I'm not one to do a birthday party every year. Birthday's are one of those family event that should last a week! I've always believed that birthdays are about celebrating the special being you are and not about impressing the families of your friends with how much you can "afford" to spend on the party (come on, admit it, you've overdone it at least once - we all have! I will be the first to admit, I spent over $400 on a "Pirate Party" for my son's 7th birthday with only 4 invited friends - YIKES!).

But, taking time to make the birthday person feel special for a week among the masses is how I prefer to celebrate.

Well, my daughter turned 5 in December - okay, 5 is a special one and I admit, I got caught up in the "event" of it! She had started JK the year before and had become quite the little-miss-popular, having been invited to many parties over the year. But what to do?

While staying a night at Blue Mountain for my 6th anniversary, we stumbled across this fantastic little shop called "Crock-a-doodle". (http://www.crockadoodle.com/) WELL! I fell in love at once with the concept of a paint-your-own-pottery place where you didn't have to be a ceramics expert. The pieces were pre-cast and ready to paint! All you had to do was come prepared to let your creative juices flow and they did the rest - firing, glazing and cleaning up!

Imagine my delight when I learned that not only do they host birthday parties, but were delighted to work with a group of 5-7 year olds and didn't want me to stick around for it! haha! But the idea was so enticing that my girlfriend and I stuck around with the kids and painted our own pottery. We had a blast, the kids had a blast and I didn't have to clean up the mess!

In the end, we had 10 children at the party, who each got to paint their own ceramic piece and keep it - I had pre-selected a Princess Mirror and a Cupcake keepsake holder as their options (and a fighter jet for my older son who also joined in on the fun). Each kid painted their own piece in their own way and then signed the bottom (for future identification). Once the pieces were painted, the staff helped us get everything taken to the firing/glazing area and we got to walk away from the mess. We picked up the completed pieces in less than a week so we could distribute them to the kids as their "Loot Bag" (though I admit I gave each of them a little bag of candy at the end of the party too).

After painting at Crock-a-Doodle, we ventured through the Village at Blue, stopped for Pizza at Firehall Pizza (awesome!), took a horse-drawn sleigh ride through the Village (spontaneous fun!) and then stopped at Starbucks for $1 kids hot chocolates (it's not hard to do Starbucks when you go for the Kiddie drinks!) - The whole party cost me less than $350 for 10 kids and they all raved about what a great time they had and my daughter was beaming the whole time.

Crock-a-doodle has locations all over Canada and are opening more all the time. Even if you're not in my area (Collingwood/Wasaga Beach), you may have a location near you!

If you're looking for fun ideas for your next kids event, why not check out the Village at Blue? They've got more to do than you might realize and because they're a year-round resort, there's something for every season. Check out the spots we visited:

http://www.crockadoodle.com/
http://www.villageatblue.com/home.asp
http://www.firehallpizza.com/