DIY Hula Skirt & an Easy Luau Party

Hula06

Little girls in grass skirts are just about the cutest thing ever. Babies in grass skirts – even cuter!

Luckily, this DIY hula skirt is easy to make, in any size!

Last spring we hosted a little luau party for my 4 year old’s preschool friends. While we were planning, we realized that her baby sister needed her own mini hula skirt. I thought about just trimming one of our old child sized skirts down to be small enough, but then I saw this package of raffia at Hobby Lobby and decided to just make a DIY hula skirt in a miniature size.

It wasn’t hard at all, but it took about 45 minutes to tie all of the pieces on – perfect for watching 1 episode on Hulu!

DIY Hula Skirt

How to make a DIY hula skirt

You will need:

natural raffia (I found mine at Hobby Lobby for $2.99 – and the baby sized skirt took exactly 1 package)
scissors
thick, soft cotton string or cord

Easy DIY Hula Skirt

Directions:

Unroll your raffia. It will be bent and kinked from being rolled into a bunch, but we will fix that!
Submerge the raffia in a sink (or bowl) full of hot water. Let it sit for about 5 minutes.
Carefully straighten out the raffia and let it dry on a towel.
Once it is dry, cut it to your desired length. First measure how long you want your skirt to be. Double this number and add 2 inches. For example, I wanted the baby hula skirt to be 10 inches long, so I cut my raffia in 22 inches pieces.
Cut your cotton string to be the length of the baby’s waist plus about 16 inches. Lay the string out. Take once piece of raffia and fold it in half, under the string.
Take the ends of the raffia and fold down over the string and tuck into the loop at the top of the raffia piece.
Pull the ends of the raffia tight.
Repeat until you have your skirt as wide as you need. Trim the ends of your string, leaving enough length to tie the skirt easily.
Tie your DIY hula skirt on your teeny wahine!

DIY Hula Skirt

How to host an easy luau party

And now about the luau party!

We were so fortunate in San Francisco to be a part of a wonderful preschool community, and my daughter had a great group of friends. One of the parents had an ingenious idea to start Friday night get togethers for the girls, where every few weeks a different family would host all of the girls from 5 – 8pm. The parents were welcome to stay and hang out, or go enjoy a night out on the town without kids. Dinner was served and the girls would usually end up playing dress up, dancing, and having a blast.

Every time the girls were at our house for Friday Night, they all wanted to put on our hula costumes. Since we only had 2, and there were usually 7 little girls, this was sometimes an issue. So when we were in Maui a few months ago, we spotted some hula costumes at a little shop in Lahaina and bought enough for all of her friends.

And our idea to turn one of the Friday night get togethers into a luau party was born.

I don’t have many pictures of the actual party because I was too busy drinking pina coladas with the other moms…I mean supervising the kids. ;) But in case you are looking to host a super simple, no-stress luau, here is a quick rundown of what we did.

Luau Party Invitations:

Aloha hula girl invitations from Etsy

Luau Party Food:

fruit skewers with fresh tropical fruit (mango, guava, passionfruit, bananas, and pineapple)
kahlua pork sliders on mini Hawaiian rolls
sticky rice and mac salad
pineapple whips for dessert

(all food was inspired by our favorite restaurant in Lahaina, Aloha Mixed Plate)