arts and crafts

so this afternoon i went with my mom and grandma to the harvest festival arts & crafts faire (honestly, i hope that is the lamest thing i will ever write on this blog). i wasn't exactly looking forward to it... i expected it to mostly be mediocre handmade jewelry, over the top bedazzled accessories, and appliqued teddy-bear shirts i can only picture on women who live squarely in the bible belt.

i convinced my mom and grandma to ride the light rail downtown to the event, which was quick and easy to get to the convention center. it was great, except after one of the stops was announced over the PA (san fernando), my mom turns to me and says, "saaahn fehnaaahndo" in the voice of a little old asian man. this would have been fine if she hadn't said it so loud that the entire car could hear her. i was just praying that there wasn't an acutal little old asian man on the train.

the festival itself was way better than i thought it would be. the crafts were pretty much what i expected, but there were also quite a few food-related booths... all of which were giving out free samples. i bought a few christmas gifts, including a hand-blown glass ornament. the glass-blower was telling us about how he allows the glass to cool longer than mass-produced glass ornament makers do, which makes the ornaments far less fragile. he said that unless you throw it against the wall, the ornament is basically not going to break.

my absolute favorite thing at the festival was this chocolate liquor sauce from annette's chocolates in napa. YUM. they had samples of almost all of their sauces, my favorite of which were the carmel brandy (yum), and the chocolate brandy (yum). they make an amaretto chocolate sauce, but had run out of it at the festival, so I didn't get to try it. but i definitely came home and ordered some immediately. did i mention that the sauces were delicious? DELICIOUS.

anyways, i ended up leaving the festival with an entire envirosack worth of stuff. ha!