Prairie Fest 2011 Recap

It’s been over a week since Prairie Fest happened and I’m just now getting around to blogging it, but here it is! It was a gorgeous day, albeit windy, but still beautiful. Storms plagued the evening, but we were there during the pre-lunch hours so it was great during that time. The place was crawling by the time we arrived and got even busier by the time we ran back after lunch to pick up some free plants from a scout troop that we forgot to pick up when we left the first time.

Lots of dogs out and about in the park. The fest was set up primarily along the playground area of the preserve with visitors able to walk down the path to where the plein aire painters were working.

Some day I might feel comfortable enough to do this! I have enough trouble not working from a photograph!

There were more vendors than I was expecting but I feel like most of the vendors were mostly informational rather than artsy. These birds were from Birdlink Sanctuary a non-profit rescue. I think they try to adopt out some of the birds but many of them are too disabled to adopt out so of course there is the upkeep in taking care of these birds.

I’m wanting one of those shirts in the top photo. They were worn by some Tri-Beta students from TCU. I might have to dig around the internet for one for myself!

The folks from Log Cabin Village helped me remember how to make tissue paper flowers. I will have to make a string of them sometime.

I really liked this group, Don’t Forget to Feed Me a food bank for pets. Of course! Pets are usually the first to go if there isn’t money, so this is a great thing they are doing for those in need.

I loved the fact that there were a lot of green information sources there from clean energy (solar tubes) to bug traps and the availability of refilling your water. Though, there were still water bottles around, there were also recycling boxes, too.

I’m not sure what the future of the the fest is, but I do know that parking could get worse and much more crazy if it grew. I hope they add more art vendors in the future, though I felt the difficulty in selling there. I had my eye on a crochet purse and the price wasn’t terrible at all, I just talked myself out of it because a: I could do it myself and b: I didn’t need one at the moment. The artist made a comment about it possibly being cheaper at the end of the day, but I wanted to tell her that wasn’t the point, that it was awesome and many of her items were great but that I had other reasons. I really understood how hard it could be going to all of these shows and having people picking over your work and asking for it for cheaper. We’re just so caught up on buying things for cheap and not for the quality or talent of the individual. Not everything is made for a big box store.

Anyway, that’s another rant!

I hope next year is even better!