Birthday dilemma

Honest opinions needed here folks! Matthew's birthday is coming up (February 12th) and Chris and I are disagreeing as to how to handle the festivities. We've had each birthday party so far at an indoor playcentre. It's great cuz there's no mess at our own house to clean up, the kids have a blast playing with all the toys, it's big enough to house all of our extended family and our friends, and with the 2-hour time limit on the place we don't have a ton of people to entertain at our house for a whole day (sounds bitchy I know and I don't mean it the way it sounds). The downside is that it costs about $250. I think that's ridiculous to spend that kind of money on a 3-yr-old's birthday party, especially when he could care less. This is the route Chris wants to go, but I really really want to have a small party for him at our house. For some weird reason I want to be the one to bake and decorate a cake (despite never having done this before but my Mom always did it for us so I'd like to do it for my Baby Shmear), and I'm dying to decorate the house in balloons and streamers. Yes I'd have to clean up afterwards, but I have to clean the darn house everyday anyways so what's the problem? The downside to having it at home, in addition to the cleanup, is that our house isn't all that big. If we were to invite all our family and friends and possibly all of Matthew's daycare buddies there's no way they'd fit in our house. And since everyone is still fairly young I know all the parents would want to stay with their kiddies instead of dropping them off for a few hours. Hmmm, what do we do?