Thread: Hosting a Haunted Luau for my Birthday!

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Hi everyone! I'm hosting my party at the end of the month, and I decided to have a theme: Haunted Luau. I've ordered a few 'haunted luau' decorations from Oriental Trading, but does anyone have any ideas of what I can do with Halloween merch not being readily available? Games, recipes, ideas for ambiance... any input would be great,

Thanks!

You know how they have suckling pig at luau right, instead have suckling people... or person.
Tiki's are pretty bad ass in their own right... Big Lots had several Tiki products available a month or two ago - I haven't been since, but they were cheap and great (for both regular and haunted luau)
Pigmy's -- little guys with those huge masks.... I see cardboard and doll legs/hand with a straight stick for a spear -- you can pump out 10 of those guys for next to nothing.

As far as ambiance, palm fronds can take up a lot of space and make empty, blank areas 'full'. A looping sound (MP3 player or CD) of deep drums playing in certain areas. Coconuts tied together strung up all over. Hatching (like you'd see on a roof) place in certain areas -- those are the type of things that can fill in unused space or areas that might take away from your theme. Lighting can be a big help with this theme... yellows, reds, oranges and even some green lights place in corners of rooms, behind trees or bushes... that stuff adds to the feel without getting too involved (both time and money). If you've got a fog machine, I'd use it.

Black leis for everyone? Black drink umbrellas. I don't even know if they make those.

What kind of food are you having? I picture some meat (pork especially)... depending on how you prepare it, have some mini blow darts sticking out. That could be as simple as pencils with frilly red, feathery crap on the top (dollar stores always have that sort of thing).

Shrunken heads on stakes -- made from doll heads, painted, burned, and hair tied with some rope.

And of course, Tiki torches (just be careful of placement if you're going to have guests with costumes walking by them).

Instead of carving pumpkins - carve watermelon, pineapple, or any tropical fruit. Light 'em up inside with candles too!


It's late and that's everything off the top of my head. Maybe I'll actually search online for more ideas, but later!

I think all the ideas I suggested are able to be created or bought/created this time of year at most stores. And everything that I had in my head when I was typing all this was fairly inexpensive, but could be turned into something awesome. Keep us updated.

Great great great ideas! I especially love the idea of carving fruit instead of pumpkins. Thanks for helping me think of items that I can easily get to make some cool props. There was a thread on here somewhere of how to make 'haunted' trees out of cardboard and Good Stuff. I'll try my luck with that to make some spooky palm trees.

Make pink flamingo skeletons.
Oh...and the skelly you see sitting in the photo is using a toy fishing pole and dangling it over a water fountain. The little magnetic fish were painted into skellies too. I think they were a dollar tree find.

I love my skelemingos bought them here

a corpse or skeleton rotisserie is a good idea too

or you could do the time tested skeleton in a big pot with explorer hat on.

Line a bucky skull line with saran wrap.
Layer it with sandwich meats to make a meat head. Center the skull on a large serving plate & surrounded with "finger foods" (smokies sausages) & red dipping sauce (ketchup or BBq sauce). Fresh pineapple can double as both decoration & or cut up & served later. Don't forget the canned Spam, Hawaiian's love it! Place quart size glass Mason jars w/ tea light go on all the tables or hang them from trees. If you have any extra skulls around, use them for a head hunter decoration.

Get a couple of buckys, dress one in a straw skirt, coconut bra, and color ful lei, the other one in straw hat and hawaiin print bathing trunks. Set them somewher in a corner. Put a drink on one of their hands with an umbrella in it. That might help a little with the theme. Good luck and would love to see pics when you are done.

We just had a tiki/luau party. Here are some things we did.
1. I carved a watermellon to look like a tiki totem dude. Got the idea from a tutorial somewhere on the web. Took a slice off the bottom to make the watermellon stand easier. Carved the designs with a knife, mellon baller, and the tip of a star shaped cookie cutter.

2. Made a spear out of a gardening hand shovel from Big Lots. Cost a whole one dollar. Cut off the tip of the handle which was too big, wrapped it in some duct tape, shoved it in a bamboo stick. This was my Tiki version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. The kids and adults took turns throwing the spear into a target (hoola hoop with a honeydue mellon for a bullseye). This was a lot of fun.

3. I made Tiki masks out of oval chinet paper plates, the cardboardy kind. Cut off part of the lip, wet them quite a bit on both sides, curved them to fit them in a glass baking dish which as a little narrower than the plates. Dried them in a 200 degree oven for around 10 minutes, then they held the curver shape when removed. I cut out eyes, mouths, etc, then glued on noses. The kids had a blast painting these.

See link below for pics. I couldn't get them to post inline:
lmhs1986/tiki - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Oh wow! I really dig your Tiki Melon lol, it's great. All of your responses have sparked some cool ideas. So, I finished my invitations! Instead of mailing them out, I produced some that I could hand to my friends. I typed 'em up, soaked them in tea to get an aged look, and then had some fun with fire burning the edges and making smoky marks Then I just tied them with some twine.

I got good responses from my friends... except some of them were confused as to where this Tiki room actually was... the party is at my house, lol, I didn't think it would be so confusing. But I think I set a good tone for the party to come!

I like the look the tea gave nice job snickers