Our year in review!

Happy New Year!

This was our first year of Sweet Ice goodness, and it was a whirlwind for us! Starting Sweet Ice and making all natural snow cones was an idea, and then a dream, and we certainly didn't plan on making it a reality as quickly as we did. One thing led to another, and a successful snow cone wedding turned into a business venture. Then a Shasta trailer ended up in our hands, and now, here we are, planning for a really huge Sweet Ice season! Even though it wasn't what we planned, we wouldn't want it any other way, and we're really grateful for the fun we've had, and the support that Sweet Ice Snow Cones has received this year. Here's a few monthly highlights from our year for ya. It starts in June because, well, that's when Sweet Ice started, and we like to keep things real!

Our first event! Our friends Jared and Michelle got married, and we made snow cones for their wedding. It was the cutest wedding ever, and they had a bike processional from the church to the reception, so all the guests were happy to have something cool and refreshing. We tried a watermelon flavor at this event, but it was a bit strange (still working on that recipe), but the other two flavors were DIVINE! We're really thankful that we were asked to make snow cones for this event, because it is really what started this whole crazy adventure!

We got our trailer! This 1962 Shasta was just HANDED to us! It was something we only imagined could happen, so we were floored when everything worked out as perfectly as it did. While we did have a really successful season, we still need to raise the funds needed to renovate this lovely thing so we'll be hosting an online fundraiser in the next few months, which we're really excited about!

Time for our debut: our first public event - the Art Crawl. We were so humbled by our success at Art Crawl. We totally didn't prepare for the Hamilton-snow-cone-love, and sold out of syrup before 10pm... less than three hours! There were line-ups all evening, and we were serenaded by the lovely Kori Pop. This is one of our favorite Sweet Ice memories so far, as we just couldn't believe how friendly and excited everyone was.

Our BIGGEST event of the year was in September. You know what it was... the best day of the year for all of us: Supercrawl! Supercrawl was incredible on so many levels. The vendors were amazing, the art installations were incredible, the music was AWESOME, and the Sweet Ice fans were aplenty! We served just under 1000 snow cones that day, and we sold out of all our flavors just as the night was winding down. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

Runner up highlight for September: Hanging out with Andrew (Songs to Wear Pants To) and Hannah (My Drunk Kitchen), and having our snow cones in their nomming video...

This was probably our favourite event of 2011. When we started Sweet Ice we had a crazy idea to do a Snow Cone Dance Party, complete with mixed-drink cones. It seemed a little too crazy to work, but ended up being just crazy enough! We were so excited for our giant light-brite, the spiked snow cones, the amazing music by DJ Donna Lovejoy...we kind of forgot that there would also be a room full of really awesome people with really killer dance moves. Once all these things came together, it became one of the best nights of our lives. We're already so excited for Sweet Ice Dance Party 2.0!

Hmm. What did we do in November? Oh ya... NOTHING! After all these crazy adventures we took a BREAK! Well, at least we tried not to talk about or think about snow cones. We retired our snow cone buttons for a few weeks. We stopped eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We put pictures of snow cones on the wall and threw darts at them. OK, none of that is true. But we didn't have any events in November, and it was nice to catch a breath. However, a break can only last so long, and by the end of the month we really missed a lot of things about Sweet Ice.

Oh joy! Santa was good to Sweet Ice this year! We were asked to participate in the Kitestring Christmas Spectacular, and we were so honored to support the CKA charity alongside a whole bunch of other really awesome businesses. This was the first event where we didn't wear our aprons (Sweet Ice goes glam!), and also likely the only event where you'll ever be able to get our Gingerbread + Spiced Rum snow cone and get Christmas snow cone buttons!

It's been an amazing year for both of us, and we've had so much fun with this adorable little business of ours. Thanks to everyone out there who has bought a snow cone, made jokes with us at our booth, supported us behind the scenes, worn our buttons, and applauded our efforts all over town - we're SO appreciative! We're excited to see what the next year holds for us, as it is our first full season, and we've got so many thrilling goals, plans and ideas.

Happy New Year!

With much love,

The Sweet Ice Girls