Mardi Gras (which means Fat Tuesday in French) marks the end of carnival season and the day before Ash Wednesday.It features masquerade balls, parades and parties to celebrate one last day of feasting before the season of fasting, leading up to Easter, begins.The traditional colors of Mardi Gras are green (faith), purple (justice) and gold (power). Some of the Mardi Gras traditions include parades with people on floats throwing various trinkets to the parade watchers; the most popular being beads and doubloons (coins). Colorful masks are worn by both the people on the parade floats as well as the on-lookers.

Family Friendly Mardi Gras Celebration Ideas

Here are some ideas to help your family celebrate Mardi Gras this year:

1. Decorate masks.

2. Serve a traditional New Orleans style dinner.

3. Bake a king cake (or cupcakes).

4. Decorate the dinner table with Mardi Gras colors and symbols.

5. Listen to music typical of New Orleans such as zydeco, jazz & blues.

Mardi Gras Masks

Kids will LOVE decorating masks; just give them some supplies and let them go to work.

Use things such as feathers, sequins, pom poms, pipe cleaners, ribbon, and plastic jewels to embellish your masks. I wanted to keep everything in the traditional Mardi Gras colors – purple, green and yellow, which were easy to find at either Dollar Tree or Michaels.

Adults can join in the fun too, of course…I had a great time making my masks!

King Cake Cupcakes

King cake is a braided coffee cake covered with icing and purple, green and gold sugar. A small plastic baby is baked inside the cake and whoever finds it has to bring the king cake to the next celebration.

I personally am scared of yeast, so I didn’t attempt to make the traditional king cake…If you’re feeling brave, you might try Martha Stewart’s recipe. 

Instead, I went for cupcakes decorated with purple, green and yellow frosting and dressed them up with free Mardi Gras printables from Kim at The TomKat Studio (one of the guest speakers at SNAP!).

In keeping with tradition, I baked a baby into one of the cupcakes and thought it would be fun to see who chose the winning cupcake. Of course the kids wanted to eat ALL the cupcakes to see who had the baby!

Tablescape

To decorate the dinner table, I started with a simple white tablecloth and then added some things to make it festive using the traditional Mardi Gras colors.

The centerpiece was created by placing some twigs painted white that I placed in a tall vase. I filled the vase with little green balls, adding some coins and beads hanging from the branches. Matching ribbon was tied around the center of the vase.

To add some color to the white tablecloth, I used a paper punch to cut out a bunch of fleur-de-lis shapes from purple, green and yellow cardstock and scattered them around the table.

For the place settings, I started with a shiny purple piece of scrapbook paper and then added the contrasting yellow paper plates and utensils wrapped in a green and white polka dot napkin. The napkin was secured with a yellow ribbon and embellished with more Mardi Gras party circles from The TomKat Studio.

To dress up the plastic cups, I again added some yellow ribbon and another party circle from The TomKat Studio. A purple and white striped straw is always more fun to drink out of, right??!!

My kids are really excited for their special Mardi Gras dinner coming up next week. They’re probably most looking forward to the cupcakes again to see who gets the baby this time!

Are any of you planning your own Mardi Gras celebrations this year? What are some of your favorite traditions? I’d love to hear about them!

Oh, and if you get the chance, stop by Paisley Petal Events. I’ve just finished up Valentine’s Day and am looking forward to spring. I’ve got several great projects in mind, like this Mario Kart birthday party.