Butter and Bags

I had heard about this so called 'butter princess' last year. But never did find out where it was. This year it was my number one priority.  I knew it was a princess carved out of butter and I was envisioning a WHOLE princess with a pretty ball gown and all.


Instead I just saw the heads... there were about eight different faces carved and it was still rather impressive, even if it wasn't the whole body of a princess. They carve the faces from 90 POUNDS of butter, it takes about 6-8 hours and the princesses get to keep their head when the fair is over. Now what they are going to do with about 90 lbs of butter is a mystery to me, but I'm pretty sure they will never need to buy butter again. Heck I don't even buy butter, oh wait - I don't eat butter :-P

There were many booths throughout the fair that were giving away bags, there were a few plastic bags to put flyer's and advertisements in, but most of them were reusable bags (which we keep in our cars to use when we go to the grocery store - yes we are very GREEN!). Last year we got a blue UCare bag... and what I remember was just walking by some place and getting handed a bag.  This year I was seeing the purple University of St. Thomas bags again. But unlike last year, THAT was the bag I wanted!  Since Kyle has just applied to this college, I wanted to support him by getting a bag. Problem was, and this could have been because it was the last two days of the fair, but they were only handing out bags at certain times. We finally found the booth at about 11:00am and they weren't handing out bags again until 12:30. SOOO we booked it to the pet building and ran through the Eco building before making it back to the education building at 12:15... to find a nice BIG line! But we waited in line, and we ALL (that's four) got our own purple University of St. Thomas bag!

I just love this picture of Kyle, he looks like such a goof ball.


View from the bus ride back to our car:


Thanks for reading!
________________________________________________________

Farm life at the Fair

One of my favorite things about the State Fair, is the animals!!!!  You can't tell me, no matter how long you've been around animals, that they just don't seem to draw you in. Even Kyle, childhood farm boy, enjoys all the animals at the fair.

First stop:


The Miracle of Birth barn is the first thing you see coming in the front gates. So it's usually our first stop. And it's rather busy - even busier when a birth is taking place. Kyle's dad couldn't believe there were bleachers set up for people to watch a birth take place, LOL.  I'm not so interested in the actual birth as I am all the cute little BABIES!!!!  Oh my gosh they are so cute!

There are the little baby piglets, that lay next to the big fat mama under the heating lamps.
 

The the cutesty little lambs, they are so cute too!
 

And my absolute favorite... the baby ducks!!! AHHH they are just the cutest things EVER! Eating and drinking, eating and drinking. LOL we stood and watching these two baby ducks eat and drink over and over for a good 3 or so minutes.
   

They also had bunnies, I love the little floppy eared ones.


As we left the miracle of birth barn we couldn't help but notice this 'chia cow'.  "Just add water!"
   

After walking around a bit we came across a little lesson going on about an eagle. It was pretty cool seeing the eagle up this close. So beautiful.
   

Across from the eagle seminar was this reptile stand. I guess they had more guys like this one inside the booth, but I chose to just enjoy the free sample.


After we had pretty much completed the rounds at the fair, we stopped into the horse barn. Unfortunately, we mainly just got to look at horse butts, but this guy was facing us.


We made our way through the barn to the arena where we rested our feet and enjoyed a little square dance show and a guy showing off his horses.
 

The last animal building we went to see was the Sheep and Poultry building. Although I'm not really shure why they give it that name since it is filled with GOATS :-)  There were a few poultry animals off to the side, but mainly goats. Which I LOVE! They are also just so darn cute! They kind of remind me of harpo, just nibbiling away at the grass.
     

This one was very fond of Kyle's shorts.


It was fun watching them ram their heads together... being playful.


The poultry were a little harder to get good pictures of, since they were all in square cages. Kyle had fun getting them to talk to him. There were chickens, hens, geese, ducks, turkeys....
 

That pretty much concluded are animal journey. Until next time...

Home again, home again, jiggidy jigg.


Thanks for reading!
________________________________________________________

The State Fair

**I decided to add a little more text after the fact :-) I posted this in a hurry yesterday**


Yesterday we went to the state fair, boy did we do some walking!!!  This is the second time we've attended the Minnesota State Fair, and if you remember last year - we tried a lot of interesting food - 'fried on a stick' is what they're famous for.  This year wasn't any different, except that we had family with us, so we were able to try/share more!!!

We had cheese curds like last year - a must! Although they tasted greesier than I remember, but still one of my favorites!  I also had to get the dippin dots. Yes I know these aren't really unique to the state fair, since you can now buy them in the grocery store, but they're still fun to get. As Kyle pointed out, it's been the ice cream of the future for years..???? hmmmm


We also had these again:


Pig Lickers, you ask? They are chocolate covered bacon...




