Hula girl birthday party

I can't believe my little girl is already 7!  Where does the time fly?  I LOVE to plan my kids parties even though I tend to go over the top and rarely get to sleep before 3 am the night before.

I found this picture while on cakecentral.com a few months ago and after a little research found that her inspiration was from Birthday Express's Hawaiian Girl party line.  I warn you in advance if you love beautiful cakes you can spend hours drooling over the amazing creations people post.  My favorites folder is pages and pages long. We have been stationed in Hawaii and I LOVE all things Hawaiian (it makes me nostalgic) so I knew this had to be her theme.

I normally love to create homemade birthday party invites and thank you cards but these past few months were crazy busy so I made them on the computer this year instead.  I'm NO expert with photoshop so don't look too closely.  I copied an image from the internet of the plates and cut out the hula girl and hibiscus flower.  I emailed copies to most people and printed a few of these 5x7 cards to put in her scrapbook.

I created a banner with scrapbook paper, ribbon, and my KNK cutter to cut the letters out.  I found a lot of  Hawaiian themed items at the dollar store.  I bought the hibiscus flowers, beach sign, and paper lanterns.  I love the touch my husband added to the table by adding our favorite picture of our new family right after she was born.  She's our little miracle that we tried over 5 1/2 years for and this picture captured our awe and joy so well.

We also had a pool party earlier in the day at our swim club with just a few friends so we kept decorations pretty simple and I decided to just do cupcakes. I was afraid the fondant on the cake would melt in the hot sun.

I used photoshop to create the cupcake toppers and then my KNK digital cutter to cut the pink scalloped circles.  A little glue and a toothpick with some 1M star tip swirls and you look like you took hours to decorate.

I found the tiki torches at Walmart and thought they not only added to the atmosphere but worked out great as table weights.  A pink tub from the dollar spot at Target added a nice burst of color and was a great chip bowl.

If any of you are like me you can do without all the little goodie bag trinkets that end up broken in the car ride home.  I decided to give something that the girls could use over and over again.  I am LOVING my embroidery machine and my favorite thing to use it for is machine applique.  There are a number of great sites to buy digitized designs from. One of my favorites is Planet Applique. Another warning if you own an embroidery machine, this site is HIGHLY addictive.  I bought the hibiscus file from her to create these fun giveaways.

The towels were on sale at Target for $3.75 so they were reasonably priced, pretty easy, and best of all functional!

Be on the lookout for some tips and tricks I used while decorating the cake, fondant topper, and cupcakes in my next post.

Thanks for stopping by!