Mystery Jar Sunday: Hawaiian Restaurant (At Home)

The girls have been enjoying the Mystery Jar!  You have no idea how glad I am to have stumbled across the idea.  It has kept our summer filled with the unexpected!  Yesterday's mystery jar surprise was Restaurant at Home (Hawaiian Style).  The girls were absolutely on board!  To get the day started, Alayah wore her orange "Hawaiian" dress to church. She looked adorable!

A few days ago I had this idea already in mind and knew what I wanted to make for our meal.  I found a yummy recipe for Hawaiian chicken over at The Girl Who Ate Everything. I put my chicken in the marinade right before we went to church.  After church we ran over to the store to pick up a pineapple for our centerpiece (Pinterest idea) and some fresh flowers.

Alexa took care of decorating our Mason jar lids, (another Pinterest idea).  We didn't have any Hawaiian floral paper so we settled on some stickers, which worked out fine.  You can see her handy work here, along with our pineapple centerpiece.

 

While we were working on setting up, I found some Hawaiian music on Pandora to get us in the Aloha mood.  It was perfect!

 

Here are my Hawaiian Ladies

 

When dad came home from work, the girls sent him upstairs where his Hawaiian shirt was waiting.  They even found something in my closet for me that was sort of Hawaiian (not really, but it worked).  Dad started the grill up and we waited patiently while our chicken grilled to perfection.  I'm not exaggerating, the chicken and rice were DELICIOUS.  The family agreed that the recipe is a keeper!

We served our meal with some Hawaiian bread.  It was filling and perfect for our "restaurant."

 

To end our Hawaiian restaurant experience, we had some dessert.  Sorry, I didn't make any of it.  All store bought.  The truth is, I hadn't really thought of dessert.  How can you have a true restaurant experience without dessert?! So I sent hubby to the store to see what he could find.  He came back with this!

 

Pineapple upside down cake and Key Lime pie!

 

 

After dessert we found a Hawaiian themed movie for the family to watch: Johnny Kapahala: Back on Board.

 

Then we took a nap.

 

To make the evening even more perfect, the girls did some night swimming with a few glow sticks!

 

It was a great family day.  One that will go in the memory bank for years to come!  We have decided that our next restaurant experience will be Mexican!  Japanese and Italian will follow! 

 

 

So there you have it, another successful Mystery Jar surprise!!