These stories of over-the-top kids' birthday parties are becoming so commonplace in the media now that I'm actually starting to think some of them sound like great ideas. Not the ones that cost tens of thousands of dollars where you have to book the Four Seasons ballroom six months in advance, but the kind discussed in this article, where you take your kids to a venue and let 'em go at it, whatever "it" happens to be.

These parties are like Gymboree or Build-a-Bear parties taken to the next level, and it's a level that is somehow not as repulsive to me (I hate clowns and I hate stuffed animals). I could totally go for a dress-up party where my kids and their friends spend a couple hours tarting themselves up with sparkly eyeshadow and then dance around in fairy wings, especially if it didn't require me to provide the cold cream and mirror space. I can see having a build-your-own-pizza party, or a tea party in a fancy hotel.

Well, I can almost see it. What I really like about what I'm reading here is that some of the parties were just really creative at-home parties, like a tractor-themed party with a real machine for climbing and pretending. Planned by professionals of course, which we have already established is kind of bizarre for a little kids' party, but there's no reason you couldn't come up with this stuff yourself. But then you're going to have to clean it up yourself when the fairy dust and tea-sandwich crumbs settle.