The Adwords help centre has some great resources to help you get started with PPC: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/?hl=en
For our clients with limited budgets, each has asked this question. But they make mistakes with the keyword research and get keyword that return bogas clicks. Then they fail to keep their bids low because of bad ad text, or bad landing pages. So, take $1,000 and have someone with real knowledge set it up for you. Once it's started, you can then maintain it, but the beginner mistakes are 10x more expensive.