We recently had our daughter's birthday party, and we held it in a public park near our house, where there's an old parks department building.  The sun plan was outdoors, but of course it thunderstormed and we didn't have a back-up plan.  So we called an audible and asked if we could use the back room in the parks building and they said sure. So we ended up with a bunch of kids running around a dank, old, concrete room (1950's style - mostly unchanged since then), eating pizza and cake and being entertained by a (wonderful, thank god) balloon twister, in the pouring rain.  It was dead simple, and cheap.  And the kids had a *fabulous* time.  Our daughter was thrilled; one of her friends said it was the best party ever. It just goes to show that sometimes, simple is best (or at least, can be great).

We recently had our daughter's birthday party, and we held it in a public park near our house, where there's an old parks department building.  The sun plan was outdoors, but of course it thunderstormed and we didn't have a back-up plan.  So we called an audible and asked if we could use the back room in the parks building and they said sure. So we ended up with a bunch of kids running around a dank, old, concrete room (1950's style - mostly unchanged since then), eating pizza and cake and being entertained by a (wonderful, thank god) balloon twister, in the pouring rain.  It was dead simple, and cheap.  And the kids had a *fabulous* time.  Our daughter was thrilled; one of her friends said it was the best party ever. It just goes to show that sometimes, simple is best (or at least, can be great).