For my daughter's 9th birthday, we had a "Magical Mystery Tour Around the World".  To make the invitations look like U.S. passports, I used dark blue cover-weight card stock and stamped an old-fashioned globe image and the word "PASSPORT" on the front cover, and embossed them with gold ink and clear embossing powder so that the design would be raised.  The inside of the card contained all the pertinent party info, with several extra pages. The girls were instructed to affix a picture of themselves in a specific place, sign the "document" and bring it to the party, where it would be stamped in all the "countries" they would visit.  They were also told to bring their favorite doll (but not told why.)  Part of the fun was keeping each country we would visit a secret until the last minute.  However, the birthday girl was in on it all, and was an integral part of the planning.  When the guests arrived, we set out to visit our first "country" -- Japan!  I had transformed our home "office" into a mini-Japan, and told the girls that we were going to celebrate Doll Day, a special holiday for girls in Japan.  (Copying from a book on international festivals, I wrote "Doll Day" in Japanese and posted it above the door.)  As Japanese music played from a boom box, the girls made a procession down the hall with their dolls, led by the birthday girl, who was clad in a real kimono borrowed from a Japanese friend. They each then placed their dolls on a doll "altar" I had made by covering a desk with cheap red shiny lining fabric.  The room was decorated with lanterns, my old Andon lamp, and umbrellas, and the guests sat down to a low table (the coffee table, moved in for that purpose) for "tea" which was actually green tea ice cream served in small teacups. I also had purchased some interesting Japanese candies and crackers and served them from a beautiful lacquer-ware box with drawers (also borrowed from friends.) Everyone had just a token amount because dinner was on its way.  Now, it was time to move on.  The girls were very excited to find out where they were going next -- Italy (the dining room.) My daughter made herself an impromptu Venetian gondolier costume with navy pants, a striped top and a Styrofoam "straw" boater hat with a red ribbon around it.  I had gone to our city's Italian Tourist Commission and they gave me lots of free posters to decorate the room.  We had put butcher paper on the walls and cut thousands (or so it seems) tiny squares of colored shiny foil paper so the girls could glue them on in patterns to make mosaics like in Venice.  Dinner consisted of a choice of pizza or pasta, with Italian sodas.  When one guest got her first taste of her vanilla soda (made from Torani syrup and club soda) she exclaimed, "THIS IS FABULOUS!" (Background music: the soundtrack from Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet")   Now, it was time to move on to the good old USA, for a "sock hop at the White House." (Our living room is done in gold tones so I figured I could claim "East Room.")  We had rented a juke box and concealed it until it was time for the dancing.  The girls danced, had a "star-spangled" birthday cake and then danced more until bed time. While they slept, I transformed the dining room from "Italy" into "France" for breakfast. Decorations were cut-outs of Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, etc. For breakfast, they had chocolate and almond croissants purchased from a local French bakery and orange juice served from an Eiffel Tower shaped decanter. While they ate, they wrote postcards (real Paris ones bought at a local French bookstore) home about their trip to their parents, which I mailed the next day. I confess to having read some of them, and most of them went something like this, "Dear Mom and Dad, I'm sitting in Paris by the Iful Tower.  Had a great trip."  (Background music, Edith Piaf.) The party favors (Eiffel Tower shaped pencil sharpener, Japanese soap, Italian candy, mini flags and some old foreign coins and bills in very small denominations I'd managed to collect) were presented (along with the passports which now bore many interesting stamps) in Chinese take-out cartons decorated with old-fashioned travel trunk "hotel" stickers I got at a travel store.  This was one of my daughter's favorite parties ever, and we're going to do it again this year for my younger daughter who will turn 9, maybe with different countries.  Can't wait!