How to Host a Luau / 1st Birthday party

Recently, another blogging friend posted her baby's one year luau party.  Knowing Rigby's Hawaii trip would be so fresh under his belt at the time of his birthday, we had to go luau style.  I was wishing that she had posted her ideas and what worked, so I'm going to post it for others.  Here's how the party came to be.

First, the table settings.  I picked up a couple of twin, grass skirt bedskirts on clearance.  I ran a seam down one to make it fit this table and gathered another in the center with a rubber band to size it to the kiddie table.  In the center of each table I have a bowl or two of dried mango slices.
Each attendee was greeted with a candy lei.  I made these by laying out a strip of colored celophane, roughly 4 feet by 7 inches.  I spaced candy about 1.5 inches apart down the center.  I then folded the top down over the candy, then the bottom up over it.  I cut curling ribbons about 8 inches long, tied them around the celophane between each candy, and curled the ends of each ribbon.  The ends then come together and get one more piece of ribbon.  Viola!
The main dish was kalua pork, tradition at luaus and on the "plate lunches" common all over Hawaii.  Traditionally, I believe you dig a large pit, line it with banana leaves and ti leaves, light some kind of fire, and somehow steam a pig in it.  As I was short on banana leaves, I opted for a crock pot.  I bought a pork shoulder at Costco, and it really was Costco size.  My crock pot is large, but the roast barely fit.  I covered it with liquid smoke and sprinkled a healthy layer of sea salt on top.  I want to throw on a few unpeeled bananas, but there was no room in the inn.  I started the heat the night before, and let it cook on low for about 18 hours.  When I finally tried to take it out, it just fell apart.  Good thing I intended to serve it shredded; it practically shredded itself.  I served it with some Luau BBQ sauce on the table, in case people wanted more flavor, but I thought it had a surprising amount of flavor all on its own.


I mixed up a little strawberry/mango/guava/raspberry juice to drink...
And check out Rigby's fun volcano cake.
This was fun to make.  Invert an angel food cake on the cake platter.  Mix a mashed banana with a half cup of white frosting.  Spread this on top of the inverted cake.  Cut a 2-3 inch wedge from another angel food cake.  Spread some plain frosting on the two cuts and press them together, making a smaller cake.  Invert this and place it on top of the first cake.  I then put another small layer of the banana frosting and placed a mini (single serving size) angel food cake on the top.  Whip up some cream and add in the rest of the frosting with a little yellow food coloring.  Spread this all over the cake and press on shredded coconut.  Whip up more cream, coloring a little of it red and the rest blue.  Drop the red in sloppy spoonfuls on top for lava and spread the blue around the bottom, shaping it into waves.  I bought the palm trees, boat and sun in a craft store in their wood crafts section.  Tape the sun onto a kabob skewer.  Add them to the cake and be sure to take lots of pictures!

I saw this idea on the plane on the way to O'ahu.  Make homemade pineapple ice cream.  I am no expert at this, so find your own recipe... sorry.
I scooped it into hollowed out pineapple halves and froze it.

I then covered them and froze them.  On the video on the airplane, they just cut up the pineapple into cute chunks to hold and eat your ice cream out of.  My question is: How do you just run your knife through a frozen pineapple shell?  I couldn't do it.  I just scooped it out as usual.  Let me know if you have a better idea.