McHenry County Holiday Fest - Crystal Lake, IL

 

This is a holiday marketplace that took place at D’Andrea Banquets & Conference Center in Crystal Lake.  It’s flyer description says it has 32 exhibitors for shopping, visits with Santa, Santa mailbox, crafts, face painting, live entertainment and a man cave.  We saw everything listed except for the face painting, live entertainment, and man cave. Not to say it wasn’t there, maybe we just weren’t there at the right time, but we didn’t see it.  This event was free and we received a free reusable bag when we walked in.  We saw that Santa was there so we stood in line to see him.  

 

 

The line wasn’t too bad so not a long wait.  Santa was nice and showed Aiden the bottle of magic he carried with him to get all the gifts delivered on Christmas Eve.  He told him that because Aiden asked him if he was real. LOL.  After that we went over to Santa’s special mailbox so that Aiden could drop off the letter he had written him.

 

 

From there we looked around at all the vendor booths. Some of them had cute craft stuff but a lot were also corporate booths.  After that we headed downstairs to the kids craft making area. That was as packed and crazy as you’d expect. Each table had a different craft going on. We took the first table we saw and Aiden got to decorate a cookie with frosting and sprinkles. He enjoyed that but wasn’t really interested in doing any other tables.  I was thankful for that because they were all packed and so tightly crammed together.  

 

Overall, I would have to say this event was underwhelming.  There wasn’t a lot of vendor booths and it would’ve been nicer if there were less corporate stuff.  It would’ve also been nice to see the advertised live entertainment. But the short line for a picture with Santa was nice, and he was a good Santa. The special Santa mailbox was a nice touch as well. And Aiden definitely enjoyed decorating a cookie.  All that stuff was good, and free, so it was worth the trip for us.

 

 

Apple Fest - Long Grove, IL

Apple Fest is a yearly event in downtown Long Grove.  There are hundreds of apple-inspired treats and dozens of local merchants.  There is also live music playing on 3 stages throughout the fest. There is a Kid Zone with activities for smaller children and a carnival for all ages.  This was our first time here. Parking was difficult but we got lucky and didn’t have to walk too far. There was a $5 admission and kids under 12 were free.  

There were lots of people here the day we went and it was super hot. It’s an apple fest, yet when I remember it, all I really think of is chocolate.  There were lots of booths with different chocolate covered foods.  It would’ve been nice if these booths had more “taster samples” available but they didn’t and food wasn’t exactly cheap.  We did however get to try a sample of Belgian chocolate covered grapes, which we all liked.  

We saw the Kid Zone area when we first walked into the fest.  I don’t know what different kinds of activities were taking place, besides blowing bubbles, but we could clearly see that it was an area for much younger children so we did not take Aiden there.  

The streets were lined with vendor booths of food and other products and all the little specialty shops were open.  There was one store there that I really liked called Creative Hands. We ended our day at Morkes Chocolates for some really good taffy apples and chocolate treats.  We actually never saw the carnival area until we were in the car leaving.  That’s ok though. It was just way too hot to continue.