SA Conference Luau

Better late than never, right?  Here are a bunch of pictures from our Single Adult Conference Luau - none are amazing but it'll give you an idea of what it looked like. We had months of fun creating the tiki dudes, volcano, waterfall, centerpieces, signs, etc.

We'll start outside where we had a couple of these signs (thanks for the wood burning help Becky!) directing everyone to the various activities in the two buildings:

Inside is where everything came to life...

Tiki Dudes - cardboard boxes (boxes for all these projects were courtesy of Mom - thanks Mom!) covered in newspaper to give dimension then in paper mache then painted once they dried:

We had something like 25 tiki dudes, which looked like a lot in Kristin's basement but hardly any in the big cultural hall!

Next up, table centerpieces.  We made 3 different kinds to have a little variety.

Baskets with tropical flowers:

Palm trees!

Floral rings around vases.  Inside the vases we had sand, tiny seashells and rocks, and a battery operated tea light.

We had a tiki bar thanks to Kristin's generous friend:

One of our favorite features (and the one that caused the most frustration and took several rebuilds) was the volcano:

Once again this was a product of many hours of covering boxes in paper mache (I think we've all had about enough paper mache time to last a lifetime!) then we added lights wrapped in red cellophane for lava.  Behind the volcano we hung black paper punched with holes for stars (lamps behind the paper) and of course a sparkly moon (you can't have a luau without a sparkly moon can you?). 

In the back corner we built a waterfall.  Guess what it's made of?  Right!  Boxes covered in paper mache.  Then we put blue plastic tablecloths down the center followed by white lights.  Then we draped blue organza over the top. Justin and Paulette made a ring of stones around the pool of water and hung the background scenery.

We strung about 180 paper lanterns (fuchsia, orange and lime green) in three different sizes across the ceiling and added a couple strings of lights.

We had a delicious dinner from Lifestyles Catering and then Manea Polynesia came and danced for us. They did an incredible job!!  They had 16 dancers and did dances from many of the different islands.

Our conference committee was small but they were incredible to work with!  The best part of anything like this is all the new friends you have!  Thanks for everything Kristin, Debbie, Cheree, Penny & Dave!