Tess, for a work luau we had for the kids, I made fruit kabobs displayed on a watermellon.
We used long bamboo sticks with fru-fru colored stuff on the end and colorful chunks of fruit: here are some ideas pineapple, grapes, watermellon, honeydew, strawberries, cantelope, and blueberries. About 3 colors per stick, chunks were all about an inch.
Cut the watermellon in half lengthwise, get the meat out, then turn it cut side down. Make thin slits about an inch deep across the width and about 2" apart from each other. Make then all the way across the watermellon. This lets you stand rows of finished bamboo sticks. Plus it makes a nice visual pattern.
I had all the fruit prepped and stored in individual containers. Brought them to the party and several folks helped make the kabobs. Not sure how we would have transferred them otherwise for an hour drive.
Quantaties for 150 bamboo skewers (decorated with multi-colored foil palm frond tops and a monkey):
4 cantelopes (cut into four slices, with 6
pieces cut out of each slice)
4 cans of pineapple chunks (48 chunks/can).
3 lbs of red grapes
1 mutant-size jar of cherries.
The kids and adults loved the popsicle sticks (100/box for $2.50)...once they were frozen! This relatively brainless act of not freezing (even though they were in my freezer for 24 hours) happened because I left them in the cardboard box they came in when I put them in the cooler with the ice: (PHYSICS FLASH: Heat Transfer Theory #1: Cardboard is an Insulator.) They weren't staying frozen in the 95+ temp, even though we had tons of ice in the cooler. (PHYSICS FLASH: the ambient temperature of ice cubes is insufficient to change a liquid state to a solid state (in other words, keep the suckers freezen). Fortunately, I had bought dry ice pellets to make smoke for a papier-mâché volcano centerpiece. We put the popsicles on the dry ice, which refroze them in 5 minutes and they were PERFECT for the whole party. An adult (well, that would be Larry, so we'll give him the honorific) monitored the hand-outs so none of the kids could touch the dry ice. He wore a pair of new gardening gloves as dry ice can burn your skin.
Note: Blue or green popsicles Rule!
I found the dry ice in the yellow pages...aka know as Carbonic Ice. At the time, it was $13 for 20 lbs of dry ice pellets...and lasted for 4 hours worth of 99º weather.