Contented Chaos: Forest Fair

I've written plenty about Forest Fair in the past, so I'm sure all my readers (yes you, Dave!) are waiting for this year's rundown of FF fun.

Friday, July 1, was the first day of the Fair this year and it was a rainy, cloudy, chilly day. Friday is always a good day to hit the booths because it usually isn't crowded and everyone has full inventories. And the weather meant even fewer Friday fair-goers. I scored a new utensil crock in my favorite color scheme from Irwin Pottery (Alaskan Summer 2, if you must know) and I also worked the t-shirt shack that evening. Always a highlight of my fair experience.

Moriah and Susannah decided to make and sell duct tape wallets and recycled juice pouch totes again. This year, though, because they were 13, they had to buy a 'real' booth space. It was at a greatly reduced rate, thankfully, and was at the very end of one of the newer loops at the fair. Their spot made them nervous about whether or not people would actually come all the way down the loop, but it ended up being just fine and they saw plenty of traffic. They made almost $500, too. Not a bad haul for a couple of teenagers.

At some point on Friday, a friend of theirs took a card, wrote her name on it and taped it to the canopy. Then another friend wrote + and her name and taped it up. Then another friend and another...and so on and so on (isn't that from a shampoo commercial?). Anyway. Turns out that even perfect strangers were intrigued by this and wanted to add their names to the growing collection. By the end of the fair, 50 people had taped up their names. Ah, the randomness of Forest Fair. Not nearly as random as the weird couple walking around dressed as rabbits and carrying a rabbit 'baby' (hand puppet) or the guy wearing only a Speedo and a cowboy hat (ewww), but random enough.

Saturday morning was the Forest Fair parade and as usual, over half of our family was involved in some way. Jim wore a lovely fish and marched proudly with the Lions Club.

The little girls dressed as princesses (Ariel and Cinderella) and marched with their Summer Playground buddies. Oh, what a thrill to throw candy to the masses!

And, as usual, Samuel donned the ever-so-tasteful (or tasty?) ice cream suit to ride on the Ice Cream Shop's float.

We enjoyed great food (DJ's cookies, cheesy spinach bread and corn fritters for me!), great music (Melissa Mitchell, Rogues and Wenches and Hobo Jim) and plenty of chances for little girls to improve their hula hooping skills.