Throw a Luau Party!

Summer is a great time to throw a party that celebrates the islands! On a sultry summer night, invite your friends and family over for a Luau Party!

Decorations

Colorful sarongs make great wall hangings.
Make palm trees out of posterboard -- brown for the trunk and green for the leaves. You can also buy inflatable or light-up palm trees if you like. Your local party store may even rent out decorative palm trees (real and fake ones).
Your local party store may have a tiki bar for you to rent.
Scatter seashells on tables.
Tiki torches around the yard make great atmosphere for a nighttime party.
If you don't want to wear a grass skirt, you can hang them from tables or wrap them around a cooler. Just keep your grass skirts away from the tiki torches!

Dress Code:

Hawaiian shirts, shorts, colorful sarongs, and sundresses! Give every guest a lei when they arrive -- you can buy cheap ones with silk flowers, or even make your own by stringing tissue-paper flowers on thread or yarn. Grass skirts and coconut shell bikinis are optional -- catalogues like Oriental Trading Company do sell them if you want to spend money on them.

A pig roast may be traditional, but it may be easier to grill up a pork loin or make pulled pork sandwiches.
Don't forget the seafood! Grilled shrimp is always a favorite.
Grill pineapple slices on the barbeque.
Feeling adventurous? Try making poi -- a Hawaiian food made from sea cucumbers.
Tropical fruits make a delicious dessert -- mangoes, pineapples, coconut, papaya, starfruit, oranges, bananas, and more! Try to offer a combination of familiar fruits for picky eaters and exotic fruits for the more adventurous eaters.

Games and Activities

Hula Dancing -- what would a luau party be without hula dancing? You may want to put on a video of hula lessons, or just let guests make up their own dances!
Pineapple Bowling -- set up pins and let guests try and bowl them down using a pineapple instead of a ball!
Limbo -- crank up the limbo tunes and see how low you can go!
Fire Eating -- you may not be able to really eat fire... but you can challenge guests to eat spicy foods and hot peppers!

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By (Guest Post) 06/07/2006

That sounds really really cool! For my 13th birthday this Friday I'm going to have a luau party. We will go swimming, then come back and play volleyball, eat dinner, have presents, cake and a sleepover. I suggest that if you are going to cook traditional or non-traditional luau meat, to offer something else as well, like pineapple pizza, for the vegetarians. Out of the six people I'm inviting, three are vegetarian! We will have a "tiki bar" off to the side with drinks and snacks. I advise popular drinks, like soda and lemonade, as well as more Hawaiian things, like fruit smoothies or pina coladas. Anyway, thanks for the terrific idea! Have a fun luau party!

By nfurubayashi (Guest Post) 06/06/2006

thank you for the suggestions, but please update your info regarding poi. it is NOT made from sea cucumbers, it is made from the root of the taro plant. other than that, it's all accurate and all good! thanks again!

By (Guest Post) 06/05/2006

That sounds like fun, One easy recipe is to use your favorite sweet and sour sauce, and get the small smokie sausages the ones that are already precooked, they come plain or with cheese, and look like miniture hot dogs, you can put any kind of fruit in with the sauce, canned pineapple, mandarin oranges, fruit cocktail.It would probably save a lot of money to make your own sauce, if you had time, and either way you could put everything for this dish in a crock pot.Hope you have fun.Kersti P.S. You could serve this over rice.If you know someone that has a rice cooker, they make the best rice and they look nice enough to serve the rice from.