The Saline Celtic Festival 2014

Over on my art blog, I wrote a post about the things I do for the Wee Folk at the Saline Celtic Festival, but it was getting a little long.  I decided to split the post into two, blogging about the crafts there and the athletics and other stuff here!  Here's a run-down of the awesome activities offered on the "Island:" 

Athletics:
Wee Haggis Hurl - In the main festival, there are crowd participation events for adults. One of them is the Haggis Hurl, where people can try their hand at throwing a frozen haggis and see how far it can go.  ...I'll let you think about that awesomeness for a minute...  So, a few years ago I thought I'd do a mini version of that, using water balloons.  It was fun, but I got sort of tired of cleaning up popped water balloons, and the filling of them took a long time.  So this year, I used elements of past athletics (hula hoops from a Wee Survivor competition and pool noodles with PVC pipe in the middle that were once part of a Wee Caber Toss*) to create a goal and had my sister make some haggis-shaped bean bags.  Much more effective, much cleaner, and much less time filling balloons! The kids seemed to enjoy it.

Defeat the Dragon - Two years ago I made a dragon, a castle turret, and a castle entrance out of four sheets of donated plywood (thanks, Home Depot!).  The dragon is also a corn hole bag game, where 100 points means the dragon has been defeated!  He also seems to watch over the Island, as he lives right near the entrance to the Island's activities.

Wee Golf Course - This was a new one this year!  Over the years I've eliminated a few athletic events for various reasons* and this year decided that this would be a good replacement for them.  Plus, it has Scottish origins, so it fits with the festival theme!  And bonus, there's an awesome grassy path right by our main Wee Folks area that is perfect for a mini golf course.  I think the kids really enjoyed it!  I plan on expanding from six to nine holes next year, and maybe having other people come and help me design the holes. 

The last hole!

*Here a some of the things I've eliminated over the years:
Wee Caber Toss - the "cabers" were a little too light-weight, I think, so kids usually ended up sword fighting with them, or just whacking their friends with them.  It had to go...
Wee Survivor - 3 or 4 years ago the festival started to do a Celtic Survivor competition for adults, so I thought it'd be fun to do a "Wee" version, with elimination rounds to determine 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.  It was pretty fun, but a lot of extra stress for me the day of, so I stopped doing it this year.

Some of the other activities on the Island are: 
Ducky Races! - Four times in the afternoon people have a chance to win some fun prizes (like this pillow, this castle, or this knight set).  All they have to do is pick a duck and pay a buck! (That should be my new slogan for this...) This year I started offering a "6 ducks for $5" deal, which people seemed to like. We dump the duckies at one point in the river, and whichever one gets to the bridge first is the winner!  It's pretty fun!

Princess Merida!!! - For the last two years, Princess Merida from the movie "Brave" has come to the island.  The kids LOVE her! She talks to them, gives hugs, tells stories, and sends them off to find the Will-o-the-Wisps in the woods!  (I made those and sort of love them!  We hide them and the kids bring them to us for a prize when they find one.  Then we re-hide them!)

Princess Merida telling stories
Mini Merida on the left is so cute!

Merida, played by the incredibly talented and
sweet Hannah Rains, is SO good with the kids!
It's no wonder they love seeing here there!

A Will-o-the-Wisp hiding in the woods...

Face Painting - this is something I've never been able to have consistently.  It's hard to find a good face painter that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, but this year we had one! She was excellent, and the kids were lined up to have their faces painted.

Wee Folks Parade - At 4:30, we take a break from our busy crafting and athleticizing (I think that should be a word...) and a bagpiper comes and leads the kids around the rest of the festival!  This is a chance for them to show off their craft projects and for the rest of the festival goers to see what we have to offer.  Princess Merida joins the fun, and the kids who participate love it! (And the free ice cream treat they get for being in the parade...!!)  This year I had streamers out (see photo above) for people to use to decorate their wagons and strollers for the parade.  Fun!

(Our piper forgot his kilt this year...oops!)

The best part?  All of these activities (except for the Ducky Race) are free, thanks to the sponsorship of Play and Learn Childcare.  

(Check back to my art blog for a wrap-up!)

