So this past weekend I celebrated my 23rd birthday. I had a lot of fun.

Normally I plan a party like this.

1) Pick a day (and forget to tell people right away)
2) Find a venue (my house, your house, whatever)
3) Add people
4) Add music
5) Add beer
6) (optional) Add hard liquor

And no matter what, as long as there are people + beer + music people seem to have a good time. Honestly I never though Id ever throw parties, but it's worked out quite nicely a whole bunch of times. I think it started with just a few friends, and slowly expanded to have like 10, 15, 20 people at at time. Which is just right for my tastes. People I love having fun, that's the idea.

For the record, the two photographers (minus a few camera phone pics by other people) were Mike and Jenny.

So for my birthday, I decided I wanted throwies. I got the idea from The Graffiti Research Lab, they developed them and gave them out to large groups of people encouraging them to "alter their surroundings". One of their biggest targets was "The Alamo" or "The Cube" that's in the village over on Astor Place. (I'm borring from wiki for the details, but I remember picking throwies off the cube after the event. Oh and I have to mention the unrelated Rubix Cube prank.)

So instead of buying beer in large quantities, I bought throwie parts. And with the help of the very simple instructions from instructables I decided on what parts to buy and after they arrived I stole a few rolls of packing tape from work, got a few box cutters (from my surplus order a few weeks ago) and I was all set. That's literally all the preparation I did for my birthday.

So once people started showing up (a few I had to convince to leave a showing of "the life of Brian" at another party, I promised they could finish the movie at my house but once they saw the lights everybody forgot about it.) I sat them down at a table in the living room and showed them how to make a few throwies. Nobody .. well almost nobody knew that was coming, but as it turns out, arts and crafts (like this anyway) are a lot of fun, and people are easily bribed with pizza.

Come back later for part 2.

-Francis