Chinese Party -11yr- Ying Yang Sugar Cookies

For my daughter's 11th birthday, she wanted to have a chinese themed birthday. It only cost about 200 dollars and the kids had a great time.

We made most of the decorations ourselves, using red and green ticket board. I printed out silouettes of dragons, chinese money, flags, yin-yang signs and banners with chinese lettering on them and we drew them on the colored ticket board.

We bought chinese lanterns at our local dollar store and a couple of lighted ones at a thrift shop. We also used red, black and yellow streamers and balloons that we bought at the dollar store. We also drew a pig on a piece of ticket board because she was born in the year of the pig and played pin the tail on the pig. I made my own placemats on the computer with the chinese calandar of the years and horoscopes on them that I copies from a chinese webpage.

We bought packages of decorative chopsticks at the dollar store and some red flowered wrapping paper. I made little holders for the chopsticks out of the wrapping paper and placed them with red napkins folded like kites and the placemats on a table on our deck(I used a cheap white patio table and removed the legs for an oriental feel; then I placed all our throw pillows around it and each girl squatted on the pillows).

The food was the fun part. We had chinese chicken balls and wings and garlic spareribs with chicken fried rice and egg rolls that I bought at the grocery store. We had a bowl for their rice and I bought chinese noodles and green onions and other oriental veggies to place on top of the rice. I filled a condiment dish with a variety of sauces and made chinese sweet bread as a kind of dessert(I found the recipe on line). Also I made two-toned sugar cookies that resembled yin-yangs( I just made plain and chocolate dough and then combined them in small balls and then pressed them out with a glass).

We served pop and juice and she had a cake with types of oriental dogs on it. After the food we played a frog race with origami folded frogs where I gave out money prizes that were written inside each frog(instead of the fangbao game).

We had my oldest daughter's friend and our son give the girls a martial arts lesson.  Then we gave out sparklers and lit them.

The loot bags contained party poppers(instead of a fireworks display), chocolate money, more chopsticks that they could use in their hair, chinese fans that I bought at the local chinese fare shop,and other types of candy.

The girls had a great time and so did I! Our invitations were an origami folded dog face that barked when you wiggled his ears and the party info was inside.