See the line where the sky meets the sea
It calls me…and we can’t believe
Brielle’s turning Three!
My daughter, Brielle, is obsessed with Moana so it was only obvious that’s what her birthday party theme would be! I wanted to bring in as many tropical touches as possible to invoke the island feeling. The best way to do that was COLOR! Hot pinks, oranges, bright greens and of course, brilliant turquoise were scattered through our venue as well as flowers and palm leaves. This is another picture heavy post but if you wanna take a trip to Montunui settle in!
Every place setting had a palm leaf that I cut out using Cricut’s Life’s a Beach cartridge and on the back of each chair was a flower lei. The girls all got flowers to put in their hair.
I wanted a big impact for the centerpieces but having nearly 50 people there I couldn’t afford real flowers on all the tables. I found these tissue paper flower garlands that were the perfect colors and tropical to boot. I laid a garland down the center of each table over brightly colored runners.
Ideally, this kind of party would’ve been held outside but with our weather being so fickle I didn’t dare not have an indoor venue. I was able to find a mostly white place though and that helped all my bright colors keep center stage!
The present and favor table. I found the Moana poster online and using Photoshop added in my text to make it work as a favor sign. One of my favorite new finds is Staples can print HUGE images for cheap! I think this sign was around 3 feet tall and it was like $5! Make sure your image is well over 1500 pixels so it’s sharp and ask for engineer paper. We built the Moana boat to hold all the favors, Ferrero Rochers that I turned into mini pineapples. Use bright green tissue paper to make the leaves and then hot glue them on top.
This drink was AMAZING!! I had to refill it twice and all three times it was gone within 10 minutes.
2 liters 7Up * 46 oz pineapple juice * thawed 6 oz orange juice concentrate
We hired a local Polynesian family, Pauni Island Grill, to cater authentic Polynesian food. I try to have all our big parties catered so I can visit and it’s always nice to be able to give someone else the responsibility of cooking, serving and cleaning it up after! I picked chicken and pork because I thought it’d be funny since Moana’s sidekicks are a chicken and pig. Thankfully, the kids didn’t get that I was essentially saying we were eating them 😉 Dinner was delicious, my favorite was the kalua pork and the sauce that went with it but the macaroni salad got a lot of compliments too!
Our venue had these big posts throughout so we wrapped a few of them in kraft paper and cut out big palm leaves to make palm trees.
We have a little kid bowling set that I turned the pins into palm trees (kraft paper and tissue paper) and got a coconut to use as a mini game the kids could play while waiting for dinner.
You can’t have a Moana party without Te Fiti! My husband had made the hedge backdrop for my Queen of Hearts party (check it out here!) and I thought it’d be perfect to use as my dessert backdrop!
For desserts we had raspberry, coconut-lime, and orange cupcakes, lemon cookies, and
Kakamora kettlecorn popcorn.
And this amazing wave inspired cake was lemon inside…yum! Aren’t these gum paste plumeria flowers incredible?!
Another Staples project, her facial features are just engineer paper that we cut out and attached using glue dots.
I had a woman from Etsy custom make these stunning, hand dyed, paper flowers to use as Te Fiti’s crown. She was great to work with and the flowers came out exactly as I hoped! Plus, they’ll do double time when we transform Brielle’s nursery into her big girl Moana themed room this summer!
In addition to the catering the Paunis also put on a show for us! They had the cutest little kids perform traditional dances from the different Polynesian islands. It was so awesome to learn some new things about a different culture and it was done in a perfect way to keep all my little guests’ attention! I think they did 6 different dances, complete with outfit changes, as well as teaching the little kids a dance! The Emcee kept the energy up the whole 30 minutes and had us in stitches, especially when the boys did an Americanized Haka dance…with hilarious translations! The dances were easily the highlight of the party! 
It was a perfect evening and my birthday girl (who had missed her nap and therefore was SO grouchy…well until she got to open her presents!) has talked about it for over a week! Happy 3rd birthday baby girl! Happiness is where YOU are!
Garlands, cups, grass skirts, palm leaves, flower hair clips, leis and coconut cups: Oriental Trading
Plates, napkins, forks: Party City
Moana Dress: Little Dress Up Shop
Tablecloths & Runners: Tablecloth Factory
