Luau Party: The Menu

One of the best parts of a good party is the FOOD! And I ALWAYS over do myself... I just can't help it. Here was the menu.

Meats

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Ham and Grilled Pork Tenderloin
Served room temperature with Harry & David's Sweet Pepper Relish, spicy mustard, and honey mustard on Hawaiian rolls or water rolls.
Grape/Chili Meatballs
1 crock pot
2 jars grape jelly
2  jars chili sauce (found in condiment section)
1 bag of meatballs
Combine all and warm in crock pot for a few hours prior to beginning of party.

Killer Appetizers

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Shrimp Cocktail
Spinach Dip in a bread bowl served with bread and crackers
Marinated Cheese (most requested appetizer)

INGREDIENTS
½ cup olive oil
½ cup white wine vinegar
1 (2-ounce) jar diced pimiento, drained
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
3 tablespoons minced green onions
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon sugar
¾ teaspoon dried whole basil
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 (8-ounce) 5 ½ x 2 x 1-inch block sharp cheddar cheese, chilled
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, chilled
Fresh parsley sprigs (optional)
Combine first 10 ingredients in a jar; cover tightly, and shake vigorously. Set marinade mixture aside.
Cut block of Cheddar cheese in half lengthwise. Cut crosswise into ¼ -inch-thick slices; set aside. Repeat procedure with cream cheese. Arrange cheese slices alternately in a shallow baking dish, standing slices on edge. Pour marinade over cheese slices. Cover and marinate in refrigerator at least 8 hours.
Transfer cheese slices to a serving platter in the same alternating fashion, reserving marinade. Spoon marinade over cheese slices. Garnish with fresh parsley sprigs, if desired. Serve with assorted crackers. Yield: 16 appetizer servings.

Tomato & Mozzarella Skewers drizzled with balsamic dressing
Fruit Salad in homemade fruit bowls (half a pineapple and quarter of a watermelon)
And lastly to munch on...

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Chips & Salsa
Store bought hummus & pita chips
Veggies & Veggie Dip
8 oz sour cream
8 oz cream cheese softened
1 pkg Lays Garden Onion Dip Creations (new!)
Nuts (you can't go wrong with a few containers of mixed nuts, almonds, or cashews)

AND for dessert we had

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Beach themed cupcakes
Chocolate boxed mix, homemade vanilla icing, ground graham crackers for the beach, a mint beach ball, and drink umbrella.
White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies (1st time using this recipe and AWESOME!)

... and a cupcake closeup

Linking up: Little Rays of Sunshine, Running with Glitter, Sarahndipities, Making the World Cuter

The Luau Party: Other Decor

Entryway
... kind of speaks for itself; "C'mon I wanna lei ya!". A basket full of leis, a dollar store pig centerpiece, shells, a few lanterns and then I made a cute sign and put it in a frame.

 Add to it a grass skirt and a dollar store sign and we're in business.

 Welcome to the party!

Bathroom Sign
At any party, of course you want people to know where your bathrooms are, right? We had 2 accessible to party guest one from the inside and one from the backyard, so of course I had to create a pretty sign. I looked up in a few places how to say "bathroom" in Hawaiian. Here, here, and here all said that bathroom was "Lua". So that's what I used.
When one of my girlfriends comes to the party (whose family happens to live in Hawaii), she informed me that she thought it wasn't "Lua", but it was something else, probably "Lumi 'au 'au " (which the 3rd link said was an option). Oh well... I tried! No one else knew, right?

I found the lei border online and... er... tweaked it... then printed it out in word and laminated it.
Voila. Bathroom sign.

Food Marker Tags
I like having tag that tell people what they are munching on at a party so back to the trusty computer I went.
I did a search on word templates for tags and whatnot but didn't find much. I DID find a "Christmas in July" label which is super cute, so I filed that away for later. I also found one food tag, but it wasn't the fold over/tent that I wanted so back to the drawing board.
I ended up opening a return label document with 3 columns. The width of each row was a little to narrow for my taste so I changed each row to about 1.5" and then put my lei border graphic in every other row. Printed out, it looks like the following:

Then I used my paper cutter to separate the rows.

Then I cut them in between each label and folded them to make the tents.

I was going to print what the food was on the label, but since I had friends bringing food I decided to just write it in my hand.

The rest of the decorations
I picked up at the dollar store or at Joanne Fabric when they were having 70% off their summer decor. You can't go wrong with cheap tacky luau decor!

However my FAVORITE part of my decorations was the scene door hanger! I plan to use this every year and put a card with the year on it so we know when it was taken!

Linking up: Handy Man Crafty Woman

The Luau Party: The Wreath

A few weeks back I happened upon 2 wreath frames from a fellow Freecycler; now when I was heading over to go pick them up, I (for some reason) thought I was picking up 2 grapevine wreaths since I had never heard of "wreath frame". Imagine my surprise when this is what I picked up:

Hmmmmm.... luckily it only took a short while to figure out what to do with this wreath. I immediately thought about the Patriotic Wreath I made a little while back (wrapping garland around a wreath) and decided that that was what I would have to do with this. AND I had just the "event"; The Luau Party!!

Unfortunately, I didn't happen to find any "luau" garland but I DID find a whole lotta leis (dollar store 6/$1 packs - best deal I found).

So what I did was cut the leis so I had one long strand. Now be careful, we all know that leis like to unravel QUICKLY... so I took some thick clear plastic tape and attempted to tape it to itself (it didn't always work, but the lei was like... $0.15 so no BIG loss).

Anyway, I wanted to use all the colors, so I secured the start of all colors with clear plastic tape at my beginning point and started wrapping around the wreath.

I kept wrapping around (as tight as I could without unraveling the lei) until I ran out of my first color yellow. I then opened a new 6-pack of dollar store leis and cut them in half. Using clear plastic tape, I taped the end of the 1st strand of yellow to my new yellow. I did this to the rest of the colors. Only one of the colors happened to be taped together at the front of the wreath.... but you couldn't notice too much.

At the end of 2 packs of 6 leis (12 total) I was left with a large empty space. Instead of opening another 6-pack, I decided to find something to put there instead :) (in other words, I was lazy).

Pig? mmmm nah.

Dollar store funky totem pole topper luau centerpiece...PERFECT!

Add a dollar store "Tiki Bar" sign and we have the FINAL wreath.

And lastly... the wreath in action :)

There you have it, my Luau wreath, which cost me $3 total! (plus cost of tape, lol)

Linking up: sweet Ps and BB, Someday Crafts, Handy Man Crafty Woman, Twin DragonFly Designs, Sew Much Ado, My Girlish Whims, Ginger snap crafts, Delicate Construction, Sarahndipities, Making the world Cuter, Tales of a Trophy WIfe