The Festival of the Gnomes!!

After Thanksgiving I stayed up north with Little Miss so that we could attend the Festival of the Gnomes.  When I was a little girl my mom took me to this, and also introduced several of my cousins.  It's not anything huge- the lobby of the local theatre is transformed into a gift shop for all things gnome.  You can buy a hat (red for boys, green for girls) on the first year.  Each year after that the lovely lady volunteers will sew on a tassel.  There's also a bake sale.  When I was a little kid there used to be a gingerbread house display with one huge gingerbread house, but they no longer do that.  The main focus is a play- all centered around gnomes.  It's a series of shorter skits and many of the same people have been doing it since I was a child. It's a fun part of my childhood and I really wanted to share it with my daughter.  Since Thanksgiving was late and the festival was early, the timing worked out well.  

We took some photo ops before the festival began:

 

You can see that my hat isn't pointy at all.  That's because it's really old and a different style.  I suppose that I could buy a new one and move the tassels over, but I'm kind of in love with it just how it is.  Little Miss Gnome now officially has her hat and can have a tassel the next time she attends.  We were lucky that my best friend from high school was also able to come with her niece:

 

My little Biscuit was mesmerized when the show began and watched as much as a baby could before getting distracted and then eventually falling asleep in my nap.  Thank goodness for the carrier.  She was able to tuck in and snooze away under the hood while I could enjoy the show without my arms breaking from holding her. Poor Laura had a different fate.  By the end of the show she was calling her niece Wigglebutt.  She said she'd never been so restless.  Moral of the story: skip the festival when Corn Pop is 2:)  It was a fun festival and I'm glad that we were able to go.  I'm not sure if we'll make it an annual event, but it sure is fun to be able to introduce my daughter to things that I used to enjoy when I was a little girl.