Colfax Canvas 2021

A few weekends back Mathilde and I headed to Aurora for the annual Colfax Canvas street art festival. The festival is in its second year and this was our second time attending. Two for two! 

If you've been here for any amount of time you'll know I'm a big fan of street art, so a street art festival is right up my alley. We're lucky that between the Denver and Boulder metropolitan areas there are actually quite a few street art festivals each year. Along with Colfax Canvas in Aurora there is Crush Walls in Denver's RiNo neighborhood, Streetwise Boulder, and Babe Walls which changes location each year. While some of the artists who take part in these events are from other cities and states, most are based here in Colorado, which just goes to show what a wealth of local talent we have here. I've made sure to tag all of the photos with the artist's Instagram handles so you can look them up and see their other works. 

Ok, enough talking, let's look at some street art!

 

Mural by @pher01 and @chrishaven

Mural by @pher01 and @chrishaven

Mural by @rube.zilla and @chattyancestors

Mural by @pher01

Mural by @amandavelacharbonneau, @seewalker_art, @patrickmaxcy and @volarduran

Mural by @shittykitten1

Mural by @aprilwerle and @ddambrackas

Mural by @reveryart, @charlo.gw and @goodlooksvol.1

Colorado Renaissance Festival

This past weekend we did something totally new for us. 

Something that until now was one of those "only in American tv shows and movies" things. 

We went to a Renaissance Festival!

Growing up in Australia, Renaissance Festivals were something that I only knew about from tv and movies. Much like school pep rallies, college sports, trick or treating, handing out valentines to classmates, school science fairs and take your kid to work day, Renaissance Festivals are one of those things that are a part of growing up in America, but totally foreign to anyone growing up elsewhere. I've said it so many times in the past, but one of my favorite things about living overseas is my kids getting to experience things that I grew up seeing on tv but could not experience for myself. It's kind of surreal, but even the littlest differences like school hallways lined with lockers and those big, yellow American school buses make me so happy and make the every day feel like an adventure! 

Anyway, back to the Renaissance Festival...

On Saturday we braved the smoky air and headed to Larkspur, south of Denver, to the annual Colorado Renaissance Festival. This year marks the 44th season of the festival and it returns after a year in hiatus due to you know what. Most Renaissance Festivals around the country did not return this Summer, so I was excited to see that our local festival was back. 

For those of you not in the US, you're probably wonder just what a Renaissance Festival is. Let's take a look...

Lunar New Year Festival 2019

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

It's the year of the pig; Ava's favorite animal and coincidentally, the Chinese year she happened to be born in.

Every year I love taking the kids to the various Lunar New Year celebrations around the Bay Area, but given that this year happens to be Ava's favorite animal of all time, it feels a little more special.
Last weekend we braved the rain and headed to Berkeley's Fourth Street shopping district for the annual Lunar New Year festival.

We arrived just as the lion dance was about to begin. Every year the lion dance is based on a story relating to the animal of the year. This year the lion dance was based on the three little pigs story. Children from the crowd was chosen to be a part of the show - acting as the little pigs. They were divided into three groups, those with a house made of straw, those with a house made of sticks and, you guessed it, those with a house made of bricks.

Berkeley Chocolate & Chalk Art Festival 2018

This past weekend saw one of our favorite local festivals here in Berkeley, the annual Chocolate & Chalk Art Festival.

Now, you would think that the chocolate part of the festival would be what excites my kids every year, but the chalk art part of the day is actually the big draw card for them. It's not every day you get to get creative on the sidewalk, after all. Plus, it's a competition with prizes up for offer.

This year's festival happened to fall the day after we arrived home from our East Coast trip. I'll be sharing our East Coast trip here soon, but make sure to check out Instagram in the mean time as I've been sharing sneak peeks there. Anyway, we were all a little tired from our early flight home from Boston so we had a quiet morning and headed to the festival in the afternoon. This didn't give us an awful lot of time to try out the chocolate on offer but we still had plenty of time for the girls to get creative with chalk.

We found ourselves a few clean-ish squares of sidewalk along Shattuck Avenue in the Gourmet Ghetto and the girls got to work.

4th of July 2018

Ahh... Summer break!

