How to Throw a Luau

Luaus are about family, friends, food and celebration. They are relaxing affairs with a let-your-hair-down attitude. If you don't have the party budget for an extravaganza, don’t sweat it--a luau can be created quite inexpensively. Follow these simple instructions for creating a Hawaiian luau, and your guests will be doing the hula in no time!

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Silk or real flowers/greenery
• Large pad of paper
• Beach Towels
• Flat marbles or pebbles
• Hawaiian music
• Strings of lights
• Candles
• Black marker
• Beach ball or large ballon
• Shells
• Broom handle (limbo)
• Streamers
• Name tags
• Printed menus

1. Buy a few flashy items like tiki torches and pineapples.
2. Place some beach blankets in a group to form the "table." If indoors, choose a large, warm room in your house and push back the furniture.
3. String paper lanterns or white Christmas lights. Outdoors, place a few strategic oil lanterns or protected candles.
4. Use flowers or greenery from the house or garden to place around your beach-blanket table.
5. Hang streamers, preferably green, to disguise the normal furnishings of the room.
6. Arrange flat marbles, shells or flowers on glass plates around pillar candles. Place plates in the middle of the beach towels.
7. Hand out leis and grass skirts as party favors. See How to Make Grass Skirts for a Luau for easy, do-it-yourself steps.
8. Set the atmosphere with Hawaiian music (think ukulele) or the Beach Boys.
9. Give each guest a name tag with his or her name translated in Hawaiian.
10. Create a Hawaiian-inspired menu. You don’t have to prepare authentic dishes, as long as you include a little pineapple, coconut and pork. A roast pig cooked in the ground is traditional. See the Resources list below for recipe ideas.
11. Give menu items quirky names and type up the menus for guests to puzzle over. For example, serve cocktail sausages in a tangy barbecue sauce and call them "monkey toes." Serve cola and call it "volcano blast."
12. Play games like the limbo, beach ball volleyball (use a large balloon indoors) and a homemade version of Pictionary with Hawaiian clues (such as orchids, surfing or seashells).
    

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