I have to honestly admit that a week ago I had no idea the purpose or history of Mardi Gras! I knew I wanted to celebrate it with my daughter this year, so I went straight to work doing some research. The best explanation that I found was a kid friendly video from National Geographic Kids.

I made plans to do some Mardi Gras activities and games with my daughter. But as luck would have it, 3 days ago our entire family came down with a nasty chest cold. So although we had to modify our plans a bit due to illness, I wouldn’t let that stinky virus stop us from having fun!

We started our day with festive colored pancakes! Really easy to do- just separate your batter into 3 bowls and add food coloring.

After some needed rest we made some handprint masks. They turned out really cute! I am thinking I will read her bedtime stories tomorrow with my mask- just to spice things up a bit.

I made green,yellow, and purple cupcakes (for the super easy recipe check out Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas blog). I thought it would be fun to use our doughnut pan. They were our own little spin on kingcakes- and instead of adding a little plastic trinket inside the cake, we added strawberries in the center. I think I am going to pull out this doughnut pan more often! Doughnut shaped cookies, brownies, ginormous ice cubes, muffin-tin lunches, strawberry shortcake.. I have officially made myself hungry!

The last Mardi Gras-ish thing we did was had our own mini parade in our basement. Boo decorated her pink little tikes car and scooter with streamers, and we paraded around and made up a Mardi Gras song. It was the highlight of my day! And of course my daughter draws in her journal that the highlight of her day was taking a bath… go figure!

I hope you all had a wonderful Mardi Gras day with your family.
Happy Teaching!