Cajun culture forms the basis for a great party theme, because Cajuns love a party and have a distinctive style of food, drink, music and d#xE9;cor. You can shoot for a swamp-cabin theme with alligators, Tabasco sauce bottles and Spanish moss; or use old New Orleans as inspiration with masks, beads and fleur-de-lis decorations.
Room
Hang a large rubber alligator from the ceiling, and mimic open rafters with bands of brown, red and green streamers from the midpoint of the ceiling to the walls. Miniature crabs, shrimp and crawfish also make great wall decorations scattered in a strip or triangle of fishing net nailed on the wall. For a fancier theme, use gold, black, purple and green feather boas draped on windowsills, mantels and over chairs. Plastic Mardi Gras masks are an inexpensive decorating tool that you can pin to fabrics and stick to walls in numbers to add glamor to your decorations. For a zydeco Cajun d#xE9;cor style, hang old washboards and other country musical instruments like mandolins, spoons, fiddles and drums on the walls.
Tables
Add chili-pepper confetti to tables and use wire-stemmed artificial peppers as napkin rings. Set ceramic or plastic alligators near each plate, or peeking out from the decorations. Accent clear votives with wide, printed fleur-de-lis ribbon, or stick fun crawfish, sunshine and alligator stickers on glass jars holding red candles. For flashier centerpieces, fill hurricane glasses with Mardi Gras beads; for down-home Cajun style, pile bowls or vases with trailing Spanish moss. Use woven baskets to display Louisiana plants and flowers, like dogwood, magnolia, spider lilies and moss. If you can get them, cypress, beech or willow branches can make an authentic Cajun swamp-style centerpiece to which you can attach ribbons, candles, flowers, moss, beads and little creatures.
Accents
Some traditional Cajun foods include limes, lemons, garlic, crawfish, shrimp and of course almost every kind of pepper. Use dried, fresh or artificial versions of these foods to spice up tables, lying loose or tied into garlands. If you can find large quantities of any of them, so much the better. With a little effort and some craft wire, wrap poles, railings, gates and mantels with strings of peppers or crawfish for an over-the-top Cajun decorating scheme. It's also hard to go wrong with Tabasco-sauce decorations; you can find coasters, trays, light strings and magnets branded with the little red-and-green bottles. For a fun Cajun addition to your party, print out Cajun words and phrases in attractive fonts with their matching definitions, and use on walls, tables or anywhere you want to encourage guests to linger.
Tags: party, decorations, Cajun style, Mardi Gras, Spanish moss
