We had a wonderful "Cinderella/Princess Party" for our twin 4  year old daughters this month. We had searched the  birthdaypartyideas.com site, pestered our friends and wracked our brains for ideas that would suit our particular needs - an  expat American family living in Bangkok, Thailand - and came up  with some winners.  We had to use our garage/storeroom for the party because it was still rainy season and the chance of the party being rained out was strong. As it turned out, the weather held - but better safe  than sorry. We decorated the garage with streamers and lots of pictures from Disney's Cinderella which I printed off the net and  enlarged. We decorated the entrance to the garage with a castle  gate made out of old moving boxes which a neighborhood moving company donated. We painted the castle white with pink iridescent stars and it looked great - it even had a drawbridge  with streamers on the sides. We put lots of helium balloons at the front gate along with signs stating "Zellerbach Castle, home of Princess Alex & Princess Kit" and "Please park your royal  carriage in the soi" (soi is the Thai word for street.) The signs  were festooned with pink and silver stars, too ... The room was filled with pink, purple and white helium balloons - one tied to each child's chair at the table and several to Kit and Alex's gold  thrones (gold cardboard studded with plastic jewels on top of their regular plastic play chairs!) There was a huge "Pin the slipper on Cinderella" poster and coral  tablecloths on which we stuck giant gold sticker stars on 4 tables (kids table, food  table, drinks table and gifts table) - so the room looked really pretty.  You could almost forget it was just a cement garage.  The party invitations read: Hear Ye, Hear Ye! You are cordially invited to Zellerbach Castle to celebrate the 4th birthdays of  Princess Alexandra and Princess Christina  on Saturday, September 8th, 2001 at 3:00pm. We also invite the King and Queen of your kingdom to attend this exciting event. Please come dressed as your favorite prince or princess in your most royal attire. And they did! All the children came dressed up and my husband  and I borrowed costumes from the local amateur theatre group for us and the friends who helped out - so we all looked  wonderful - though a little warm in the 100+ temperature in  Bangkok!  The activities were all non-competitive. I made a Cinderella  Pinata for the big event at the end, but we had a crown decorating activity to start, pin the slipper on Cinderella (the children each colored in their own slipper before playing the  game - that and the crown making activity gave them something to do when the guests were arriving one by one), we had a game  like a cake walk where the children walked in a circle on top of  pictures from Disney's Cinderella. When the music stopped, I'd  call out "Who's on the picture of the wicked stepmother?" or  name another picture and that child would win a prize. Every  child won a prize by the end of each game. Another good game we played was a slipper hunt. I colored in pairs of Cinderella  slippers (2 red, 2 green, 2 blue sparkle, etc) and placed one of  each color in the garden attached to a chopstick and handed each  child the other one. Then the children had to run into the garden  to find their matching color. Once they did, they received a prize.  And we also had a relay race carrying the t-cups through the  castle on a tray. All of the activities were lighthearted and  most of the children participated in them all. And preparation  really wasn't difficult. Once I'd downloaded the Disney coloring  pages, I just photocopied them, cut off the feet for the slippers  etc. I'm not an artist by any means so it had to be easy. The major design feet was the pinata -  but even that turned out to take more time than skill - though I'll admit I made it too many layers thick and it took a baseball-playing Dad to come in and break it open!   And the crowning glory was the Cinderella Barbie birthday cake - it was so beautiful!!!! Too pretty to eat really. A friend decorates cakes and gives the profits to charity so it made me feel good about ordering such an extravagant cake too. The girls have  already told me they want an Ariel theme party next year... Guess  I better start planning!     I have pictures to submit if you'd like to see them.