Slice of Heaven

County Fair

We just got back from our county fair. Our little Leah came home with the big prize...Junior Champion on her painting of an alligator! I think it is totally cool that she won this prize...she just told me today, "Mom, you know what I really love? Doing drawing and coloring the best." Well, I guess it shows because she gets plenty of practice. If she is not doing her schoolwork, she is ALWAYS drawing or coloring something.
Look at those happy faces! Actually they really were very happy, I just told them they didn't have to smile for my picture if they didn't want to, so Eric took full advantage of the opportunity to give me a too cool for the camera look.

Eric won 1st on some beaded jewelry he made me for Christmas this year.

Dennis won 2nd on a pool que rack he made for my parents.

Eric entered lots of items...a total of 9 I think. Here is his 2nd place on his lion cubs.

Leah drew a picture of Luke, our cat and won 1st on that also. I'll have to scan it and load a better picture of it...it is actually quite impressive. She has butterflies and bees buzzing all around that you can't see from this angle.

One of Eric's watercolor birds.

One of Leah's potholders made on her Klutz potholder loom

A pajama set I made for Leah

And Bay's bathrobe...he actually only entered one item (a lego model he built). I felt badly that he did not have more things to enter (Bay is not a very crafty little boy in the way of scissors and paper and crayons, but actually very crafty when it comes to being clever :)) So he will get the prize I won for his robe...poor guy will wake up cold the next few mornings and will be missing it anyways!

As usual, the county fair is always so much fun...especially when we get to see on display the things that we have crafted with our own hands. I didn't show you everything we entered, but there was much more: canned goods, sunflower heads, more artwork, Lego models, stuffed animal collections, etc.

But even more than seeing all of our items is to see how valuable the craft of making things by hand is still alive and well...there were so many familiar names on those hang tags...things sewn by young people we know, and older people still practicing their craft and proud to show it. We love to walk around and say hello to the folks from the county we know from so many different venues all together at the one place.