Leave of Absence

I think it's traditional to let people know before taking a leave of absence, but as an untraditional person, I chose to let you all know after.  I'm just trying to keep things interesting.

The funny thing is, I accidentally spelled "absence" "absense" just now, and while the latter spelling is incorrect, it reflects much of my summer - absent of sense.  It was nuts! I thought I'd do a visual summary of my summer here and give you the highlights:

At the beginning of June, before the school year even ended, I took off to Grand Rapids for a summer job of sorts.  (When I was there in grad school at Kendall College of Art and Design, I'd been the grad assistant in their Continuing Studies program and did a lot of curriculum development.  The grad assistant who came after me didn't have a background in Art Education like I did, so the the CS director asked if I'd come back this summer to work as their Program Assistant and pick up where I left off.)

I worked here (the "Old Federal Building") all summer

This was my office space where I did curriculum
development for the program.

The Old Federal Building is historic and has
lots of cool architectural and historic features.
This room was once Gerald Ford's
Congressional office!  Groovy.

Grand Rapids skyline

 I had already committed to teaching a camp and other classes at home, so I had to travel back and forth to Grand Rapids a lot.  Thank heavens for audio books.  This is from one of my trips to GR:

I taught the same camp twice this summer  - Young Architects.  It's my favorite kids camp!  During the course of the week, I teach the kids (8-12 years old) the basics of architecture, and they design a number of different buildings, ultimately building a maquette (small model) of one of their designs.  I LOVED designing houses and rooms when I was a kid - I have clear memories of doing this in elementary school art - so you can see why this is a fun camp for me to teach!
This star student designed a house for Tony Stark (Iron Man) and it was AWESOME:

His house design

The maquette - each floor was built separately
and can be lifted off so you can see inside!
Note the bottom of the pop bottle covering
the balcony off the third floor.

The first time I taught the camp this summer (at home) it was awesome.  The second camp (in GR) was chaos.  Too many kids, too much noise, too much crazy.  I did, however, design and build a house for myself, which was fun:

Between camps and working in Grand Rapids, I did the Celtic Festival - my sixth year!  (I am chair of the Wee Folks Island - kids' activities.)  You'd think by now I'd have it down with no hiccups, but it changes from year to year, and this year was a nutty one.  But I still love it!!  I was also interviewed for an article in the paper, where my last name was spelled two different ways, neither of them correct. 

My domain - Wee Folks Island

Princess Merida came to the island this year!  This is her
with my sweet nieces and nephew.

Whenever I could, I rode my bike this summer.  I was sadly not very consistent, which I will feel on the 30-mile ride I'm doing in Detroit this Saturday (the Tour de Troit)...  But I love being on my bike and love Detroit, so hopefully it will be ok.  I'll just ache a lot on Sunday.

One of my favorite trails

I got caught in a rainstorm on my bike one day...

I also did a painting demo one Saturday while home at the Summerfest downtown: 

 Thankfully the craziness of driving back and forth across Michigan and doing so many things was peppered with great moments like these:

Saw my bestie Megan perform with her quartet in Saugatuck
The Tesla Quartet

My little sis and kids 

Historic Baseball at Greenfield Village

And with delicious food like this:

Chocolate covered bacon - I made it for an Independence
Day pig roast

Candied bacon chocolate chip cookies - also
made for the pig roast

A delicious meal from my favorite Grand Rapids restaurant...

The Electric Cheetah

 And with time spent in my favorite place in the world, Ludington, Michigan:

Ludington State Park Beach house 

Hamlin Lake sunsets from our cabin porch

River floating with the fam

My awesome parents at the Ludington lighthouse

With my nephew (his dad, my bro, was only up briefly this
year, so I don't have a good pic of him to go here, but I
had fun with him, too!)  :D

My sis and our nephews and niece

I had to scoop our ice cream at the bait & ice cream shop...
more on that story another time!

Thankfully the good memories are pushing out the more stressful ones, and fall was very welcome this year. Sadly there was no summer romance (don't we all wish for that, even a little?), but there's always winter's cold to inspire cuddling...!!


Stay tuned for the return of Lyrical Thursdays and much more...