INVITATIONS:
Send each guest a lei with a gift tag attached. Write the invitation on the gift tag.
DECORATIONS:
Drape grass (or raffia) skirts, leis or flower garland, and colorful Hawaiian print fabric over everything, including your guests as they arrive. If outdoors, set out Tiki torches around the area.
Make palm tree decorations to stake around the yard. Get some wooden dowels and paint them brown. Stake them in the ground (a few clusters here and there work nicely). Take some large, green tissue paper and cut out large leaf shapes. Tape a green pipe cleaner up the center of one side of the tissue leaf. Tape or tack the leaves to the top of the dowels and arrange them to look like a palm tree. If indoors, simply make palm tree trunks out of brown paper or cardboard, tack it on the wall, and tape construction paper cut leaves to the top of the trunk.
A large fruit bowl with tropical fruit makes a great centerpiece. Get some plastic coconut cups and little drink umbrellas for the table, wooden bowls and woven baskets to hold food. Have Hawaiian music playing when your guests arrive.
ACTIVITIES:
Hire a traditional hula dancer for a single lesson in hula dancing during the party. If you can't afford a professional teacher, find an moderate to advanced student willing to come and demonstrate basic techniques to the children.
Play "pin the apple on the pig." This is like the traditional "pin the tail on the donkey game," but instead of a donkey, get a large picture of a pig. Or, get some poster board and draw a pig with an open mouth. Make construction paper apples and put a guests name on each one. Blindfold the guests, and let them try to tape the apple to the pig. Whoever gets closest to the pigs mouth, wins.
Have a "poi eating contest." If you don't happen to have traditional poi on hand, use a substitute, such as vanilla pudding. Place a big bowl on the table in front of each participant. They must clasp their hands behind their backs and, when the contest starts, eat the poi (or pudding) without using their hands. First one with a clean bowl wins.
Make Hawaiian flowers for girls by wrapping colorful tissue papers around pipe cleaners. Sprits some perfume on them and they can wear them in their hair. For boys or mixed parties, have old oatmeal containers with construction paper, markers and glue so they can make their own Hawaiian drums.
REFRESHMENTS
Fruit salad! Cut a watermelon in half, length-wise and scoop out the inside with a melon -baller. Use the empty watermelon to hold the fruit salad. Add some pineapple and mango slices, the melon balls, and some maraschino cherries.
Roast pork and fish dishes are great for Hawaiian theme parties.
Get real coconuts, crack them and cut out some of the flesh, leaving the chunks inside of the broken shell.
Take a pineapple and slice it directly in half, vertically. Scoop out the insides (use it for the fruit salad chunks). Now you have two pine apple bowls when they are laying on their side, cut end up. Fill them with tuna, crab, chicken or shrimp salads.
Make a "roasted pig" cake for your party! Get two packages of cake mix and make the batter as the directions instruct. Instead of a cake pan, however, use one large and one medium small stainless steel bowls. Make sure the bowls are greased and floured well to avoid sticking. Put ¾ of the combined batter in the large bowl, and ¼ in the medium small bowl. Baking times will vary because of the shapes, so test by inserting a sharp knife or toothpick in the center. The two bowls should be baked separately.
When cool, turn them out onto a tray so that the small cake is in front of the large cake (both should be rounded side up). The small cake is the head of the pig, the large cake is the body. Take a cup cake (just buy one at the bakery), remove the paper, and cut off the bottom stump. Place an apple sideways on the tray, right up against where the pigs mouth would be. Secure the stump with toothpicks on the front of the pigs face, just above the apple, for a snout. Frost with whipped cream tinted a cotton candy pink (whipped cream will spread better than commercially bought icing; alternatively, you could make a butter cream frosting). Use gel icing in tubes to make eyes, nostrils, hooves, and any other details. Use a pink pipe cleaner twisted into a spiral for a tail and stick it in the backside of the pig cake. Lay a silk flower lei over the pigs "neck" (or, where the two cakes meet to camouflage the separation).
GOODY BAGS
Stuff a plastic coconut shell cup with a baggie of assorted candy, and top with a bamboo drink umbrella and a crazy straw. Pass them out to guests as they leave.