Now before you go 'eewwww', don't bash it til you try it. It's probably my favorite thing (even more than the cheese curds and dippin' dots) It's got a sweet salty taste to it that compliments each other nicely. They are served cold, so it really just tastes like a chocolate covered pretzel.

We also tried these:




I'm guessing they are pig cheeks, however they chop that...???  We were not impressed at all with these and ended up throwing a whole one away because they just were NOT good! It tasted like we were biting into a huge hunk of fat... really chewing and I couldn't taste any peach glaze at all.

And one of Nancy's favorites:

The kettle corn, we all shared since they put so much in the bag she couldn't close it til we ate some. But it was straight out of the kettle and nice and warm, mmmmm good!

Kyle had alligator on a stick. Not really anything exciting. It tasted just like a brawtworst (and looks like one too) He's dipping it in some hot sauce here. We decided if we go back next year we'll get the alligator bites or something like that... it's the battered version that looks like fried calamari. (right next door was ostrich on a stick, which I'd like to try next time)


Nancy had chocolate covered key lime pie. We had to walk a ways back since we saw this stand at the beginning of our day.  She said it really wasn't worth the walk back, but I didn't taste it (not a fan of key lime pie) so not sure what it tasted like.


Nancy also got some sweet potato fries, which were mmmmmm good!!! The top ones were the best, because toward the bottom they ended up being just a big greesy mess. The white fluff is whip cream which was so good as well.


On the way out, we kept seeing people with these, which smelled so good as they walked by.  So we had to try them,  battered potatoes with ranch and cheese sauce!!! Kyle said it was probably his favorite of the day.


Boy were our feet tired from walking all over and after eating all that JUNK, I'm so glad we worked out that morning! We were all in the mood for something healthy for dinner, lol.

We stood and watched some of the rides for a while. Fun to watch them go up and down, round and round. waiting to see if anyone puked, lol.  We didn't ride any, but I had fun taking pictures of them with all their bright colors. A fair's not a fair without the carnies!!


Next up: State Fair Animals!!!! (the live ones - not the ones we ate, lol)
________________________________________________________

Y27 - the THIRD week

So as you may have noticed I was a little late posting week two last week - due to the camping trip photos... so I'll try and get back on track with my Sunday weekly Y27 posts. Don't worry, I've been doing good so far, no cheating and a picture EVERYDAY and only one of my patio garden this week! :-)


#15: Lake Superior morning rocks: We went camping up along the north shore and we got up early to get pictures of the sunrise over Lake Superior. I just happen to take this while waiting for the sun to come up and absolutely LOVE how it turned out! Too cool how the water ended up looking like smoke over the water.

#16: Maya baby: My friend let me shoot her daughter as practice. This was my first 'photo shoot' and I learned a lot. She is so cute, this one just happened to be my favorite!

#17: Tomato: Squirrel Dinner: Last year when we moved into our house, around this time of year (end of August) my neighbor's tomato plant kept getting eaten at. Well this year, around June, she had asked me if I wanted this net stuff she got for her plant. I said no, that I hadn't noticed any squirrels up on our patio... well two months later, they've attacked! I should have said yes to the netting and just put it on mid-August. Well I'll know for next year :-)

#18: Mirror Self Portrait : trying to get my shot in for the day, playing around in the passenger seat while we were driving to our church's mentor program, Wednesday night. This is me in the passenger vanity mirror. I did flip it in photoshop so the Nikon wouldn't read backwards!

#19: This is where I work...

#20: Chino Latino Mojito: I've mentioned before this is one of my favorite places to eat! Such great food... AND a really good blackberry mojito martini!! I love the little plastic animals you get with it :-)

#21: Kyle and his Dad: Del and his girlfriend, Nancy, came to visit us for Labor Day weekend. Here we were walking along Grand Avenue in St. Paul, visiting the cute little shops, we just happen to be right outside of a yarn/knitting shop in this photo.



Thanks for reading!
________________________________________________________

Harpo: the traveling dog!

Ever since Harpo was 5 weeks old, he's been a traveling dog! At 5 weeks he took a road trip from Missouri to Georgia and back. 2 weeks later he took that trip again, then he took 2 more road trips back and forth the next few months. Then when he was 10 months old, he took a road trip from Georgia to Minnesota. In the past 2 years he's taken MANY road trips from Minnesota to Missouri!!  So as you can see he got used to traveling FAST!!

I find this funny because even though he has an empty seat here:


He still spends the whole car ride trying to get comfy.....












Then he quickly found this spot after our hike around Split Rock Lighthouse State Park:





Thanks for reading!
________________________________________________________