Cinco de Mayo Celebration!

Cinco de Mayo (fifth of May) is right around the corner. Celebrate Cinco de Mayo this year with a bit of Mardi Gras sparkle by adding beads, costumes and red hot lights to your party!

Cinco de Mayo celebrates the day Mexican forces overcame the French army. Even though it is not the true Independence day for Mexico (September 16th), Cinco de Mayo is widely celebrated in Mexico and here in the United States by people regardless of their nationality. This day has become a holiday to celebrate Mexican culture and the wonderful food and beverages it encompasses! Restaurants and homes will be filled with margaritas and scents of simmering Mexican dishes for Cinco de Mayo. Mix up a batch of your favorite margaritas, on the rocks or frozen, and invite some friends over to celebrate.

MardiGrasOutlet.com offers lots of fun styles of Fiesta inspired Mardi Gras beads. Beaded necklaces with Cinco de Mayo medallions, metallic chili peppers, bobbling cactus and even fat tequila worms are some of the fun Mardi Gras style beads available. Hand out these fun Margarita glass beads to all your guest to get everyone in a festive mood.

Want to really get in the spirit of Cinco de Mayo? Dress up in a brightly colored Cha Cha girl costume. This is sure to be a crowd pleaser!

And no party would be complete with out twinkling chili pepper lights. Wrap porch columns, door frame or an arbor with these fun red pepper lights.  Another option is to run them down the center of your buffet food table. Layer sparkly metallic chili pepper beads on top and the table with really sparkle.

Celebrate Cinco de Mayo your way and enjoy the day!

Pretty Carnival Masks for Prom

Looking for a fabulous mask to wear to a Venetian or Carnival themed Prom or Dance? Check out all the beautiful styles of masks at  Mardi Gras Outlet. These masks also make wonderful table decorations. Scatter pretty paper mache or feather mask along the table for added glamour. With all the styles available, you are sure to find the perfect color match for your prom dress and one for your date too! Don't forget  to add the matching feather boa!

Crawfish Door Decoration

Finding door decorations or wreaths for a Crawfish boil or Cajun parties can be difficult. With a little creativity, crawfish themed products can be used in new ways to decorate the door for a Crawfish themed event. The jumbo felt crawfish hat is large plush crawfish hat that has an opening on the bottom so you can wear it on your head as shown. It is a big crawfish!

This plush crawfish is too cute to just wear as a hat. It also makes a great door decoration or centerpiece on a table for a crawfish boil. The head opening of the crawfish body will need to be stuffed with a filler. Newspaper, plastic grocery bags or tissue all work well.  The large front claws and tail can also be stuffed to add more dimension and stability to the body of the crawfish. To do this make small slits in the lining of the hat and fill each body part with additional stuffing.

Then fill the body of the crawfish (the head opening) with filler, too. Stuffed this way, this crawfish could be used as the centerpiece on a table. This jumbo crawfish on the table would make an impressive centerpiece. He measures 30" long and over 20" wide.

To use this crawfish for a door decoration, use a large safety pin to clip the two large front claws together. Thread the pin in and out of the fabric to get a good hold. Hide the pin on the back side of the fabric so it will not show when hung on the door. This safety pin becomes your hook to hang the crawfish from the door.

What a warm welcome for your crawfish boil guests! Being greeted at the door by a smiling crawfish is sure to bring a smile to their faces.

Hurricane Party

Want to recreate  the experience of Mardi Gras in New Orleans? Serving a fruity hurricane drink cocktail in the traditional style hurricane glass is a great way to do that.

Bring New Orleans home with a Hurricane Party!  

Hurricanes are serious business for people living along the Gulf coast, especially New Orleans. The weather phenomena can do serious damage. But visitors to New Orleans, think of hurricanes in a friendly way. The hurricane cocktail is one of the most recognizable drinks in New Orleans. Served in a specific curvy hurricane glass, it is a universal symbol of frivolity and fun in the French Quarter.

This fruity red, rum based cocktail is credited to the bar, Pat O'Brien's. Pat O's, as the locals call it, is a New Orleans staple. No trip to the city would be complete with out a visit to Pat O's for a hurricane cocktail. 

The folk tale behind this drink says that servers at Pat O'Brien's created this rum based cocktail during World War II.  During the war, popular whiskey and scotch were harder to come by. Local liquor dealers forced bars to buy large quantities of readily available rum to be able to purchase  the more popular liquors. This left bar owners with additional cases of rum and no one drinking it. So Pat O'Brien's created this fruity red cocktail to utilize the left over rum. The addition of a glass shaped like a hurricane lantern created the hurricane drink as we know it today.

Good times in New Orleans usually start with a hurricane cocktail. But don't let your location stop the fun for you.  Let the good times roll where ever you live with your own Hurricane Party. Custom hurricane party invitations set a festive mood for a hurricane party.  Invite friends over for a cocktails and conversations with this bright hurricane glass invitation. There are additional styles of hurricane glass invitations available at MardiGrasOutlet.com. Plastic hurricane glasses will really personalize the drinks at this party. These acrylic hurricane glasses come in assorted colors or clear plastic. Send the glasses home with your guests as a party favor just like they do at Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans. Everyone gets to take home a piece of the fun! You will love to use these dishwasher-safe glasses over and over again -- recreating the fun of Bourbon Street each time!

