Serenity's Moana Birthday Party!
Serenity’s Moana Party!
Serenity’s initial idea for her birthday was to have a nature party, with a hammock, outdoor scavenger hunts, and other fun outdoor ideas that didn’t seem like a great idea for July. Plus, our July is crazy with travel and a family reunion, so we decided to have her birthday with her friends in May! As we started planning though, she thought it would be fun to paint rocks like the Heart of Te Fiti from Moana, and suddenly her party was Moana themed! She wanted a scavenger hunt to find the Heart of Te Fiti, and to paint rocks for necklaces, and most of all, a sleepover! We also thought it would be fun to sing the music and learn to dance the hula. Actually, Serenity’s only seen the movie twice, what she really loves about Moana is the music. We have the soundtrack and we listened to it in the car all spring!
Since we were going to dance to the music, I thought it would be fun to have costumes! I started trying to paint sarongs for the girls, but eventually ended up with a very simple wrap skirt made from muslin fabric painted with flowers. I left the selvage edge to give it a little bit of the fringe feel that Moana’s skirt has. That was going to be it, but then I found orange tank tops on clearance at Old Navy for just two dollars each that were PERFECT! It was awesome. The girls were so cute in their costumes, with little plumeria hair flowers! They had a blast the night of the party, yelling, “Come on Moanas!” and changing the lyrics of the song from “I am Moana” to “We are MOANAS!” So funny and adorable =) And the boat Dad built in the yard was adorable for pictures, and they all played on it too. Maia’s been using it all week, and telling everyone her Papa built a REAL boat =)
The week of the party I started to get nervous because there was some severe weather in the forecast. We have an in-ground tornado shelter, so we would have been safe, but I was not excited by the idea of getting ten children into it in the middle of the night. We had a tornado drill in the afternoon just so they would be familiar with the shelter, but fortunately all the bad weather missed us. We only got an hour of rain even, and no hail! So lucky!!!!
We got to have our scavenger hunt for the Heart of Te Fiti outdoors after all. I painted 30 rocks with glow-in-the-dark paint, and the swirl pattern. They LOVED finding the rocks! Everyone got three to keep, and there were a few extras that they found hours later.
We also had a necklace painting craft. Originally they were going to paint rocks, but we decided the wooden pendants would feel better to wear. They knotted cord to add white beads like Moana’s necklace that she got from her grandmother to hold the heart of Te-Fiti. They were really cute!
For food, we got donuts in the shape of the Heart of Te-Fiti. OK Country Donuts are our birthday tradition, so delicious and they make just about any shape you could want! I made Kalua pork, we had Hawaiian roles, and lots of tropical fruit. Pineapple, mango, watermelon. Mmmm. I also got chicken nuggets. So technically we ate Hei Hei and Pua… shhhh. I bought coconut cups for the girls to drink from… and then I bought juice boxes. So I turned the coconut cups into Kakamora decorations, which turned out to be a good thing because the lids did not want to stay on.
The sleepover went really well! I decorated the room upstairs to look like an ocean, and I hardly had to buy anything! It turns out I own a LOT of blue bedding and fabric, I just got a few more blue pillowcases to finish it off. We reused pvc pipe that was from previous projects, the photo backdrop from her third party and the Kid Wash dad built a few years back. Easy and awesome! I had bought some of the blue projection Christmas lights on clearance, thinking I’d add them to our Christmas decorations this year. They made it look so awesome! Like you were really sleeping in the ocean. Add an ocean soundtrack and it was just right.
We set up a nice assortment of legos and put out Maia’s Moana set. The girls spent quite a bit of time playing that too. And Serenity got Exploding Kittens as a gift from Abby and they played that late into the night. We had invited seven girls, although only five stayed the whole night, I was really happy with how well they got along. I hope their class manages to stay kind to each other through the middle school years. =)
In the morning, the girls had cinnamon rolls, Tamatoa slime, and Fishing to look forward to! Fishing off the boat Papa built was so much fun!
Because of the storm, Moana’s canoe got blown off course, but she joined us for breakfast the next day! She taught the girls some hula moves, and sang with them, and painted their faces. It was the perfect finish to Serenity’s Moana sleepover 9th birthday!
