My daughter wanted a "Barbie and the Nutcracker" party for her fourth birthday....a bit of a challenge since it's in March and all the Christmas stuff is tucked away.  We put our heads together and came up with some great ideas. Our invitations read "The Palace of Sweets is under attack by the evil Mouse King. It's up to Barbie and the Nutcracker to save the kingdom. We need your help to find the Sugarplum Princess.  The adventure begins March 1st at 3:30pm Hannah's house. Wear your leotard.  Sugarplum tutus will be provided."  As the party goers arrived they were given their gift bags filled with a pink sparkly tutu, a tiera and a ballerina pen. The tieras and pens were from Oriental Trading. Grandma made the tutus (very simple with elastic in the waiste). We invited them into the kitchen where everyone made her own "Palace of Sweets" (aka gingerbread house).  I collected small milk cartons from the school cafeteria the day before, glued graham crackers to the sides and to the roof (made of construction paper). I glued the carton to a paper plate and let the kids decorate with icing and loads of candy. This is a great activity that lasts about 20 minutes. I came back into the kitchen and said "The mice are about to attack, Let's go!" We went into the den and played "mouse bowling". In the movie Barbie throws her shoe at the mouse army to get away. Mouse bowling was accomplished by stuffing some grey socks with polyfil.  I stacked them up like a pyramid and divided the kids into two teams.  Each team had a pyramid of mice they tried to knock down with a shoe...worked like a relay.  Then we opened presents and had cake.  The cake was a Barbie doll with a "cake skirt". She was sitting on a larger rectangular cake that had candy and small nutcrackers on it.  I made pink punch out of ginger ale and cherry 7up.  After the cake we had a ballet slipper pinata (from www.mypartyworld.com). We had lots of Tchaicovsky playing in the background. We had planned on letting the girls make up a dance and present it for the parents, but time got away from us. It was a wonderfully "pink" day!! Hannah's older brother dressed up as the nutcracker and got a sword for his party favor.  He was a trooper!