P.S. Today is also Mardi Gras, aka Fat Tuesday, aka Pancake Day! Eat pancakes in honor of the ancient Christians who had to use up their eggs, milk and butter before Lent, which starts tomorrow. As a nod to them and their fast, my own family will give up pancakes for the Lenten season. No pancakes (or their cousins, waffles and crepes) will pass our lips until we eat them anew on Easter morning.
My own personal fast will also include chocolate (every year, gotta give that up again!) and … yelling. Yes, yelling.
Lord Herndon is going to give up hitting the snooze button. Everyone has their own challenges!
If you are going to give up something for Lent, what is it?
Today is a day to celebrate and eat heartily before the fast of Lent. I wanted to make jambalaya, but with a husband who doesn’t like shrimp, what do you do? So that’s how it came to be that we had pancakes for dinner. And sausage and fresh fruit. But still, it was pancakes.
We also celebrated today! I did a very big, very involved project. It wasn’t hard, but with my kids, it took … planning. And patience.
Okay, now I am going to stick my foot in my mouth. This always happens to me! I complain about something or make fun of something, and then I end up doing it.
It used to drive me crazy seeing intricate, step-by-step photos of something that I could easily have read the directions for and figured out for myself. I mean, Pioneer Woman used to make me want to bang my head against the monitor when I would read her recipes. You have to scroll through her entire story and every. single. picture. Do I really need to see her dumping in each spice? I just want to see the recipe! No matter how artsy the photo of her teaspoon of vanilla may look.
And now look what I am about to do. My first tutorial. Step-by-step, intricate photos of the Making of a Mardi Gras Mask.
Step One: Draw your mask onto thin foam and cut out. Warning: Don’t make the eye holes or the nose shape too big. Two mistakes learned from.
It works best to trace and cut half of it, then fold it over and trace the other half so that it is symmetrical.
Step Two: Paint your mask.
