My daughter's birthday is on December 25th. This year she surprised me when she said she wanted a "Christmas" Themed party.... HOORAY! Especially since the house would already be decorated! We went all out with the lights on the outside of the house and completely decorated the inside too. I even stamped snowflakes on all the bathroom mirrors using a rubber stamp and a white pigment ink pad. The ivitation really set the tone. I found some cute ribbon at the craft store that had written on it..."Santa Claus is coming to Town..." I cut santa hats out of red paper and glued this ribbon on the front for the outside of the invitation. The inside wording was "And so is Delaney's 9th Birthday! so don your gay apparel and join us for a TOTALLY CHRISTMAS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION! We'll be decking the halls at..... (address) on... (date) from... (party time) so please jingle these bells and say you'll come... (phone number to RSVP) The party is from 4-8:30. rather lengthy, but it's a friday night and my daughter has asked for a lot of activities. First, as the guests arrive, they will be greeted by my 6 year old "elf" who will escort them to one of the many different stations set up throughout the house. In the kitchen they can decorate their own large gingerbread cookie. (to save time I purchased a mix from Krusteaz... easy, just add water) the cookies were baked ahead of time and the cany decorations were placed out in muffin tins. This kept it fairly neat. At another station  you could decorate a stocking. (purchased nice ones at Target for .99 cents) They used buttons, puffy paints, glitter, fake rhinestones, ribbon and whatever else I could find around the house or get dirt cheap! There was also an ornament decorating station where the girls could choose from several different types. I bought cheap kits from OrientalTrading.com and also, Jo-Anns had glass balls on sale for 2/$1.00. You can use acrylic paints and just squeeze some red, gold, green, white and/or silver into the ball. Swirl it around til it's coated on the inside. Put in tip side down to drain in a disposable cup and tie a ribbon on when dry! Super easy and inexpensive "marbled" ornaments the girls will cherish. The last station was for stringing together jingle bell bracelets... which we would definitely need for our caroling portion of the party. (we went up and down the street to a few neighbors houses... they loved it!) So the girls casually went to the different stations for about an hour. Then I ordered the pizzas and we played games while we waited for it's delivery. I had pre-cut some white cardstock to the size of the front of a greeting card. Each girl then wrote their names on one side of the cardstock and put that side down on the top of their head. Everyone had a pencil and without looking had to draw a snowman on their card while holding it on their head. My daughter picked the one she liked the best and we gave that girl a small stuffed snowman I picked up at the .99cent store. The girls all had a good laugh at their drawings. When it came time to open gifts, I wrote what each girl gave on the back of their snowman cards and then my daughter later used them as her thank you cards by gluing them onto another colored card. We played another game to see how many words you can make out of "MERRY CHRISTMAS" . The pizza arrived and after we were done eating, we bundled up and got ready to go caroling. I had called the neighbors ahead of time to be sure someone was home. In the invitations, I also added a note about the caroling and invited the families and siblings to join us at 7pm if they wanted to carol with us. When we got back about 8pm. we warmed up with hot cocoa and hot cider. We all sang happy birthday and watched her blow out her candles. I made cupcakes too because I wasn't sure how many "extra" carolers there would be. We sent everyone home with their ornaments and goodies in the stockings they decorated, and also included a jingle bell necklace, candy cane, and some snowman glitter nail polish. Everyone had a wonderful time and really got into the Holiday Spirit!