Raley’s Lilo and Stitch Birthday Luau

Raley has been telling me for nearly a year that she wants a Lilo and Stitch birthday party. I love that she knows what she wants and sticks with it. (Well, most of the time it’s a good thing.)

I absolutely loved this idea! There’s not very much Lilo and Stitch decor out there so I decided to go with a generalized luau theme. I was very excited about this concept! I decided to broaden the color scheme to bright, tropical colors rather than stick with red and blue that you see in the movie. I don’t typically love pink, orange and red together, but in this case it totally worked!

My parents put in a pool this year so they graciously allowed us to have a pool party at their house. Raley’s birthday is not until the end of the month but we decided to celebrate early just in case fall decides to come early this year in Alabama (fingers crossed!)

Some of my favorite party elements to look for:
– Balloon garland with artificial palm leaves
– Gold letter balloons
– Gold spray painted pineapples
– Pineapples with artificial tropical flowers/leaves
– Artificial palm leaves spread on tables
– Burlap table cloths and backdrop
– Hula table skirts (the one with flowers is from Oriental Trading. The one on the drink table without flowers is from Hobby Lobby. Both 9 feet wide so they wrapped around the tables)
– Happy Birthday banner

I had a hard time deciding what to do for the backdrop for her table but I finally decided to do a balloon garland. I thought about doing some tropical paper flowers but they take so long to do.  I just didn’t have it in me to put the time into it. I have never done balloon garland before but it was actually pretty easy and I thought it turned out pretty good!

I found a reed backdrop that I ended up using behind the drink table. I ordered some artificial palm leaves, which I used in several places including the Happy Birthday banner. I found these plastic tiki statues at Party City and I think it rounded out this area perfectly!

The menu included:
– Hawaiian pulled pork sliders
– Pineapple skewers
– Pudge’s PB&J sandwiches
– Nutter Butter flip flops
– Strawberry pineapple cake balls
– “Beach Balls” (cheese puff balls)
– Pina Colada cupcakes
– Pineapple Punch
– Prickly Pear Hibiscus Tea from Panera Bread
– Hugs and juice drinks for the kids

Raley and I spent an entire day last week baking for her party. We made the cake balls (she kept asking when it was time to do the sprinkles) and we attempted to make these pina colada cupcakes. Well, the cupcakes did not turn out good at all! I ended up finding a recipe for pineapple cupcakes where you simply add crushed pineapples to a box of yellow cake mix and they ended up being very tasty! I topped them with vanilla icing and rolled some of them in coconut (I left some of them plain because not everyone likes coconut). With the pineapple and the coconut I was still able to call them “Pina Colada Cupcakes.”

A few other details:

Raley and Audrey both had such a great time swimming and playing with their friends! We are so thankful to everyone who came and celebrated with us and for those who couldn’t and sent happy birthday wishes her way!

My Audrey is stingy with her smiles but she hopped right up there and said “cheeeeese!” I had to scramble to find my camera because this is rare!

She was exhausted! She was falling asleep while my sister was changing her clothes.