MARDI GRAS!

I survived Mardi Gras yesterday :) Haha. Here are some pictures to help document my day. Mary, Jamie, and I left our house around 2pm and headed into the French Quarter for the day. We didn't end up seeing any parades (they started at 8am in a different part of town), but we saw many awesome costumes and crazy people!

Here's Mary and I in Jackson Square amongst TONS of people. We both worked really hard on Monday night to finish sewing our costumes!

Here's evidence of my first ever celebrity encounter! Below is a picture of us with Ken Jeong, most recently in "The Hangover" and "Couples Retreat." We just happened to stop into a bar where he was casually having a drink. A guy pointed him out to us -- he was super nice and willing to take a picture with us.

Here's a picture of my awesome face paint that I got for free! I walked by this woman sitting on the ground painting her own face, and I commented: "Wow, that looks great! I can't believe you can paint your own face like that." She said she was just bored because she didn't have a line of customers, and that she would paint mine for free because it might help her draw a line. How awesome! She ended up painting Jamie and Mary's faces too for $2 each.

Soon after we got our faces painted, we must have been looking really cute, because as we were walking down Bourbon Street, a bouncer at a bar yelled to us and invited us up onto a balcony that had a $75 cover for FREE!! (Free was the magic word of the day -- we were so cheap, we packed PB&J in our purses for dinner, haha!) Anyway, here's a picture from the balcony on Bourbon. People people everywhere!

So many elaborate costumes and balcony decorations!

Here's another view of all the people in Jackson Square. Hundreds and hundreds of people everywhere! It surprisingly wasn't as raunchy or scary as I was expecting -- of course there were crazy people flashing their bodies for beads and other souvenirs. However, us girls are obviously WAY classier than that, so we resorted to bartering for souvenirs. I earned Jamie some sunflower beads by trading some awesome doll-faced beads I already had with a drunk old man. Mary got me the feather boa by hanging upside-down from a street lamp (haha). We even tried to trade our PB&J's at one point, with a choice of SunChips or Cheetos. It was fun to see what prizes we could get by being witty as opposed to trashy :)

I couldn't get over the age span of people out celebrating. Young and old alike were dressed up and partying down for the occasion.

This reminded me of a Halloween costume that may or may not have came to my parents' house one year. "SpongeBob! I hate SpongeBob!"

Another cool costume -- Pee Wee Herman.

Alright, I am out of time at the coffee shop! I will post more ASAP!