Saturday, September 3, 2011

Butter cows, horse shows, and hot air balloons.

A couple weekends ago I went to the Illinois State Fair for the first time ever! Needless to say, I was pretty excited. I went with my friend Kayla and her parents. It's basically like every other fair, but bigger. And at the Illinois State Fair they have this thing called the butter cow. You may be saying, "Now, Kate. Every cow is a butter cow." To that I say, but is every butter cow MADE FROM butter?! No, no they are not. Every year a cow is sculpted out of 500 or so pounds of unsalted butter. It takes like a week to sculpt the whole thing, and they reuse the butter 5 times before using new butter.

Said butter cow.
 Now if you can't tell, in the bottom right corner there's a little butter piglet. Each year they change the theme of the scene and I believe this year's was a farm scene. I think. I'm not quite sure. But here's a picture of the butter piglet up close.

Kayla and Me
There was a ski lift that went over the whole fair. We decided to go on it at night to see all the lights.
Kayla while we were on the ski lift.
Whenever we got tired of walking around we watched the horse shows. Unfortunately, this was the only animal show left because it was the last weekend of the fair.
Because Kayla's all artsy and whatnot she wanted to go check out the art competition. I was like sure, it's air conditioned right? All kidding aside, some of the art was outstanding. There was this really cool portrait that I wanted to show you guys but one of the judges was sitting right next to it and I don't think you're allowed to take pictures. I wasn't sure and didn't want to get us kicked out.

Then last weekend I went to a hot air balloon festival with my friend Morgan, her sister and brother-in-law, Kayla, and Jordin. It was sooo cool. I think I'd only seen a hot air balloon once in my life. It was too windy for the balloons to go up though. Too bad, because I was totally willing to pay the $250 per person for a ride... Not.
Random watermelon car? BA.
Jordin kindly pointing out the kites.
Kayla and Morgan talking art.

Me and Jordin talking Chelsea Lately.
Morgan decided to pose us with the balloons. They're all on her camera so I'll have to wait until she puts them on Facebook.


We agreed that the Sea Fantasy balloon was obnoxiously over the top. Cool, but way too cocky.
My favorite was the third one down from the Sea Fantasy balloon.

And that's my past two weekends in a nut shell! I actually just got back from boating with Kayla and some of her family. There's nothing better than chilling on the lake, star gazing. While I fully enjoyed myself at both of the fairs, there's something to be said about just taking it easy and relaxing. Sometimes you just have to take time to appreciate the little things in life.


Aaaaaand, cheesy moment's over. Seriously people, the butter cow really is something worth seeing. Simply beautiful. I plan on going next year.




3 comments:

  1. That looks way more awesome than our state fair!

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  2. Holy Freaking Cow! hehe

    I WANT A BUTTER PIGLET.

    I like the watermelon car. I like balloons. I like you.


    The end.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You hicks and your butter cows...tsk tsk.

    ReplyDelete