Ideas For a Mardi Gras Party Magic Valley Style

Mardi Gras is an amazing holiday we should all celebrate!  I'm down for a party for any reason possible!  More on how you can Mardi Gras this year Magic Valley style after the jump!

Here are a couple of ideas for Mardi Gras, both local and some you can just do at home:

• 360's Main Street Bistro: It's local and the food is authentic and GREAT!
• Attend the Fat Tuesday Empty Bowls Dinner Fundraiser on Tuesday, March 8th at the Historic Ballroom. Dinner is served and it's a cool event that helps out the community.  Get more info HERE.
• Woody's Mini Gras: When I first moved here, I was told there was a Mardi Gras Parade.  To my excitement, I attended, only to find it was quite MINI!  But with a beer in hand, I still had fun.  Find out more about Woody's Mini Gras HERE!
• Bake a king cake: King cakes look like unicorn poop, but a lot of people like the sugary treat. Seriously there are like 2 cups of sugar in one of these babies. Allrecipes delivers on the recipe front.
• Listen to some dixieland jazz: Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and W.C. Handy are just a few stalwarts of the genre. Click these YouTube links and be transported into a dustbowl-era Mardi Gras parade. You can’t do worse than starting with this gallery of classics (if the footage looks black-and-white, it’s probably the good stuff).
• Hold a Masquerade: Go to a party store and buy a bunch of masks. Spend the night pretending you are at a fancy plantation soiree. Make up a fake name for yourself like “Lurlene Beauregard Lee and speak in a cajun drawl.
• Watch a Mardi Gras-themed flick: In Abbot and Costello Go to Mars, the duo mistake a Mardi Gras celebration for Mars after their spaceship malfunctions and sends them to New Orleans. The trippy Easy Rider features a scene where the “heroes” get high in a New Orleans cemetary during the festivities. IMDB tells me a movie starring Carmen Elektra was made last year called Mardi Gras in which, “A group of college buddies sow their wild oats in New Orleans.” Sounds promising!
• Hold a party where you hand out beads to a woman when she expresses her intelligence: Self-explanatory.  THIS IS HIGHLY SUGGESTED! :-)