Sproutwood Fairie Festival

Fairie Festival?  Yes!   The girls were super excited to go to the Sproutwood Fairie Festival.  We read about it in the local paper and they were dying to go!  It ended up that I was beginning to get what turned out to be a "flu-like virus" and started feeling bad the day of the festival, but at the last minute I decided that we couldn't miss it.  Put on your wings!  We all dressed up in our very fairy-est costumes and went for the adternoon.

Sproutwood is a really neat CSA farm just over the Pennsylvania border from us.  They have all kinds of educational programs and just fun programs and two big festivals each year.  There were three different stages with very interesting music.  There's lots of audience participation too!  Two ogres (I think) chased the girls for one song.  There was a green goblin-lady walking around with her pet insect.  The girls got to make fairie wands.  They had a fairie tea party with purple tea of some sort and lavender cookies.  

We also went on a magical journey into the fairie realm where people, and fairies I suppose, had built fairie houses to attract the fairies back each year.  I honestly don't know how much that the lady in charge was telling us was playing along or real to her.  And the girls came away convinced that fairies live near ourhouse because  we have lots of skunk cabbage and thorns, which apparently are signs of fairies.  The girls even built a fairie house and were told that the fairies would then recognize their scent on a fairie house if they built one on our property and will

trust it to be safe.

There were tons of things to do at the festival.  The girls wrote letters to the fairies at the fairie post.  And we got to view sunspots through the observatory telescope.  This place has a little of everything!

Including snakes.  And lizards.  And tortoises.  Which the girls got to pet and wear.  There was surprisingly little adult supervision with the reptiles.  

And who doesn't love a rope swing? Again with little to no supervision.  But like the reptiles, it seemed to be ok here.  Which was very surprising and nice.  

We stayed until the festival closed that evening and still the girls didn't want to leave.  It was an awesome location and an awesome festival.  I don't know how crowded it would be if we'd gone on Saturday instead of Friday, but the crowd was perfect!  Just enough people to see all the cool costumes and feel like the place was filled, but not so many that you had to wait in line for things or feel crowded.  

The girls already made me promise to take them next year and they're already planning their costumes.  I can't wait myself!