That time of year when I think I'm going to be able to play catch up on the blog because I'm not running backwards and forwards between school and kid activities all day. Ha! With three kids home all day (and still plenty of kid appointments and activities to attend) I think I'm even busier than usual. But I'm making it a priority to catch up on the blog because I have a ton of fun stuff to share with you all.

First up let's take a look back at last week's 4th of July celebration...

As usual, we spent much of the holiday at the festival at Berkeley Marina. We ate corn dogs, went on pony rides and bounce houses, made animal friends in the petting zoo, watched some fun performances, and soaked up all the red, white and blue spirit of the day. Oh, and took a ton of silly photos! 

Earth Day Festival of Colors

This weekend was a super busy one for our family.

If you're following Little Hiccups on Instagram and saw my stories this weekend you would've seen why. We had Cal Day (UC Berkeley's super fun and family friendly open day), a friend's birthday party, and an Earth Day Festival of Colors today at Ava and Lola's school. I'm exhausted just thinking about it all!

I have a lot of photos from the weekend to share, so let's start with the Earth Day Festival of Colors...

This was the third year that our school has held this particular event and it's always a lot of fun. The festival is based on the Indian Spring festival Holi and features yummy Indian food, a pedal powered mango lassi station, henna tattoos, making wildflower seed bombs, lots of fun Bollywood music, and Indian dancers. The highlight of the day is when all the kids, and the adults, get to throw colored powder at each other. It's so much fun!

Berkeley Chocolate & Chalk Art Festival 2017

About a month back the girls took part in one of our favorite local festivals, the Berkeley Chocolate & Chalk Art Festival! This festival was previously held annually, but has been away for the past few years (it clashed with the Bay Area Book Festival which was run by the same people). The girls and I were super excited that it has made a come back and we hope that it's here to stay.

Pedalfest 2017

A few weekends back we spent the day at one of our favorite local festivals: Pedalfest at Oakland's Jack London Square.

If you're not familiar with Pedlafest, it's a whole day dedicated to bike riding fun. There are all sorts of crazy bikes to try out, fun rides for the kids, tasty food, amazing stunt shows, markets, a bicycle powered stage and a ton of other bike related fun.

Maker Faire 2017

A few weekends back we spent a day at one of my favorite festivals: Maker Faire.

As always, the day was filled with all sorts of creative fun. The girls made art from salvaged junk, rode crazy bikes, made replica cells out of foam clay, dressed up as robots, ate delicious treats, and watched all sorts of crazy things shoot flames.

   

As always, it was pretty hot when we arrived at Maker Faire, so this year we headed straight inside one of the halls full of fun hands-on activities and demonstrations to escape the heat. There were all sorts of activities to keep the girls busy.

Hoes Down Harvest Festival 2016

Last weekend we left the city and headed to Fully Belly Farm in Yolo County for the annual Hoes Down Harvest Festival. This was our third time attending the festival and it was just as much fun as it was in previous years. Even better - it wasn't scorching hot like it has been in the past! And it wasn't stormy overnight like last year, so camping out was a little more comfortable. 

Roadworks Festival 2016

This weekend Mathilde and I spent an afternoon in the city at one of our favorite annual festivals.

Each year, San Francisco Center for the Book hosts the Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival. It's a fun day full of printing and book binding activities with a market place for local print makers to sell their artwork. The highlight of the festival is the steamroller printing. A vintage steamroller rolls over a carefully place linoleum block, paper and layer of blankets to produce amazing prints. It's such a fun and novel way to produce prints.

This year, there was not one steamroller at the festival like previous years, but two. Double the steamroller fun! One steamroller was used to produce the large 3' x 3' prints as per usual, and another was used to print smaller prints to order, four at a time. This meant that there was twice as much steamroller action, something that Mathilde was pretty excited about.

Berkeley Kite Festival 2016

Yesterday the girls and I headed down to Berkeley's waterfront for the annual Berkeley Kite Festival.

Cherry Blossom Festival 2016

Cherry Blossom Festival in San Fransico's Japantown district is on again this weekend!

Last weekend we headed into the city for an afternoon of fun at the festival - which the girls like to call the "Hello Kitty Festival" due to all of the Hello Kitty themed kids' activities.

