Cranberryfest 2011

Hello again! Well, another Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone. It was pretty busy! Saturday, my husband, Indy and I went to Fort Langley's annual Cranberryfest. This is my 5th year and I think that judging from the crush of people present, folks have finally caught on that the best little Autumn festival is happening there. Seriously, I have never seen so many people in attendance! I think it helped that the weather was perfect too.

We had a wonderful brekki-pancakes, cranberry sausage, breakfast sausage, juice and coffee for $5-can't beat that! The sausages, which were made by Freybe were so yummy! One of the cooks even gave us a spare sausage (for free!) for Indy. Indy was super happy about that!

After brekki, we toured around town looking at all the vendor's booths. Everyone comes from far and wide to get fresh cranberries for their holiday dinners. Langley is one of the largest exporters of cranberries in the world. A couple years ago, I actually took a tour of the bogs. It's incredible to see acres and acres of land turned scarlet with berries. These guys were scooping and filling bags for sale just as fast as they could. The lines were 10 people deep!

These are the sweet ladies who have a booth in front of the little white church every year. They have buckets galore filled with dahlias. You can pick 6 stems for $5. There are florists who have vendor's booths at the festival, but I always hike up the street to the church to buy my Thanksgiving bouquet. I'd much rather give my money to these to gals. They are just so lovely and their flowers are gorgeous. I love dahlias and they looked very cheery on our dinner table.

All around town are these huge pumpkins. I couldn't resist snapping pics to play with when I got home. I love how this one turned out. The pumpkins are really big and they bring them in on skiffs because they are so heavy. They have to move them with a forklift.

I also came across these gorgeous mushrooms, which were waiting for me like a gift, just as I stepped out of the car. They are 100% real, I promise you! This is the season when you see them and these ones were huge! You can't tell their scale from this photo, but they stood 7 inches high and the caps were as big as my palm.The only other time I've seen them this large was hiking the wilds of BC last autumn on Vancouver Island. I love photographing them.

In case you missed it the other day, Manual Dexterity #3 is now available. It's chock full of Autumn and Hallowe'en art, inspiration & goodies! There is also the second mini house zine in the Rue du Maison series, which I had so much fun making.You can find these two zines (and more!) here.