Birthday Awesome for under $20

This is my best friend's birthday week (she informed me that she deserves a whole week on the phone last night) and she told me that I was going to I volunteered to throw her a shin-dig at my apartment on Friday. But as soon as I got off the phone with her I remembered that I am completely broke and have no idea how I am going to throw her a party.

Once I got done with my initial anxiety attack, I sat back and pondered my options.

1. I could call the Birthday Girl back and tell her that I am completely broke and cannot host a party for her, sorry, and risk having her not talk to me for a week.
2. I could do my best to turn into Martha Stewart and possess all the information I would ever need about making fun h'ordeurves out of the jar of pickles in the fridge and the crusty peanut butter in the cupboard.
3. I could cry in a corner and hope that the birthday party fairy would appear and make it all happen for me, free of charge.

Since I know that none of those are going to happen, I decided to sit down and make a few lists in the hopes that they would calm my nerves a little. This is what I came up with:

Party Necessities

• Cake (and candles)
• Balloons
• Decorations
• Booze
• Games
• Snacks
• Presents

Then I thought about which of these things would cost me the most money and this is what I came up with:

• Cake (and candles) = $5 for box of mix and frosting (plus more for eggs and oil, but I have them already); $2 for candle
  
• Balloons = $1-2 for a bag of cheap ones
• Decorations = I have no idea how much create paper costs; birthday sign printed from my computer = free
  
• Booze = $1 million dollars
  
• Games = I have a deck of cards ... Mel has Catch Phrase what else do you need really?
  
• Snacks = $10 for pretzels and chips
  
• Presents = other people's problem

So to start with, the only major expense that I was looking at was the booze. And as much as I tried to convince myself that Birthday Girl wouldn't care if I didn't get any ... I couldn't. We are girls who like to get our drink on, what can I say? So I sat down and thought really hard and came up with the most brilliant idea ever (I even think that the Birthday Girl will be ok with it).

• Presents = Booze (my present is being the organizer)
  

YES! Now I don't have to worry about spending more than $20 for the whole thing because if no one brings booze then I won't be the one getting in trouble because it says in big black letters on the invite "in lieu of gifts, please bring a tasty libation to share with the group". Total awesomeness ... and I didn't even spend any time crying in the corner about it.

Now if I could just convince myself to get up and start cleaning ...

P.S. - Birthday Girl, if you're reading this, you know I love you. Otherwise I wouldn't have cared about throwing you a good party.