Things to Do in Alpharetta

A hayride rolls across 50 of Warbington Farms' 300-acres. Riders peer over the side as the tractor turns straight into a pasture where cattle graze and autograph cartons of milk. At the end of this agricultural journey, visitors can enjoy walks through the crisp autumn air, pet farm animals, and stock up on fresh eggs, jams, and ciders. Though a working farm behind the scenes, Warbington Farms prides itself most on creating these sorts of experiences for visitors. In Autumn, Pumpkin Palooza fills the grounds with live music and fall activities, including an inflatable slide and a sandbox filled with corn. Winter brings Christmas trees and visits from Santa, and the spring strawberry festival lets visitors pick their own morsels of fresh fruit.

In the spacious room of Sip & Stroke’s new location, students of all skill levels swirl glasses, pick up brushes, and daub pigments onto canvases to create works of art during instructor-guided canvas-painting classes. Participants bring their own libations and arrive individually or in groups for birthday soirees, bachelorette parties, and famous Supreme Court ruling read-throughs. The art studio's open atmosphere also caters to children, who can take on canvases, clay, or strings of beads.

The Swim School of Memphis's instructors, drawing from Swim Schools International's programs, teach water-safety skills to fledgling divers and swimmers of all ages. Classes and activities range from the Scuba Rangers club—where kids aged 8–12 learn to snorkel and scuba dive from the safety of a pool—to open-water dives, swimming lessons, and more advanced stress-and-rescue dive sessions, during which instructors turn dog paddlers into almost-mermaids, minus the pet octopuses.

At Unique Events of Atlanta's gatherings, adults convene for evenings of interactive theatrics, gaming, and group activities. The staff's creative scribes conjure up a theme to serve as the plot of interactive murder-mystery dinners, where participants discover clues over dinner and drinks, evoking their inner gumshoes to identify villains and summon orphaned saxophone riffs left over from the '80s. Other events include casino nights, where card lovers can compare poker faces, and old-fashion game nights, where friendly competition ensues over Monopoly boards, Uno decks, Twister mats, and Xbox Dance Central screens. The event extraordinaires also host marriage proposals, anniversaries, and reunions with repaired lawnmowers.:m]]

A menagerie of more than 500 pigment-free plaster pieces such as butterflies, animal figurines, tiny princesses, and popular cartoon characters awaits eager artists of all ages at Plaster Zone. Colorful paints and lustrous glazes enliven each objet d’art, whose decoration process may take anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours depending on the size, detail, and any ongoing space-time entanglements. Unlike clay or ceramics, plaster does not need to be fired, and participants get to take their creations home immediately.

The studio hosts birthday parties in addition to its open painting hours that cater to 10-fold groups of children with cupcakes, juice, and their choice of plaster to paint, with shiny veneers of glaze and glitter available for a finish brighter than a Mensa-certified disco ball.

Skilled instructors at Range, Guns & Safes champion gun safety as their facility’s chief concern. Before granting budding or seasoned shooters access to the firing range, the staff reviews a basic gun-handling protocol, and classes delve still deeper into safe gun handling before covering shooting technique and gun maintenance. A showroom stocks an ample selection of Heritage safes, which allow homesteaders to securely store firearms and incriminating empty cookie jars.