Round Top Antique Festival & The Tale of The Ripped Pants

For the past fifty years, Round Top, Texas has been hosting one of the largest antique festivals in the United States. It's the biggest gathering place for many of our most peculiar and vintage vendors from all parts of the nation. Three shows are held annually- during the winter, spring and fall. Last week, my grandmother and I attended the fall show, which is still going on from now until Sunday, October 8th.

The venue is massive. Barns, booths and tents are set up all along Interstate 237 by people all around the world, excited to share and sell old and new clothing, furniture, dolls, old records, comic books, paintings, decorations etc.

There was no way that my grandma and I could get through everything all in just one day, but what we did see was pretty impressive.

Somewhat unfortunately, as my grandma told me and I soon came to see for myself, not everything sold there is old. Many of the booths were full of obviously aged objects, but other things were simply made to appear old and weathered. Some booths even had signs up advertising "vintage inspired" pieces.

Now, such things don't matter too much if you aren't a stickler for details. I personally don't mind, so long as the merchandise is not sold for more than it was really worth. Many booths were far too over-priced, and it was obvious from the mass amount of items still left in their inventory that high pricing didn't do anyone any favors.

My favorite booths were the Corrabelle Rose booth (simply because of the name and the entire aesthetic appeal of the barn) and one featuring handmade plush figurines called Southern Beasts.

I personally couldn't afford anything in this booth, but I really appreciated the picturesque, pink princess look of the place. It makes me think of a royal bedroom from the Victorian era.

Mary Lou Marks is the genius artist behind these creatively cute creatures. Her brand Southern Beasts features all kinds of creatures made from fabrics, needlepoint and tapestries dating back to the nineteen and even the eighteen-hundreds. Her work is a tad pricey, but the worth is backed up by the authenticity and the quality of her pieces and the materials used to make them. My favorite was the french bulldog pictured above.

Over all, the festival was very enjoyable. If your budget is tight and you don't plan on shopping, it is still definitely worth spending the time inspiring new project ideas and enjoying the decorative displays and the company of friendly, fellow visitors or hospitable locals.

I'm sure you're still wondering about the second part of this post's title so, here's a little story of a little misfortune that took place

at the festival:

When I Ripped My Pants

I wore these super cute pants that I bought from Styles For Less a couple of weeks ago. First of all, the weather was only supposed to make it up to 75 degrees and boy was it wrong. The humidity was just too much- if you visit the festival or even just anywhere in Texas, wear shorts until November. Even if the temperature seems forgiving, the humidity is not.

At any rate, I wore these brand new pants. Shortly after just stepping into my grandma's truck, we discovered a hole in the front seam. As the car ride went on, the hole got bigger and bigger. Then, we discovered a new hole going up the side of my leg.

After a half an hour of actually walking around the festival, the hole traveled so far up my leg that I had to yank down my t-shirt just to cover up my underwear. My grandma couldn't even look at me without busting out laughing- it was like the string was trailing behind, snagging every so often and pulling my pants apart even more. Of course I couldn't spend the whole day like that so I ended up buying some new shorts and (needless to say) throwing the old pants away. I learned a valuable lesson that day:

Always check the seams.