July is parade season for most of the country, but here in Phoenix it's just too hot to celebrate our country's independence with a long walk in the sun. So satisfy your itch to have a parade now, while the weather is perfect, and celebrate our balmy Phoenix winter with a Valentine's Day Parade!

Start the parade off right with custom "parade badge" invitations -- put the child's name on the front and the parade details on the back. Try a candy necklace with a craft foam tag or a paper heart tied to a string of beads.

On parade day, gather the kids and their bicycles, strollers, scooters and wagons for a pre-parade decorating party in a neighborhood driveway. Let the kids decorate their "floats" with crepe paper, balloons, paper hearts -- whatever suits their fancy. Then line up and parade through the neighborhood! You can even blast some parade music from your portable CD player or maybe get the neighborhood teens from the high school band to provide some personal marching music.

Be sure to have a planned route and try to stop mid-way through your parade for some refreshments. For safety, bring along plenty of adults to help watch for traffic when crossing streets.

Casual party conversation can often come to a lull, especially if your guests are strangers to one another. It may sound corny, but a simple party game can really liven things up and get strangers talking to each other. It's really a fantastic idea for any occasion, but we especially love to have a game just for parents at a children's party. Here are a few of our party-tested games:

• Challenge the parents standing around at your daughter's birthday party to a scavenger hunt around the house. Start them off with one clue which leads them to another and another and another, until someone finds the prize. Tie the clues in with your party theme, such as nursery rhymes for a storybook party, or love song titles at a Valentine's Day celebration.

• Simple trivia games are great -- just print a bunch of party-related questions (and their answers) and start asking! Questions about the guest(s) of honor are great for a birthday or anniversary party, and holiday movie trivia can be a lot of laughs at a Christmas party. You don't even have to be the one to ask all of the questions. You can designate a gregarious friend as trivia master or pass a handful of questions out to everyone, leaving you free to serve food or clear dishes while your guests get silly with their answers.

Don't forget the prizes! Adults are just as giddy as children when they win something -- choose a cookbook full of your favorite recipes for the winner of a dinner party game, or present a beautifully wrapped chocolate truffle to each of the game participants at your Valentine's Day celebration.