The Barnacle has a birthday next week and I’ve got 30 people descending on my house on Friday whose ages range from one to 100. (Seriously. The genes in my husband’s family are ridiculous.)

The party is from 4 to 7 p.m. All you veteran birthday party throwers know what that means: Not only do I have to do decorations, party favors and cake, but now I’m making dinner, too. Oh, joy.

Now the temptation at this point is to grab a bunch of cheap disposable plates, order Domino’s and call it a day. But that would be very un-green. In fact, I would say that’s Mommy Brownest behavior. So my quest is to create a kids’ birthday party that’s relatively eco-friendly and, most importantly considering the economic crisis my family is feeling so sharply these days, cheap.

FIRST ADD FLOWERS

First on the agenda: Decorations. I’m going to skip the balloons this year. Despite the fact that latex is a natural substance that biodegrades, and I can buy compostable ribbon, I’m going with tiny bouquets of flowers scattered on the table. Flowers don’t take six months to biodegrade, during which time even a latex balloon could wreak all kinds of havoc to a wayward pelican. Although I really love these gnome-shaped numbers embedded with flower seeds!

My cost? Free, if you don’t count labor, since I’m making bouquets of flowers and herbs from my garden. Environmental cost? If you can’t get them from your ground, find flowers at EcoFlowers, which sells in bulk for less and is all kinds of sustainable.

SERVE IT UP

Instead of using disposables, I’m committed to washing dishes later in the evening. But because I simply don’t have enough glasses for that many kids, I’m going to invest in some corn-based biodegradable plastic cups to fill with organic apple juice diluted with water. Rather than going to the landfill, these will go into my compost, where they’ll break down into water, carbon dioxide and organic material within three months–as opposed to plastic cups, which take 500 years or more and never fully biodegrade, but just break down into tiny pieces that can distrupt the eco-system. But I digress. These days, you can get biodegradable plastic cups, cutlery, plates and bowls in many supermarkets, including, of course, Whole Foods.

My cost? $20 for 50 for the cups. And about $7 for the juice. Environmental cost? Minimal, unless you get all nitpicky about it and figure out how much fossil fuel the cup company used in production. Whatevah.

PEACE A PIZZA

Rather than ordering pizza made from inorganic ingredients and a whole lotta sugar, I’m going to make my own. I like the whole wheat dough ($.99 for enough dough for two pies) from Trader Joe’s, but in a pinch I’d use a Boboli. Making that much pizza dough is just plain scary. TJs also has some great organic tomato sauce ($1.39 spreads on four) and organic shredded mozzarella (enough for four at $3.79). For an adult option, I’ll spread organic pesto ($2.19 for two), cover it with organic diced asparagus ($5.49 for two), throw on a few basil leaves from the herb garden (free!) and add chunks of feta cheese ($2.99 for two) to the mozzarella. Yum! To save plates, we’ll serve on mismatched cloth napkins, rather than some vaguely Disney-an character she’d barely recognize.

My cost? $18.82 for six pies. Environmental cost: All organic, so no chemicals there. And I’ll try to buy as much as I can locally produced. Too bad it’s not still tomato season, but we eat ours faster than I could’ve canned them, anyway.

LET THEM EAT CAKE

Now the piece de resistance: The cake. After a serious boxed-batter dependency–I have three kids; we make a lot of cakes–I broke out the old Joy of Cooking last week and was pleasantly surprised by how damn easy a homemade sponge cake can be. Flour, eggs, baking powder, sugar; powdered sugar for the frosting. That’s pretty much it. And it’s a non-crumbly cake that can be served–you guessed it–on napkins.

I’m not going to itemize the cost, but I’d estimate about $4 for the whole shebang. And that’s using organic and free range everything.

FINISHING TOUCHES

What’s left? We’re doing a gift trade, where everyone brings a gift for a two-year-old and they all pick one to take home, including the Barnacle. So that takes care of the gift bags.

Hmm… entertainment. What’s more entertaining than a bunch of two-year-olds wreaking havoc on my house? Free and eco-friendly!

That’s $49.82, start to finish. Wish me luck.

POSTSCRIPT

It’s been a month of birthdays for the Sarnoff family. First there was my husband’s 40th surprise party, which ended up with a karaoke performance of “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” complete with lifts. (Yes, tequila was involved.) Then, my daughter turned eight, and we hosted a five-girl, two-movie sleepover party. (No tequila, but an equally painful morning after.)

For both parties, I tried to keep it simple—and conscious. For my husband’s party, we splurged on dinner was at our favorite organic restaurant, Akasha. As a gift, I gave him a DIY Grain Surfboard kit, made from sustainable hard wood. Guests came back to our house, where we served organic gimlets in reusable cups, recycled the bottles and composted the lime peels, with a little help from my favorite sustainable party planner, Paige Anderson of Bash Eco Events. For my daughter’s sleepover, the theme was “Christmas in July,” so we broke out the box of ornaments, borrowed a reusable tree and played freeze dance to carols.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t totally consistent on the sustainability front. I wanted to put a childhood photo of my husband on his cake, so I ordered it from a traditional baker. My daughter craved egg rolls, so we ended up ordering Chinese (luckily, we can recycle Styrofoam in Los Angeles).

But both my husband and my daughter had fun, and I survived another July.

Besides the “no one puts Baby in a corner” moment, my favorite memory of the whole week was between parties. The day before her birthday party, I took my daughter to the beach, leaving my son and the Barnacle (read: Baby) at home with their daddy.

While everyone else sat under umbrellas in the sand, my daughter and I joined hands and ran into gigantic waves that were breaking so hard we had to dive under them so we wouldn’t get knocked over. I taught her to body surf, showing her how to race the wave to the shore in order to catch the lip before it crashed. Every so often the current tumbled us, ripping our hands apart and flipping us around in the “washing machine.” But my daughter popped up every time, her eyes wide with fear but ready to laugh it off and jump back in with me.

It’s the same spirit she’s shown since the day she was born, since she toddled into pools without warning, since she stretched up to her full five-year-old height in order to ride the roller coasters at Disneyland. She’s so fascinating to me, and so foreign, since I’ve always been so afraid of consequences.

My daughter is fearless. And I am so blessed.