For my daughter's first birthday, we had a luau party. We had the invitations printed. On the front was a picture of my daughter taken at 3 weeks old wearing leis and a grass shirt and under the picture, it read: "I've been waiting for this party my whole life."  On the inside of the card was a current picture of my daughter with leis and grass skirt and it read: "And it's finally here!" The details of the party were in a rhyme and invited all to a luau pool party and told all to dress in their wildest Hawaiian wear. As guest arrived, they were greeted with leis and flowers for the ladies' hair.  All of the guests complied with invitation and dressed in flowered shirts.  My daughter and I wore matching Hawaiian dresses and her bathing suit had palm trees and "Aloha" on it. For a tropical feel, we had spray-painted bed sheets depicting a tropical scene (palm trees and ocean) and hung the sheets around our patio. I took a picture of each guest as they arrived in front of the scenes.  Hawaiian music played in the background to set the mood.  We had grass skirts for the tables, grass skirting around the roof of the patio, Aloha banners and a big Aloha flag at the entrance.  Our pool was full of beach balls and tropical fish blow-up toys.  We sat pineapples and flowers around for decorations. The food included fish shaped sandwiches (p & j and ham) huge bowl of Goldfish crackers, hollowed melons filled with fruit, and strawberries in small cups with parasails. The drinks were in galvanized buckets. The adults could choose canned drinks of limeade or Hawaiian punch or bottled water.  The kids had Hawaiian punch in palm tree shaped sippy cups. The food table included the paper plates which had fish on them with matching napkins.  The folks and spoons were individually wrapped in a matching napkin and tied with raffia and placed in sand buckets on the tables. The children's table was covered with a white table cloth that had my daughter's name on it and "Happy Birthday" embroidered on it. I asked that each guest to sign and date the table cloth with a permanent marker. Several guests wrote a message to my daughter.  I plan to use this table cloth at each birthday party and let guest sign every year. I think it will be a great keepsake. During the party, the children swam and the adults swam or socialized.  My daughter loves Barney.  So, we hired a Barney to come to the party. To go along with the luau theme, Barney wore a lei and grass skirt.  After Barney, we sang Happy Birthday, with my nephew playing his guitar.  The birthday cake was a round 12 inch 3 layer cake with an ocean scene. It had an island in the middle with palm trees and a cut-out picture of my daughter in her Hawaiian outfit.  The surrounding icing was blue with sprinkled fish candy. My daughter's individual cake was white with hibiscus flowers on top surrounding a "1" shaped candle. After cake and ice cream, we opened gifts.  It was a long party- about 3 hours in the August heat.   For party favors, we bought sand buckets and used paint markers to draw palm trees and fish on each one and put the kids' names on them. The buckets were filled with candy fish, a shovel, sand mold, bubbles with "Aloha" on the bottle, and sunglasses with fish on the sides.  And each child took home a beach ball from the pool.  A week later, we sent out the thank you notes. In each note, we included a picture of the recipient kid at the party.  It was so much fun!!  Thirty-four of our friends and family celebrated this very special day with us.   I really wanted my daughter's party to be special and I think it was.