Summer Festivals Scrapbook Album
This summer J and I are doing a lot of the stay-cation thing, and I wanted to find a special way to document our adventures. My headaches are making travel really difficult right now, so the best option was to spend the summer exploring the Mitten State. After thinking about the best way to check out what Michigan has to offer, I decided on summer festivals.
Festivals are a great excuse to check out places we've never been before, and as there are always scheduled events it's much easier to just get in the car and go. They make for great half-day trips and are local enough that if I'm not feeling awesome, we can just pack up and head home.
I'm documenting our summer festival adventures in their own album. Inspired by the latest Awesome Ladies Feminist Scrapbook Challenge I picked out a 6x8 black cloth Studio Calico Handbook album and I've been creating a double page spread in the album for each festival we hit up. I've been trying to take some good photos at each of the events, but they're not always under the best conditions -- so I've also been doing my best to pick up some memorabilia at the events to include as well.
We started festival season in early May with the Holland, Michigan Tulip Time Festival, which celebrated the city's Dutch heritage. The star of the festival was the working Dutch windmill that was imported after WWII. We toured the windmill and learned about the kick-ass lady miller who makes delicious bespoke flour.
A few weeks later we walked down the street to the East Lansing Art Festival, which really kicks off the summer here in town. They close off the down-town area and artists from throughout the Midwest come to show/share/sell their art to the community. Across the street on the MSU campus, a concurrent festival -- The East Lansing Arts and Crafts Festival was also taking place. They're a great pair and it was the absolute perfect day to walk through town and take in East Lansing.
For Memorial Day weekend we drove into South Lansing and went to the Fiesta at the Cristo Rey Church. It was so wonderful; fresh Mexican food (homemade gorditas what?), local businesses, and a ton of great entertainment. We wound up staying extra long just to watch the local middle school's performance of The Lion King.
The latest festival we've attended is the World's Longest Breakfast Table in Battle Creek, Michigan. This one was also totally adorable. Battle Creek (home to a couple of the big cereal corporations) closes the main drag in town. They set up picnic tables along the middle of the road all the way through the town. There are cereal stations set up every couple hundred feet with free bowls of cereal and milk-pouring volunteers. Huge family presence with lots of community members and live music.
There are a bunch more pictures of the album in the gallery above. I go into a more detail on the construction and structure of the album in this week's Awesome Ladies Feminist Scrapbook Challenge. I'll be adding more pages to this album throughout the summer and I'll update this page as I can.
Links to Michigan Festivals we've made it to in 2016:
Tulip Time - Holland, MI
East Lansing Art Festival - East Lansing, MI
CristoRey Fiesta - Lansing, MI
Cereal Festival & World's Longest Breakfast Table - Battle Creek, MI
Here are a few on the maybe list for the rest of the summer:
Tall Ships - Bay City, MI
Grand Haven Coast Guard Festival - Grand Haven, MI
Great Lakes Folk Fest - East Lansing, MI
Michigan Chicken Wing Festival - Lansing, MI