Hawaiian Themed Green Birthday Party Part 2 - The Decor

Think Hawaii and images of exotic beaches, swaying palms, hula girls, orchids, garlands, parakeets - all crop up in your mind. Planning a luau is fun and before doing that, it's good to get acquainted with a smattering of Hawaiian vocabulary. So I went ahead and learnt these words:

Aloha = Welcome

Luau = Party

Lei =  Garland

Hula = Hawaiian dance form

Hula girl = A girl who performs Hawaiian dance called hula

Mahalo = Thankyou

Decor:

There are so many  decor ideas for a Hawaiian theme, the choice is mind boggling. I decided upon surf boards, a hula girl cutout, coconut tree and a few hibiscus flowers. The idea was to take a picture of each family against a backdrop of coconut trees and hibiscus flowers wherein Dad would hold a surfboard, Mom would have her face in the cutout and the kid would hold a ball. This picture would later be sent  to guests along with a thank you note. In the end, the picture idea didn't work out and I had to be content with these being only decor pieces.

A neighbour had discarded a few thermocol sheets. They came in handy.

I cut out two surf board shapes and painted them with colors leftover from a wall painting job. A few hibiscus flower print outs were colored and stuck to the boards.

A couple of waves were fashioned out of hand made paper. We stationed tender coconuts under the surfboards.

Similarly, a hula girl was fashioned by joining two thermocol sheets. A grass skirt was made with craft paper and her leis made of paper streamers.

Finally, for the coconut tree, the leaves were cut out from a sheet of hand made paper and the trunk made from thermocol.  Thermocol was surprisingly easy to join with the help of fevicol and a few allpins.

I had bought these cute little coconuts from a trip to Mathura long back. These now adorned the coconut tree and the look was complete.

 D also painted a few hibiscus flowers on a sheet.

To complete the colorful look, paper streamers were hung from all sides of the ceiling. We also blew a few balloons and I insisted on tying the ends with a thread rather than forming a knot. The logic was that the thread could be untied and the balloons reused for a later occasion. I faced a lot of opposition from fellow members but I must say that they complied and we could retrieve a few balloons using this method. I wonder if there are environment friendly versions of balloons?

Pinãta:

A cardboard box was decorated on all sides with Hawaiian motifs. The goodies included floral hairpins, erasers, pencils, chocolates and paper confetti.

Leis:

After racking my brains over leis, I finally decided upon fresh flower and paper leis. I bought pink (oleander) for girls and yellow (marigolds) for boys. To the credit of guests, most of them were sporty enough to wear them for the whole party.

I was happy with the fact that most of the decoration stuff was made of reused thermocol, handmade paper and paper streamers.