My daughter wanted a hula girl" party for her 5th birthday. The invitation was a postcard with a picture of a beach with palm trees my husband downloaded from the internet. I took a picture of her in her swim suit & grass skirt in a hula pose & then used my printshop to put her on the beach with "Aloha" in the bottom right corner. On the back it said "Greetings from Hawaii! Come to our Luau on (last name) Island to celebrate _____'s 5th Birthday!" Then I encluded the address_____" like a real postcard. I used a font that looked like a childs writing but still legible. A few days before the party the forecast was rain so I panicked & moved the party to our church gym. Then of course it didn't rain! We would have had a swimming party outside with a small pool & lots of water toys but since it was moved inside we had Chicken Limbo game a bouncy house and a video to teach the kids how to do the hula (SOOOO cute but only the girls tried it & the boys just sat & watched). My daughter wore her swim suit & grass skirt flower lei and a flower in her hair. Even though it was no longer a swimming party we encouraged everyone to wear their beach attire. The kids received leis as they came into the partyflower leis for the girls & green leaf leis for the boys. We had a sand art activity at the beginning of the party as we waited for all the kids to arrive. Oriental Trading- a variety of luau magnets that you peeled the plastic off the top & used colored sand to decorate. DECORATIONS: The gym has a small stage that we put a lifesize hula girl & used some ferns & pineapples etc. to make a cute scene. This is also where we had all the gifts. We had several round tables to sit at they were covered in bright colored tablecloths with cute hula decorations (Oriental Trading- hula girl palm tree etc.) and tropical confetti. We had two tables for the food and had them trimmed with grass skirts. Plastic fish shaped plates for the kids. I borrowed some teak wood bowls & platters that we used to serve fresh fruit including fresh pineapple & mango. The centerpiece of the table was a three tiered teak wood display platter with the fruit & a real pineapple on top. We also had some long toothpicks with tissue paper flamingos on top that we put grapes & cheese cubes and had them sticking out of a watermelon. The rest of the food was hot dogs and cheese dip & chips. CAKE: I used the small Wilton wonder mold to make the skirt of a hula girl and a 6" Barbie for the top of a hula girl. I placed the hula girl cake on a round cake that I decorated like a beach with graham cracker crumbs on top & used some chocolate shells (chocolate candy molds). Decorated the sides with thick icing tinted blue to look like waves. Also had a volcano cake that was chocolate with red "lava" icing. I had a whole in the top of the cake with a small glass cup that we put dry ice in & poured warm water on the dry ice as we sang Happy Birthday. There was also a mermaid I made out of fondant sitting on a small cake "rock" (because my daughter insisted we have a mermaid as a part of the cake!). I filled in the gaps of the three cakes with cupcakes with thick icing tinted blue to look like waves & made the "water" around the cakes. This also made serving the cake easy as the kids came up & picked their own cupcake. We used cute plates napkins & a banner with a hula girls I purchased from Birthday Express. Also had some cute glittery signs to hang up that had a hula girl and a parrot & had some bunches of balloons around the room. FAVORS: I bought colorful canvas bags from Oriental Trading that I embroidered a hula girl for the girls & a surfer boy for the boys along with their name for each child. Also tried to match the hair color to each child to make it more personal. Inside the bags there was a beach ball fish fold out fan tropical "tattoos" bubbles etc. Had a beach ball & a luau rubber duck for a few of the younger children. We had a total of 60 people about 2 dozen were kids & everyone seemed to have a good time."