Hoes Down Harvest Festival 2015

A few weekends back we attended the annual Hoes Down Harvest Festival at Fully Belly Farm in Yolo County. We all had such a great time and I have so many photos I've been wanting to share but I've been a little caught up lately in prep work for Lola's upcoming 5th birthday party, and once again I've found myself falling behind.

So, it's time to catch up with some fun on the farm photos...

This year we attended the Hoes Down with some good friends who have daughters the same age as Ava and Lola. The kids loved having friends with them, especially when it came to camping in the evening. We managed to coordinate arriving at the same time and set up our tents right next to each other. The girls loved being neighbors! Like last year, we went for the car camping option and set up our tent next to our car. Unlike last year, this time around we had a new tent and we actually all fit inside it without feeling like sardines. What a difference it made! Five people crammed into a three person tent is no joke. Our new tent felt like a mansion in comparison!

Roadworks Festival 2015

This past weekend we attended one of San Francisco's quirky events. No, not the Folsom Street Fair - although we did spot many of that festival's attendees in their interesting attire (or lack there of!) on our way home. No, the festival that we attended was the annual Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival hosted by San Francisco Center for the Book. Much more family friendly!

The highlight of the Roadworks Festival is watching linoleum block prints being made with the help of a steam roller. You know, the sort of thing that would've been used to smooth out roads back when coal was the power source de jour for vehicles. We've attended the Roadworks Festival in the past and we've all enjoyed it. Now that we have a "digger" obsessed toddler in our midst attending the festival was a no-brainer. A whole afternoon of watching a ye olde construction vehicle paired with hands on print making and book binding fun. Perfect!

Cherry Blossom Festival 2015

Yesterday we headed to San Francisco's Japantown neighborhood for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Although, from the pictures below you may think we were actually at a Hello Kitty and Pocky festival!

Hoes Down Harvest Festival

Last weekend we headed to the countryside and attended the Hoes Down Harvest Festival at Full Belly Farm in Yolo Country.

Ava and Lola were so excited about going to the festival. They couldn't wait for all of the hands on farm fun and crafts but the biggest draw card for them was the fact that we'd be camping out overnight. This was the first time that we went camping as a family and the big girls were so excited about it. Ava has been asking to go camping for years so it was about time we finally got around to it!

Berkeley Kite Festival 2014

Day two of our super busy festival filled weekend was spent at the Berkeley Kite Festival in Cesar Chavez Park, down on the waterfront.

It was definitely kite flying weather. Actually, by the end of the day it was almost getting too windy to fly a kite! I'm always amazed at how it can be so incredibly windy at Cesar Chavez Park when it's perfectly still in the rest of Berkeley. I guess that spot's just made for kite flying!

Happy 4th of July (just a little late...)

It's a little late but here's a look at our 4th of July for this year.

Now that we actually have an American in our family it felt so much more important that we celebrate 4th of July - not that Mathilde had any idea what was going on of course!

Like the last few years (which you can see here and here) we decked ourselves out in red, white and blue and headed down to Berkeley Marina for the 4th of July celebration. We ate festival food, the kids played on bouncy castles and obstacle courses and we soaked in the sun as we took in the sights and sounds of the celebration.

Ava and Lola love giving their little sister big cuddles so there was plenty of love being heaped on Mathilde as we sat in the sun. And maybe just a little fighting over who was going to hold her. Mathilde enjoys the attention from her big sisters but her absolute favourite thing at the moment is standing up with Mummy. She locks those little legs of hers and holds her arms up in a triumphant "hey, look at me!" pose, usually with a pretty big smile on her face. It's absolutely adorable how proud of herself Mathilde looks when she "stands".

Berkeley Chocolate & Chalk Art Festival 2014

UPDATE: Ava's artwork received an honorable mention from the judges! Go Ava!

Yesterday the 18th Annual Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival was held in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto neighbourhood. Every year around the start of June Shattuck Ave becomes alive with colour as festival goers decorate the sidewalks with chalk artworks.  

Like last year Ava was excited to take part and couldn't wait to get started creating her chalk art master piece on the sidewalk. This time Ava worked out in advance what she would like to draw: a mermaid and various aquatic creatures swimming in the sea. Lola was also keen to take part and decided that she would draw a rainbow and a ring. Or, as it turned out, get Daddy to draw a rainbow and a ring!