Hawaiian Theme Birthday Bash

Aloha! I hope your weekend was wonderful and your Monday does not include a whole-house cleaning as mine will. Darn those New Year's resolutions!

After my daughter's Hawaiian-themed birthday party yesterday, our house seems so calm and quiet this morning. My daughter and her friends were all smiles in their tropical party dresses. They were so adorable.  

Here were some of the highlights... 

I made some tropical party signs using a few free fonts and Inkscape. My original plan was to paint those signs, but I'm so glad I came to my senses and designed them on the computer. Much easier! The tropical fonts I used were: Tiki Tropic, Pineapple, KR Bamboo, and Tropicana BV  (for the cute Hawaiian illustrations). 

I ordered some sand dollars and starfish from Oriental Trading and put down some washi tape tic tac toe boards on the coffee table. 

Also from Oriental Trading is the colorful fish net. I hot glued some of the sand dollars and star fish on for a little island decor. 

The kitchen table transformed into a tiki bar with easy tissue paper fringe and tiki bar sign. To make the fringe, I just used some natural color tissue paper, folded it in half and cut the fringe with scissors. I taped it to the wall and table with painter's tape. 

You can't quite see it, but the punch bowl was filled with blue soda and Swedish fish for a fishbowl effect (one of a few ideas I found on Pinterest). Pineapple, fish 'n chips (goldfish crackers and potato chips) in sand buckets (not exactly Hawaiian, but still beachy) and a candy bar for the kids to fill up cello bags completed the tiki bar. 

This year's "sand" cake was a huge hit, unlike last year's cake disaster. 

I skipped the usual birthday morning trip to Party City for helium balloons and just had my daughters help me blow up some pink and orange ones. That decision kept about $20 in my wallet and also saved me precious time. The helium balloon run always ends up taking at least an hour. 

My favorite party detail was these cute little hand-stamped goodie bags. I'll go into detail about how I made these later this week. 

 They were filled with the girls' crafts (flower pins and sand bottle art), the candy bags and these homemade Coconut Vanilla lip balms. Again, more on that later. 

I made the hibiscus flowers from a stash of tissue paper I had on hand. Click here for the tutorial. 

The kids had a blast with the heat cranked up and Hawaiian music playing in the background. When it was over it was time for our party guests to layer on their heavy winter gear and head out into the snow.