My daughter decided last December that she wanted a Christmas birthday party theme for her 10th birthday in June! LOL! It was actually a great time to decide because we were able to hit all the after Christmas sales and stock up on some great stocking stuffer/favors for a fraction of their original cost. INVITATION: I purchased 9x13 sheets of paper that had red, green, burgundy and white stripes at an angle (like a candy cane stripe) around the border. I really enjoyed coming up with the wording: (in red) Twas six months before Christmas when Santa was heard to declare, For all the good girls, I have exciting news to share! A special girl's 10th birthday is coming soon; Little Josie XXX's this 26th of June. I know it is summer, but she is missing the snow, So we'll have Christmas a little early. Ho Ho Ho! (in green) Please join us June 26th from 1:00 to 3:00 for a Christmas birthday party at XXX. (in red) Please R.S.V.P. by June 20th so Santa can put you on his Nice list! (in green) Christmas attire will make Santa very happy! (in red) Hope you can join us for a Holly Jolly time!!!  We used envelopes that were big enough so that we only had to fold the invitation in half. My daughter used a snowflake punch on a piece of white paper and made confetti that we filled the invitation with. On the envelope we wrote the addresses in red ink and I had saved Christmas stamps for a finishing touch. DECORATIONS: On the outside of our two-story house we hung wreaths on all the windows and big garlands with red bows on the sills. We have four big white columns on our porch that we wound four inch wide red ribbon around so that they looked like giant candy canes. At the front door we had a Christmas doormat and a big wreath. Next to the door we hung a snowman sign with our last name and all of our first names written on little wooden mittens hanging down from it. (Yes, my neighbors did think we were crazy!) The party was held in our finished basement, so I only decorated spaces the girls would walk through to get to the stairway. I hung our most recent Christmas picture in the foyer. On the table in the foyer, I replaced my normal candles with red ones, placed another framed family Christmas photo and had a nutcracker. On the dining room table was a Christmas runner with a sugared fruit and poinsettia centerpiece. I also had Christmas music playing as they entered the house. There is a wooden ledge that runs along the wall in the stairway to our basement. I had saved the Christmas cards we had received last year and displayed them on the ledge. At the landing of the stairs I placed a sled in the corner. The kids were greeted by a 4-ft. snowman all dressed in cute clothes as they entered the room. We had put up and decorated an artificial Christmas tree that we used as our gift location. This was set up in the family room section of the space. In the entertainment center we had a nativity set and other decorations, such as miniature Christmas trees, a snow globe, a stocking, and pictures of my kids with Santa. We have three large pieces of artwork in the basement that we wrapped with gift wrap, ribbons and bows so they looked like hanging gifts. I have a large built in desk area on one side of the room. On this I placed a 2 ft. high golden angel in one corner and a 2 ft. high gold and dark green Christmas tree made of things found in nature (pinecones, nuts, etc) in the other corner. In the center we had two lists hanging. They were both large poster boards. One was green and said Nice List and had all of the girl's names on it and my five kids, too. The other poster was red and said Naughty List. In front of the lists I had a pedestal bowl (the pedestal part was a snowman) with coal in the bowl. I had gotten the coal from the actual train that was used to make the movie, The Polar Express. (It is located in our town and they actually do train rides in Nov. and Dec. to Santa's workshop at the North Pole Ok really Chesaning-but don't tell my 5 year old. On the ride there, they punch your souvenir ticket and serve hot cocoa. On the way home they place a jingle bell on your seat. It is a magical memory!!!) I used the area under the desk to hide a large laundry basket that I had all of the supplies for the party in. On a side table I had a large basket with a red liner that said NOEL on it. I filled the basket with 40 sheets of tissue paper that I had rolled up into balls (my mom and kids kept asking me what it was for when we were decorating, but I wouldn't tell them). There was also a large pinata hanging in this room (described below). The other side of our basement has a wood floor and we used that area as our dining room. We extended the table to be big enough to seat all of the girls and covered it with a cute tablecloth that was blue with snowflakes and all different colored top hats in the center and snowmen with different colored hats and scarves along the sides. We placed a center piece with Santa, a snowman and a gingerbread house in the middle of the table (an after Christmas bargain for just a few cents). There is a small bar area that we had a big fat snowman sitting on and that is where I displayed the snowman birthday cake (described below). There is one window off of this space that doesn't look at our yard but into a window well with a ladder for safety. In the well we placed a laundry basket upside down and covered it and all of the rocks on the bottom with a large white plastic tablecloth. On top of the laundry basket we placed an adorable 3 foot snowman I already had. I had a large bag of fake snow (you could also use batting) that we spread over the table cloth and around the snowman. My daughter had made paper snowflakes that we hung with fishing line from the wooden grate above. The space looked great and was my absolute favorite decoration we did. There is also a bathroom in the basement. I switched out all the towels, accessories and the shower curtain and replaced them with Christmas themed ones. I had a pine scented candle burning and more Christmas music playing on that floor too to complete the Christmas feel. COSTUMES: Josie wore a red Christmas sweater with Santa embroidered on it and an adorable Santa hat. It looked like a jesters shaped hat with three droopy points, but made of red velvet with white fur. She also wore slippers with snowflakes on them. (We had the air conditioning going and our basement is always cool so everyone was comfortable.) My mom dressed like Mrs. Claus. She wore a white top with a red velvet jumper and a white apron. In her silver hair, she wore a red garland with little red pompoms hanging from it. She wore little silver reading glasses and pinned a jingle bell to her apron. (She did a great job pretending to be Mrs. Claus and would tell the girls that