Luau Time

What a weekend! I am wore out this morning. We had a great weekend with daddy here. He came in on Thursday afternoon. Friday was our 5 year anniversary! What a great gift to have him at home all day with us. We went to dinner Friday night at a new steak house. We had a nice evening. Here are the gorgeous flowers I got (and they smelled SO good!)

Last week was crazy- I tried to get things done for the party throughout the whole week. I was hit with a bad case of the allergies that took me out one day- but other than that, I was working on getting things together. My first thing to show is the cake. I looked online and got some ideas and this is what I came up with. I did a practice round and it was HORRIBLE- luckily this one came out better :)

I bought the smaller cake pans and doubled them up (and trimmed off the tops of them to even everything out) We iced it with white icing and bought the Oreo sticks to put around it. I cut them in half and every 7th or 8th one, I put a long one in. I then covered the top with graham cracker crumbs. In the back, you can see the little tiki hut I made. We had bought a 6 pack of pineapple juice for the punch, so I used one of those 6oz cans to make it out of. I filled it with cake batter and made a small cake. After icing it, I added the potato shoestring strips. After I finished, I froze it.

Here is what is looked like after I got everything on it. I put long toothpicks in the center of the hut so it would stay on the cake. The chair is from the scrapbook section at Wal Mart. I taped a toothpick to the pack of it. The flip-flops are from the scrapbook section too.

Here are the cupcakes that I had. The icing is dyed brown and I put graham cracker crumbs on top. The "towel" is a piece of a Fruit by the Foot and then I placed the Teddy Graham on top. The umbrella tied in the whole beach theme to the cupcakes.

My dad made the cupcake stand. He did a great job! I got the idea from Shayna. This one turned out a little taller than I had pictured, but it was just fine. We got a sheet of plywood and cute it into 20x20, 18x18, 16x16 & 14x14 squares. The poles in the middle are made from a closet rod cut into 10" pieces. We'll be able to use this at all the birthday parties from here on out. 

This is the table with all the food. We had fruit kabobs, chips/dip, sandwiches for the kiddos, & graham crackers/goldfish/pretzels for the kids. We cooked hamburgers & hotdogs to eat. 

Below, was the drink table. We made a YUMMY punch. I am not a fan of carbonation- AT ALL. My mom and I went to a shower recently and the punch was great. I told her we had to do that for the party! Here's the recipe:

"Second Baptist" Punch

From Second Baptist Church - Corpus Christi

Bette Rae Miller

Dissolve 6 cups of sugar in 8 cups of hot water, add:

1 Tbsp almond extract

1 Tbsp vanilla

1 (36oz) can orange juice

1 (36oz) can pineapple juice

1 doz lemons or 1 can frozen lemon juice (not lemonade)

1 gal. water

Mix well. Serve over ice or freeze and serve as slushy drink. Serves 60. 

Here are some pictures of the night before the party. Me, Marlo & Liz (MIL) were having fun making cupcakes and cookies :)

My best friend, Lindsey was able to come by for a bit before she had to leave town. SO glad she got to come by!

Fun slides!