Cedar's $50 Chinese Themed Birthday Party + SnoSpice Review

Saturday the 3rd, I hosted a simple Chinese themed party for my daughter's 2nd birthday. I worked on a budget of $50 and held it at my church's fellowship hall. Since the church is also a private school, the fellowship hall also serves as a cafeteria and classroom for the students. It's not the most scenic space for a party and the lighting is horrible, but with it being an open invitation event, we could have expected anywhere from 6 to 50 people. So yeah, this was the best location for us AND it was free!!

Although this is Cedar's second birthday it was her first birthday party. Last year I had something special planned for her but before I could announce my plans, my in-laws beat me to the punch with other plans. Frustrated that I wouldn't be able to host the party where and how I wanted, I just dropped the whole thing. As an event planner, I'm super sensitive about my parties, ya'll. If I can't do it my way, I don't wanna do it at all. It's not that I'm a control freak or anything like that (that's a lie) - I just have super vivid visions of how I want things to be and I get totally crushed when I can't make it happen.

Moving on...

Instead of a fancy "smash cake", I got Cedar a $.50 mini cherry pie because I knew she'd have no interest in either smashing or eating a cake. She didn't eat the pie either so hey, we only lost $.50. No biggie. The rest of the guests got delicious mini cupcakes in red velvet and cookies and cream flavors. Two dozen mini cupcakes was only $6!

Cedar's cheongsam (Chinese dress) is from eBay direct from China and cost about $4.

Note: If you order one, you'll need to allow up to a month for delivery.

To save money on food, I asked that everyone bring an Asian-style dish in lieu of gifts. This way, there will be as much food as needed for however many guests we would have. It worked out perfectly. We had the just the right amount of food needed for all 16 guests. The plates, tablecloths, napkins and other decor were from Walmart and we gave fortune cookies as favors.

After the meal we all tried out this cool line of ice cream mix-ins called SnoSpice.
SnoSpice comes in 6 different flavors: Cinnamon for Optimists (I love that name), Cocoa Cayenne, Deep Chocolate Sea Salt, Lemon + Basil, Pumpkin Carriage and Turmeric'd.

So, all you do is pick your flavor, sprinkle as little or as much of it onto plain vanilla ice cream, mix it in thoroughly and enjoy!

My first choice was Cocoa Cayenne. I wish there was little more cocoa flavor but if I had added more SnoSpice then it would have been too spicy for me. This one is definitely for heat lovers. I later added in a little Pumpkin Carriage and it was magical!

And by the way, I know Lemon Basil sounds scary, but one person described it as tasting like a lemon poppy-seed muffin. Who doesn't love lemon poppy-seed muffins?!?

The cool thing about these mix-ins is that you get to completely customize your ice cream to taste the way you want it to taste. There's no limit to how many flavors you can use or how much you can use. It's your ice cream!!