37 Birthday Party Ideas That Don't Involve Alcohol

Give the party a competitive edge with a few rounds of paintball. Just remember not to wear anything you don't want stained with your technicolor battle wounds!

Go old school and take everyone to a pottery class, where they can learn the ins and outs of the pottery wheel and bring their misshapen works home with pride.

Venture out to a tea place or a hotel that offers high tea, or easily host your own version with a variety of teas, little sandwiches, and miniature desserts. Bon appetit!

Bring out your inner ten-year-olds with a heart-racing game of laser tag. Whether you all decide to team up or split the birthday squad in half to compete with each other is totally up to you!

Take everyone out for a local painting class, or buy the supplies yourself and let everyone go ham with the paint and a bunch of construction paper. Then turn all of the ~works of art~ into a beautiful birthday collage.

If the weather permits it, take a road trip and go on a group deal for beginner's rafting class. Don't forget to pack extra shoes!

Go to a local karaoke hot spot and rent a room for a few hours. Pro tip: it's usually a lot easier to get a room for a daytime party!

For a real sense of togetherness on your birthday, invite your friends to bring their favorite dishes to the park, and have a massive, delicious potluck on the benches.

If you hang with an extra adventurous squad, get that adrenaline rush going by looking up local skydiving companies. Nothing will bond your pals quite like falling out of the sky together!

If there's a movie coming out that you and your friends have been dying to see, birthdays are a prime opportunity to get everyone in on it together. Make a day of it with a double feature!

This requires a little bit of planning, depending on how long the hike is, but the awesome shots you'll get when you reach the top of the hike will be well worth the effort.

Most major cities and towns with history have ghost tours even when it's nowhere near Halloween. Who knows? Maybe the tour will end up stopping at some of your friends' favorite ~haunts~.

Let's be real, no matter how old you get, you never outgrow CRUSHING ALL YOUR FRIENDS AT PAC-MAN. Have an '80s vibe birthday by kicking it at the arcade.

Head to the local rink and see how long all of you can keep from hugging the walls without falling on your butts! Then reward yourselves with some hot cocoa and cake.

Take the whole crew to a drop-in dance class — or, better yet, ask if you can do a custom class ahead of time, and choreograph a fun group number to your favorite song.

If you're into the mystical, book a group visit to a psychic, or schedule some one-on-ones in a row. Even if it's a bit of a hike to get there, you'll have the entire ride home to gab about your fates.

Hit a rollerblading rink, where everyone can attempt to do retro dances out on the floor and you can end the day with milkshakes and trying 8,000 times to get a toy out of the claw machine.

If you have a fall birthday, hop on a train or carpool to a local apple picking farm. Summer babies can also go peach picking or strawberry picking!

If you're not into traditional museum fare, see if there are any quirky or interactive museums in your area that might be more your speed. Liven things up with a museum scavenger hunt.

You played the kid version of this in school, but now it's time for the fun, grownup version — head out to the woods and defend your flag out in the wild without any P.E. teachers refereeing to get a real taste of that flag capturing life for your birthday.

Drive out to a ranch or a local farm that offers horse riding for beginners, where you can go on group excursions with a guide or stick close to the stables. Don't forget to bring an apple for your new four-legged friend!

If the weather is warm enough, find a kayak rental place, or check online to see if there are any group package deals available. Even if you haven't kayaked before, it's a pretty quick learning curve on beginner routes.

You're running around every other day of the year, but your birthday is the best excuse you'll ever get to kick back, relax, and treat yourself. Bring the whole squad out for a day of massages and hot tubs!

If you live somewhere warm enough or you're a summer baby, take a road trip to the beach and camp out for a beach day. Even in colder weather, it makes for a calm, scenic trip out of town.

Support local comedians and get the endorphins going by heading to a comedy show in your area — the more the merrier!

If you haven't tried geocaching before, odds are at least one of the friends attending your birthday have taken a crack at it. It basically involves hunting for placed trinkets using coordinates, and leaving treasures of your own for people to find!

You've heard of pizza crawls and bar crawls, but now, introducing the most important one of all: an ICE CREAM CRAWL. You can find all the hot spots for the best ice cream in your neighborhood and hit them all up in one afternoon for a delicious birthday adventure.

Relive the glory of your childhood sleepovers as an '80s or '90s baby by recreating them down to a tee, no matter how far you must go to obtain Dunkaroos and hair crimpers.

If a spa day seems a little too ambitious for your group, book joint appointments to get your nails done. Then you can head to the coffee shop or ice cream place nearby and Instagram your fabulous nails holding delicious things.

I have two words for you: Baby. Animals. And if that's not enough to draw you in, then petting zoos and insane looking fish and making faces at monkeys certainly should.

Odds are someone in your friend group is the designated party planner — have them arrange a scavenger hunt for everyone in a local park. Whichever team finds all the clues first is the first to get to eat cake!

Even if it's out of season for an outdoor water park, odds are there is an indoor one within driving distance — and a day of water slides, floaties, and lazy rivers will be well worth it.

If you live near a fun outdoor venue, check the schedule around your birthday and see if any fun names come up. There's no bonding quite like jumping up and down together for two hours in the heat!

If you haven't heard of the early morning rave trend yet, buckle your seat belts: they are sober raves that start at 6 a.m. before work, and have become somewhat of a cultural institution in New York. See if there's one near you, or schedule your own early morning "rave" if you can find a place to keep the noise levels down!

If you're friends with an adventurous lot, hit the trails and stay overnight — you can roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories and, of course, play pranks abound.

Take a page from Tom Haverford on Parks and Rec, and Treat. Yo. Self. Take the squad to the mall to eat your way through the food court, buy out Forever 21, and take enough selfies to max out your phone storage.