Yesterday my Emma turned 3 years old!! Wow…I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown! We were looking at pictures from the day she was born and it seems like just last month we were in the hospital!!
To celebrate the occasion we threw a Hawaiian Luau. We went with the luau theme as Emma loves the Lilo and Stitch movies, hula dancers (and dancing in general). My husband also really wanted to throw an end of the season BBQ so I thought a luau would be a fun theme that would incorporate everything. And I am not gonna lie, I kinda fell in love with these pineapple cups! The pineapple cups also served as the kiddy favors, I just popped on some sunglasses from Oriental Trading and some pink and white straws as my girl loves pink. Then just added each kid’s name to each straw and BAM…easiest favor ever.
And Emma loved them! I had out Hawaiian punch for the kiddos and mai tai’s for the adults!
I told myself that this year it would be a low key birthday party and it felt that way until about Thursday night…as I really did not do that much besides pick up the supplies and make the favors but when I put everything together on Thursday it looked like I had done a ton more work. And then on Saturday, the day of the party, the weather kept changing between partly cloudy and rain so we did not set up for the party until an hour before!!! Craziness. But we got it all set up and the party was a great success!
One of my favorite parts of the party were these fans believe it or not…I bought a bunch of raffeta fans on Amazon and then with puffy paint wrote “aloha.” Due to the craziness of the set up before the party I didn’t have time to take any pictures outside beforehand so am modeling them for you afterward.
And of course the Kona Ice Truck was another fav…
This Kona Ice Truck photo was taken by my very talented brother in law, Bill Hansen.
Initially the whole purpose of the ice truck was to make my life a little simpler and not have to make any desserts. But of course I can not help myself and made some mini cupcakes with these cute little pineapple toppers on them. I mean we had to sing happy birthday to Emma with cupcakes!!
This photo was taken by my wonderful sister-in-law, Christine :).
The Party Menu included:
Drinks:
Mai Tai’s – Recipe coming soon & Kona Brewery Golden Ale
Hawaiian Punch for the kiddos
Food: A big shout out to my hubby for manning the smoker and grill…everything came out awesome!!!
Kalua Pulled Pork
Chicken Wings and Chicken Thighs
Chicken Nuggets (We got these from a local deli)
Plantains & Rice (Also from a local deli to make things a little easier)
Tropical Cole Slaw (Recipe coming soon!)
Salad and Fruit Salad (From Fairway)
Mini Vanilla Cupcakes with Coconut Buttercream (Recipe coming soon…however the vanilla cupcakes recipe is the same and is listed here! (Just changed the icing and the size of the cupcakes)).
Vendor Info:
Mini Cupcake Wrappers (these are what they looked like and where I bought them however they only have the wrappers in a large quantity at the moment)
And last but not least a huge shout out to my brother in law and his amazing wife Christine for all their help setting up!! And to my parents too!! Thank you!!
And for realsy last this time….Happy Birthday to my beautiful Emma!!! We love you!! xoxo