I learned with the sherbet for punch: use a melon baller or cookie scoop, an hour or more before the party scoop out many little balls onto a freezing cold cookie sheet, keep in freezer till just before the party. This is a quick way to add the balls of sherbet just before its time to party)

    Now we have the food table the most important part of a fun party.

 We did finger foods this party instead of a whole meal.  We had Hawaiian pizza, Hawaiian ham and cheese melts, fruit, veggies, and pineapple salsa with chips.  The treats where palm tree sugar cookies, Mini pineapple upside down cakes, and Chocolate cake.

Pineapple Upside down cakes came from:

www.toprecipeblog.com/2014/03/mini-pineapple-upside-down-cakes.html

Pineapple Salsa:

1 Fresh Pineapple                       1/2 onion

2 Roma tomatoes                       1/2 bunch of cilantro

1 lime                                           salt to taste

Chop all ingredients except the lime and mix together.  Juice the whole lime into the salsa mixture and add about 1 tsp of salt.  Mix again and let set in the fridge for an hour.  Taste the salsa with a chip if you need to add salt do a little at a time till the taste is to your liking.

Our cake this year was a two tier chocolate mint cake with a chocolate ganache filling and butter cream frosting.  The bottom tier was to emulate a grass skirt and the top was the water of the ocean.  The flower Lei and girl were created out of modeling chocolate.  

Chocolate Mint Cake:  The recipe is off the back of the Dark Chocolate Coco tub.  This recipe I have found to be one of the moistest Chocolate cakes I have ever made.  Instead of vanilla extract in the cake I substituted Chocolate mint extract purchased at a specialty cake shop.

Happy 5th birthday to my dear girl Olivia.

The Olivia Pictures where taken by Momma Mea Photography