Fat Tuesday!

I like celebrating Mardi Gras.  It's fun with the bright colors, masks, and just another reason to make a day extra special.  My sophomore year of college, I got in a car with five friends and we drove from Boston to New Orleans to experience Mardi Gras.  We made the decision to go just days before, and I think I had $300.00 for the whole trip.  Honestly, I don't even remember the names of two of the people I traveled with, but the trip was a lot of fun and I'm glad I went.  I'm rarely that spontaneous.

My Mardi Gras celebrations are VERY different these days!

I made a Mardi Gras sensory bin for Kate using rice that I dyed, beads, and pipe cleaners.

 Kate is learning the letter M this week (perfect for Mardi Gras), so I threw in the M find it cards.  She was so excited about the sensory bin that she quickly found all of the M cards and put them on the matching sheet.

 This made a HUGE mess, but it was worth it.  Kate really had a lot of fun scooping, pouring, and just playing.

 I added some play dough for an extra layer of fun.

 You cannot have a Mardi Gras celebration without masks, and M is also for mask (I love how that just worked out without me even thinking about it or planning it ahead of time).  I cut masks out of cereal box cardboard and the kids decorated them.

 

I saw these whoopie pies with Mardi Gras frosting at Whole Foods (this means NO ARTIFICIAL COLORS) and could not resist them.  I cut them up so that everyone could have a piece of each color.

Fat Tuesday is also National Pancake Day.  I made two kinds of pancakes from one batter.  Pioneer Woman has a recipe for pancake mini muffins.  To make the muffins, you put pancake batter (I used PW's recipe, but any batter would work) in a mini muffin pan and bake them in the oven for about ten minutes.  The kids liked dunking them in syrup.  I also made traditional pancakes using the batter that was left after I filled my mini muffin pan.

Hooray for all of the fun that March brings!