Get Ready for the Carnival Season!

One of the great things about growing up in New Orleans was the carnival season, the Mardi Gras season.

Starting on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, the King Cake parties began.

So you can have a lovely Twelfth Night party on the 5th, then keep going on the 6th with the first King Cake!

The King Cake is a ring cake - really, more like a bread - that has a tiny baby doll hidden in it. It represents the Christ Child. In pre-Christian times, it was a bean in there. You can bake the bean, but if you use a plastic baby, then add it from the bottom after it's cooked. Use any coffee-cake-bread ring cake dough you want. Sprinkle Mardi Gras colored sugars on top (gold, green, purple).

The cake is cut into slices. You WANT the slice with the baby in it! Then YOU hold the next King Cake party!

And on and on.

We used to call our city "The Crescent City," due to the big loop the Mississippi River throws, and "The City that Care Forgot." Now, I just call it sad. All my people are gone -- and the city is so changed. I keep toying with the idea of flying there and driving around my old neighborhood, but I don't think my mind could take it. Might go loco.

But we must all just KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON, frens!

Here is a tag that would make a cute birthday bookmark - punch a hole and put a pretty ribbon or tassel in there.

I have a new printable collage sheet of them up in the Etsy shoppe. Read about how to save this tag over on the right sidebar!!!