Happy Fat Tuesday!

It's hard to believe that Ash Wednesday is just about here--even though it is soooooooo late this year. It always seems to sneak up on me! Anyway, that means that today is Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras. My HS freshman daughter's French 2 class is celebrating Mardi Gras today at school. She took on the "culinary expert" role for her group's project (another group member is researching the history of French Mardi Gras traditions, and someone else is reporting on some other aspect which completely escapes me at the moment!). Her assignment: research and bake a King Cake to share with the class. She and I worked together last night to bake the cake and had such a blast doing it! The Gulf Coast-style King Cake that we made is a cinnamon-filled coffee ring, and while it baked, the house smelled heavenly!! She was so pleased with how it turned out. We cut it into small wedges for sampling (as well as to make it easier for her to carry it to school). After we'd cut 36 wedges for sharing and completely filled the plastic container for transporting them, we still had about 1/4 of the cake left. Guess what we're having for dessert after supper tonight!!!!

We were so thrilled, we just had to take pictures (even though the post-sunset lighting conditions in the kitchen were less than ideal). Here's what it looked like:

Yum!! The recipe my daughter found (you can find it HERE) was really simple--it's based on Pillsbury Crescent Rolls!! I think we'll be adding this recipe to the "keepers" file ;).

And while I'm sharing non-crafting photos, I thought I'd share a photo of some visitors we had last week. Last week I noticed that a lot of deer have been hanging out in our neighborhood. One morning I saw about 20 deer amble down our road just before sunrise. Just before bedtime that evening, we spotted five or six deer bedding down in our neighbors' yard. I was stunned the next morning to see them still there, right out in the open! I grabbed my camera for this shot, taken right through the sidelight windows of our front door, not quite 30 feet away. The sun was just starting to come up, and they were just getting ready to move on.

Well, I have tons to do today, so I've got to be moving along. I hope that my daughter's Mardi Gras celebration goes well today--and I hope that you have a fabulous day yourself!

Thanks for visiting!
Emily