Santa would love their ornaments or their cookies and that he was keeping an eye on them and was so happy they were being good!) I wore a red shimmery turtleneck sweater with a Christmas pin. All of my other kids wore Christmas themed shirts. My 5 year old wore a red and green baseball cap that was shaped like a Santa hat in the back and my 12 year old wore a Santa hat that said BE MERRY. My husband wore a red and white fishing hat that had Christmas decorations attached to it and a pin that lit up and played Christmas music. ACTIVITIES/GAMES: When deciding what activities we wanted to do, my daughter told me her favorite Christmas activities were: decorating our tree, decorating cookies, Christmas caroling, exchanging gifts, and opening her presents under the tree. I used that to come up with our activities/games. #1 Our first activity was a craft that I had found in Family Fun Magazine Dec/Jan 2010 issue. It was retro style ornaments made from cardboard tubes and pipe cleaners. I found that 11 paper towel tubes were enough to make 14 ornaments. Prep.: I painted the outside of the tubes with white craft paint. After they had dried, I flattened them and marked off every ¾ inch and cut the tubes where marked. Then I measured ¾ inch from the fold on each side and marked were to punch holes through them. My daughter helped with the hole punching which was great because this was very time consuming. I then put together bags with 10 of each of these ¾ inch rings and a piece of silver cording. These were placed at each girl's space along with 3 white pipe cleaners and a pair of kid's scissors. The girls, starting with the inner circle, strung the rings onto one pipe cleaner. They twisted the ends together and trimmed the excess. For the outer circle, they twisted the ends of two pipe cleaners together to make a longer piece. They then threaded it through the outer holes in the cardboard rings, twisted the ends and trimmed the excess. They then added cording to hang the ornament. This was a very inexpensive craft costing under $3 for the craft paint and pipe cleaners. #2 Our second activity was a game my daughter suggested. We played Christmas Carol Chairs, which was basically musical chairs with Christmas music. The girls liked this game a LOT. My husband operated the music and removed the chairs which allowed my mom and me to set up everything at the table for our next activity, cookie decorating. #3 I had made large Christmas shaped sugar cookies. The girls were each given plates with snowmen on them, a matching napkin and a plastic knife. I had filled multiple green bowls with homemade red, green and white frosting with spoons to put the icing onto their plates. We had 10 containers of red sugar crystals, green sugar crystals, multi-colored non pareils and multi-colored jimmies. After they were done decorating, we gave them cups of milk and they were free to eat their cookies or put them in baggies to take home. #4 The next activity was a pinata. I had no luck finding a Christmas themed pinata at any of my local stores. I ended up finding a very large six-pointed star pin±ata. It was red with blue tassels hanging from the points. It also had blue garland with foil loops of gold, green and red going through it. It came with two plates taped to the center that were pink and purple with butterflies and said Happy Birthday. I removed the plates and hot glued my own snowmen plates to the center of each side. The plates were edged in red with snowflakes. The centers were a blue background with three snowmen on a hill. Each of them had a different colored hat and scarf on. (They were the same plates that we had used to decorate the cookies and coordinated with the tablecloth.) I was so pleased with how well it turned out and that it actually matched everything. I gave each of the girls a loot bag that was blue with a polar bear on it and said: Let it Snow! (Unfortunately, the pinata was so huge that I had filled it with a ton of candy and some of the girl's loot bags broke and we had to put the candy in gallon size bags.) #5 The next game was called the Gift Exchange Game. I had all the girls make a circle and I placed 12 wrapped gifts on the floor in the middle of them. Each girl drew a number from 1 to 12. The girl who drew number 1 picked a gift from the pile and opened it. The girl who drew #2 could take the gift already open or open a new gift. We allowed gifts to be taken 2 times and then they were frozen. Once we got through all the girls, we allowed girl #1 to keep her gift or exchange from one of the non-frozen gifts. Josie had picked different giant size packs of candies (M&Ms, Reese's, Twizzlers, Milky Ways, etc.) for the prizes and we had wrapped them in Christmas wrapping paper. CAKE: We had snowman cake and snowball ice cream next. I had bought a snowman cake pan after the holidays for half price. I froze the cake after I baked it which made it very easy to frost! I iced the snowman head with vanilla icing and the hat part with chocolate icing tinted black. We made green eyes and a brown mouth with M&Ms and his nose was a baby carrot. I used red fruit roll strips to make his hatband. We had scooped out vanilla ice cream into round balls and put them on a cookie sheet to freeze. When they were hard, I sprinkled them with snowflake candies and froze again. This was served on the matching snowman cake plates and we served red punch in matching cups. After this we opened gifts. Each girl stood by Josie while she opened her gift. They then had their picture taken together. FAVORS: Since all of the girls stayed on Santa's Nice list, Josie handed out stockings that we had in an extra-large sack with Santa on the front. Each girl received a large stocking filled with a green Christmas tree sucker, a red Santa sucker, a large chocolate Santa sucker, a packet of hot cocoa with marshmallows, a gold ornament, a tambourine with either Santa, a snowman or penguin on it, a large plastic tube filled with red, green and white gumballs with a Santa that flipped up and down on the top when you pushed a button (Josie's favorite), 5 small candy canes and 3 large ones. We were able to do all 12 stockings for less than $20 because of after Christmas sales! I had purchased the movie, Merry Madagascar, to play next. It was a great length, only 22 minutes and none of the girls had seen it before. We had never even heard of it before I saw it at Wal-Mart ($5). At the end of the movie, the characters have a coconut fight in place of a snowball fight. At this point, I took the big basket of tissue snowballs and started throwing them at the girls, yelling SNOWBALL FIGHT!! It ended up being a great party. The girls loved having Christmas in the summer. One girl even told me it was the best party she had ever been to!