For my daugther's 9th birthday, we decided to have a cooking party.  For the invitations, i made them myself out of cardstock, eyelets and ribbon, they were shaped like an apron.  It said one cup of friends, 1 tablespoon of fun, a sprinkle of imagination, mix it together and come to Claudia's Bistro.  For decorations, i decorated the house in red and white strimmers and ballons, i had a checkered tablecloth and all the dishes were white and red. Once the kids had all arrived, they put on their chef hats and aprons, i took individual pictures of each of the girls holding a spatula and mixing bowl. Then sent my sister out to get pictures developped during the party because we were making a shadow box as a gift for mother's day.  We all headed into the kitchen, each got got a pizza dow ball which they handled on their own and made their own pizza crust. Then they dressed up their pizza, i had all kinds of condiments, pepperroni, cheese, tomatoes, black olives, peppers, taco beef, ham, and much more. Into the oven they went. While the pizzas were cooking, we played a few games, the first game was a food testing game, i had bough 5 different types of baby food, each child had to taste and guess what kind of food they were eating. The girl that had the most guests, won a price. Then it was the memory game, i had 15 kitchen items on a platter, i showed the items one by one, then they had 1 minute to memorize and write down as many items as they can.  The third game, was hilarious, it was blindfold the cook, one by one, each child was blindfolded and had to spook out marshmallows with a plastic spoon from one bowl to the next. Finally the pizzas were ready. For dessert, instead of having a regular birthday cake, we had cupcake decorating, in order to save time, I had made the cupcakes ahead of time, each girl had a container with white icing, they had a choice to put coloring in it or not, i had purchased all kinds of candy decorating, smarties, etc.  I took a picture of each of the cupcakes before the kids got to eat them.  After we sang happy birthday and my daugther unwrapped her gifts. Then we played a few more games, like hot potato, popcorn relay and another fun game was unwrapped the gift.  I wrapped 6 boxes separately but inserted into one another to make a big wrapped gift, each their turn, the kids had to roll a dice, if they got a 6 they had to put on oven mits and try to unwrap the box, then the game would go on, next girl who rolled a 6 would steal the oven mits off the previous one and continue to unwrap the box. The first one to unwrap the last box was the winner.  Finally the pictures arrived, each child was given a shadow box which was already painted to save time. I explained to them how to dimensionized their shadow box. They cut out cardstock, they glued embellishments (i had purchased little magnet pizza cutters, carrot piler, bottle openers, fork and spoon stickers, pizza stickers, etc. etc.) they also had letterings. They wrote chef "with their name" on their shadow boxes. We then wrapped the gifts in paper so they can take home for their moms. For the favor bags, each girl received a small strainer, measuring cups and spoons, little oven mits and candies that i purchased at the dollar store.  The kids had a great time.  The next morning, i had two mothers call me to thank me for their mother's day gift (one mother was so overwhelmed by the gift that she had tears in her eyes) and said how much fun her daugther had at the party and that she would remember it for a long time.