Happy Lunar New Year! @AtlantaChineseLunarNewYearFestival #family #culturalexperience

I took my daughters to the Atlanta Chinese Lunar New Year Festival yesterday. We had a lot of fun and ate plenty of great food. Being me, I loved the drums and the dragons.

Fireworks to start off the dragon dances.

Japan Fest

My daughter is big on anime and most things Japan.  My son likes to explore other cultures.  As a result, we ended up at Japan Fest for part of Saturday afternoon.  We explored some of the demonstrations, including one for archery.

We wandered through the exhibits and admired the art work that went into it.  I found the bonsai club and admired what they had done.  There were some impressive specimens.

They had a room just for floral arrangements as well. These were two of my favorites.

We enjoyed lunch from Kani House. My kids had chicken teriyaki. I had shrimp tempura u-dan. We tried a Ramune soda as well. Nicely sweet, may have to check out the Buford Farmer's market to get more.  They had some games and lots of vendors.  My kids ended up with "swords" for costumes they're putting together.  My daughter got one from Disney's Kingdom Hearts called a key sword.  My son ended up with Link's sword.  It will be interesting to see what they end up doing with them.  I purchased a glass painted wind chime and a pair of hair clips.

Next stop: Anime Weekend Atlanta

Decatur Book Festival #dbf2013

2013 DBF Signed Books

My kids were supposed to go with me Saturday, but my daughter decided before getting out of bed that she'd pass.  My son decided 10 minutes before leaving that since there was really only one session/pair of authors he wanted to see, that he'd pass.  For some reason, he didn't want to be stuck wandering with me and listening to all of the others I wanted to hear.  Especially since his session was the first one of the day.

At any rate, I heard some authors who are apparently well known, but not to me.  I talked with some authors who are not small but building a base and to one that has a very small base.  All were fascinating.  For sessions, I went to Rick Yancey & D.J. McHale at the teen stage.  I brought back books for my son from this session.  I saw Alex Hughes and Lev & Austin Grossman.  I visited with Johnathan French, Guy Cote, Robert Jay, Georgia Romance Writers (several good ones there), J. K. Barber and more.  I spent an entire day wandering downtown Decatur and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I also watched the Emory acapella group Ahana sing. I recorded the songs and put them on my YouTube channel.  Just scroll down, they're under both "Music" and "Recent".

Snellville Days

This past Sunday, I worked at Snellville Days for the Aquarium. I was able to tour around at one point and caught part of "Wendy's Wild Bird Show". It was very cute and she worked some educational value into it as well. If you get the chance to see her at another festival, drop by, you might actually be entertained.

Big Shanty Festival pt. 2

Since my daughter and I shared our finds from the Big Shanty Festival, Brooklyn (puppy) wanted to share hers too. There were several pet friendly vendors out, we only shopped at two this time.

Daisy Mae's delights was a cake/cookie/treat booth. We ended up getting a couple of the smaller paw print cakes. Puppy happily devoured the first one quickly.

Lose a Finger Treats are a great size for training. Puppy liked the cheddar cheese bacon variety. They're about pea size, which makes them easily treatable. This one is available in stores, mostly in the Cumming/Marietta/Atlanta area. Not overly convenient for us, so I'm not sure how often we'll get this one.

Big Shanty Festival

My family got together and went out to Kennesaw for the Big Shanty Festival. We took along the puppy when we went. Puppy still doesn't travel well (car sick), but she seemed to do ok otherwise. We put her on a halti to make sure that we had control in the crowd and around other dogs. It was puppy's first time meeting dogs that weren't in our neighborhood. Other than super-sized Newf-boy that she met, she did very well. So well that after a while we switched her back to a regular harness.

All in all, the family (including puppy) enjoyed the festival. My daughter shared her 'find' on facebook Saturday. So, I thought I'd share my finds here. A couple of decorations for the garden..

And a bonsai.. I haven't owned one of these in a long time.

Ellijay Apple Festival

My family and I took off for the mountains (literally) Saturday. We headed up to the Ellijay Apple Festival, just to see what we could see. We'd been once before, though it had been many years since then. My husband and I debated how many, but figure at least 5 years. If you go, plan to encounter some traffic on the main strip while you try to get to parking. There is plenty and they have shuttle buses running to. Check out their web site for more info.

This is a view of the fair itself from the hill going up toward the Middle/High shool.

We didn't stop here long, but watching someone carve with a chainsaw is always fascinating to me

As with any large fair, there's crafts galore. I loved this booth. This statue made me think of "Night in the Museum". When I turned to my son, we both said "DumDum gimme GumGum"..

A local wildlife rescue group was out there showing some of the animals that reside at their facility. Each animal has a story, one that's quite sad considering. Most were due to humans (not surprising) doing something they shouldn't.

On the way out, we headed further into the mountains to go visit family in the Chatsworth area. The town of Ellijay itself had an extension of the fair going on, with streets closed and more vendors. Of course, since it's the Apple festival, quite a few orchards had stands in both places, so a wide selection of apple varieties were available. All around town you could also find these guys..

I didn't get a chance to get pictures of all the different set-ups and arrangements, but it looks like most of the store fronts had one. Some local businesses without storefronts had them as well. Most were on the main square, but some were on side streets as well. If you have the chance, you might see the festival itself, then drive over to main street and wander there too.

Big Haynes Creek Wildlife Festival

I mentioned last Friday that I'd be out here working for the Aquarium. I took the time after my shift ended to take a good look around. There were many shows I didn't get to see (raptors, disc dogs, etc), but a few that I did. The exhibits, though, from the various groups were really nice.

This one was simple, a big portable tank of fish..

The serval had her own agenda for the day and it wasn't necessarily doing what the trainers asked her to do.

The trains were cute. They were sponsored by a local steam train group, one was display.

One was a ride on..

There were two Native American shows. The dancers I missed, the other group had an encampment at one end of the festival.

The same group did story telling and music on various instruments. They were fun to listen to.

I did get to listen to Southeastern Reptile Rescue (I think that's the proper group name) do a talk on snakes. I didn't get pictures, though. There was a display from the North Georgia Zoo, AWARE and Greyhound Rescue too.

All put together it was a very small festival. The numbers were low too, which was kind of discouraging. I'm sure it was for the vendors too. My main complaint was that there was really only one food vendor, which meant they could set the prices they wanted. This meant that a bottle of water was almost $3, a coke $3.50 and a burger was $4.50. Ouch. I can only hope the turn-out was a sign of the economy and not of the festival. It has a great location out at the horse park in Conyers (a bit far for my taste, but the location is good). It just didn't have enough "stuff" to impress me with what they were charging admission. Hopefully next year will work out better.