Celebrate Mardi Gras Right at Home

Sure, you might not be on Bourbon Street with float-filled parades and people wearing tons of colorful beads, but you can still celebrate Mardi Gras with five essentials. The Seattle Times reports that there are five things every Mardi Gras party-host needs: music, masks, costumes, beads and king cake.

Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, is on Tuesday, February 24. Get out your purple, gold and green decorations and prepare for an at-home celebration. Party accessories can be purchased online at mardigrasday.com, a website started by Carol Blake in Louisiana.

The Seattle Time suggests keeping costs down by serving appetizers instead of a full meal and a themed drink as a way to save on alcohol.

A Mardi Gras must-have is the King Cake, a coffee cake baked with a small plastic baby inside. Tradition says that whoever finds the baby will be the host of the next King Cake party. The King Cake is a religious symbol that honors the Kings who came in search for the newborn king, Jesus, according to the Examiner. The cake features the three Mardi Gras colors, gold, green and purple. The colors represent power, faith and justice, respectively.

Party hosts can have their very own King Cake delivered to them at home or they can find a recipe on Blake's website, mardigrasday.com.