Today was HFR’s luau birthday party. It was kind of a trip.

She was not into the leis.

But she was dressed in her finest resort casual…

…despite the fact that it snowed today!

Leis and favors by the front door.

The leis were from Amazon.

I loved the favors. I bought everything from Amazon (we would be lost without our Prime membership). The coconut cups each have a little Hawaiian rubber duck and a small baggy of Color My Bath! tablets. I bought a container of 300 and split them up. We now have tons of luau straws with hula girls, umbrellas, toucans. Summer cookouts, here we come.

The party was only scheduled for an hour and a half, at 2pm, so I tried hard not to go over board. There were 5 little ones there and a bunch of adults, so I just did snacks and drinks. Adam made Blue Hawaiians by the pitcher on the bar.

I loved the printouts from her party invitation stationery suite. Eclectic Note Cards really did a great job.

We made finger sandwiches.

Chocolate chip cookie sandwiches from Sugarush.

And the cake! I’m going to do a whole post on this cake tomorrow. It looks really simple, but I’m stupidly proud and in love with this cake. Because this is what it looks like on the inside (at least after most of it’s gone and we took a bad cell phone picture):

I made 4 layers in different tropical colors and a from-scratch vanilla buttercream. I’m H’s mommy, until she asks me for something else I feel like I should make her birthday cakes.

She had mixed feelings about her slice of cake at first.

But boy, did she warm up to it.

H partied like a rock star today, it was a really nice time. I loved seeing H as The Birthday Girl for the first time! It was so much fun watching her soak in the attention, play with her cake, open presents. Very cool.