It's Mardi Gras Season!

I've been to many'a Mardi Gras celebrations growing up in Louisiana. There is of course the huge New Orleans Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street, the Garden District and the suburbs surrounding the city. But there are also the Cajun and very traditional celebrations that take place in small "Cajun Country" towns such as Mamou and Coteau. I'll explain more about these later.

This will be the first of many posts about facts and history of Mardi Gras until the season is over. It's one of my favorite Holidays. Seriously...it's pretty much considered a religion in Louisiana. I was totally bummed when I moved to Chicago and realized we wouldn't have three days off for "Fat Tuesday":) First fact, Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday.

The colors of Mardi Gras are Purple, Green and Gold. These stand for Justice, Faith and Power (respectively). And of course there is the King Cake. A huge Mardi Gras tradition (see pics above). It's kinda like a rolled brioche or coffee cake topped with icing and sugar in the colors of Mardi Gras. Yum! They also come with different kinds of fillings such as cream cheese, praline, cherry and chocolate. My personal favorite is Cream Cheese..... Oh, and there is a plastic baby hidden inside the cake. Tradition is the person who gets the slice of cake with the baby inside has to buy a cake for next year's celebration.

Success! Football Gumbo Party!

Our Football Gumbo Party was a great success! We had a lot of fun with friends as we ate tons of Cajun Gumbo and drank lots of wine.

I didn't have a huge budget but I was still able to decorate the table and a few other things. I used a green paper table cloth on the table and added white ribbon as yard lines and stuck white numbers that I found at JoAnn's on the table cloth.

I found all of the small footballs online at Toomey's Mardi Gras for really cheap and used these to fill glass vases with. I placed the vases around the apartment and on the table.

I tied pennants to the chairs and made them look like green chalk boards with football plays written on them. They turned out really cute. I purchased the popcorn containers at Target for a dollar a piece and filled these with popcorn and roasted peanuts.

The football lanterns, football suckers and garland were purchased at Oriental Trading.

For the bar area I bought plastic trays at the Dollar Store and found football printed paper at JoAnn's that I stuck to the bottom of the trays. These were used to hold drink glasses. I also made cute glass tags (for the girls) similar to the pennants. I added green rhinestones for bling.

See photos above. Oh, and the football games were great too. The Saints won! Go Saints!!

My First Feature!

My daisies, gingham and bbq co-ed bridal shower was featured on Creative Party Place! So exciting. I've never been featured before. Check it out here:
http://creativepartyplace.com/2009/12/31/co-ed-bridal-shower-bbq/
or you can check out my post from August 28th.

Now if I could just figure out how to add the feature button to my blog....hmmm.