Want the real Hurricane Cocktail? Don't forget the Pat O'Brien's Hurricane Mix.  This package of powdered hurricane mix makes 1 gallon (32 servings) of the world famous Pat O'Brien's Brand Hurricane Cocktail. All you need to add is water, ice and as much or little rum as you like. The pre-made Hurricane cocktails will keep the bar duties simple. You can focus on having fun and enjoying your guests instead of mixing custom cocktails all night long.

Serve this hurricane cocktail in hurricane glasses with a garnish on the rim. Slices of fruit like oranges, lemons or berries compliment the fruity mix. Add  frozen maraschino cherries to the bottom of the glasses to keep your drink cool and add another layer of taste.  For added flair, top off the glass with a paper drink umbrella and tall plastic palm tree stirrer . This hurricane drink just looks fun! Your guests will be coming back for seconds of this delicious cocktail!

Decorate for this Hurricane party with a New Orleans theme. Layer New Orleans' street signs and Jazz horns along the center of the table along with some sparkling hurricane lanterns filled with candles. Order extra packages of the hurricane mix to display on the tables, too. The Pat O'Brien's logo and glass on the package add real New Orleans' charm. Scatter Mardi Gras beads on the tables and bar area so guests can help themselves to the beads. Mardi Gras paper cocktail napkins complete the look.

 Invite your friends over, pass out some Mardi Gras beads, put on a festive Mardi Gras mask, serve up the Hurricane cocktails and pretend your hidden away in a New Orleans courtyard. Your Hurricane Party is sure to be a hit! . Enjoy!

Crawdad hole

"A beautiful day for you to get a line and me to get a pole.

Let's go down to the crawdad hole!"

I stumbled upon this crawfish hole in a field the other day. It is such a simple, but amazing structure for a crawfish to build for a home. Seeing the crawfish hole reminded me of the legend of the crawfish, a folk legend surrounding the crawfish and why he lives in a mud tower home. Here is the folk tale for you to enjoy!

 

The Legend of the Crawfish

Part of Louisiana's spice is the folklore of our culture. According to legend, crawfish and the mud towers that mark their home originated in the bayou as follows:

Nova Scotia Lobster followed the Acadian people on their way to settle in Louisiana. The lobsters grew tired and smaller and smaller along the journey, so that when they arrived in Acadiana they were only 4 to 5 inches long. Messieurs les Ecrevisses were very friendly with the settlers and did everything the settlers did. So when the Acadians built mud chimneys for their homes, the crawfish did the same. However, the crawfish were so tired they couldn't complete their homes. They just crawled right into the chimneys and set up house.

The Legend of the Crawfish souvenir packet is a great little piece of Louisiana Cajun culture.  The packet includes a bagged red plastic crawfish with card that tells the folk legend surrounding the Louisiana Crawfish and his mud tower home. What a great souvenir for gift baskets, visitors to the south or home sick southerners far from their beloved crawfish!

Mesh Crawfish Sacks make fun Crawfish Boil Centerpieces!

Traditionally, live crawfish come in bright red mesh sacks. These mesh sacks allow the crawfish to breath and keeps them from pinching us. Crawfish sacks can also be used for some creative inexpensive decorations for a crawfish boil. Crawfish boils are usually messy and there are lots of tables involved. Who wants to put out a nice vase and fancy centerpiece only to have to hose it off later to get it clean? Now we have a great alternative! These festive bright red crawfish sacks come in a variety of sizes and are very inexpensive. I have come up with a few different options for using them to decorate. Check out the ideas below!

Because newspaper is often used in place of table covers at crawfish boils, this variation uses plain old newspaper to stuff the sacks. Add swirls of newspaper at the top and you have an instant centerpiece that you could afford to do on every table for a crawfish boil of any size.

Stuff the crawfish sacks with colorful produce from the supermarket. We used the same things that are normally boiled with crawfish. Lemons, corn, potatoes and garlic add color and life to the table. They are not only reusable, but also inexpensive to buy. I really love the way the corn looks. Opening the ends of the ears of corn makes them look like a bouquet of blooming flowers. Best of all, after the crawfish boil is over you can use the left over crawfish tails and the all this produce from your centerpiece to make a big pot of crawfish and corn soup. Yummy!

A nice option for topping your crawfish boil tables is this fun Kraft Louisiana/Crawfish paper that comes in rolls that are 24" wide by 50 feet long. Roll this paper down the center of the tables as a table runner. The kraft colored paper coordinates well with the red crawfish sacks. This time these red crawfish sacks are stuffed with coordinating Louisiana/Crawfish tissue paper. Louisiana Gift tags and small kraft colored lunch sacks add to the Louisiana/Crawfish theme.  All these products work together to create another fun, festive centerpiece that is not only easy to put together, but also inexpensive.

Visit MardiGrasOutlet.com to buy these versatile crawfish sacks and the other Crawfish Boil products for your next boil!

Here are even more crawfish centerpiece ideas to inspire you:

Crawfish Balloon Decoration

Cajun Crawfish Centerpiece Ideas

Crawfish Boil Tablescape

Crawfish Door Decoration

Crawfish Boil Centerpiece with Bobble Crawfish