The weekend before my birthday and our Southwest road trip, Adam and I ended up to Austin for one of my favorite events of the year: the Renegade Craft Fair.

If you too are wondering how you can get your husband to accompany you on crafty adventures like this, I have just one word for you.

Bribery.

Our afternoon started with a quick stop at mmmpanadas. We had tried to hit up this food truck once before and missed them so it’s safe to say given all the hype we’d heard about this one, our expectations were high. I mean, if you’re going to plaster you’re one of the “10 Best Food Trucks” right on your truck, you better have the food chops to back it up.

 

See, bribery totally works. Look how happy he looks!

So how were the mmmpanadas you say?

Well as much as I hate to say it, our mmmpanadas were less mmmazing and more mmmk. Maybe we caught them on an off day, I don’t know, but Adam and I both agreed they were kind of like glorified Hot Pockets – complete with the lack of flavor and the I’ve-been-microwaved-a-wee-bit-too-long-crust. We just thought they’d be a bit punchier flavor wise than they were. The pineapple cinnamon dessert one I chose was by far the best of the three flavors we tried, but even so, I’m not sure this is a food truck we’d specifically seek out again.

But we weren’t about to let our less than stellar food truck experience deter us – there was crafty amazingness to be had!

If you’ve never been to a Renegade Craft Fair, it’s basically like shopping etsy in person. Which is awesome, except if you choose not to buy something, the person who made said items is usually standing right there. Can we say awkward?

No but seriously, the fair was full of amazing artists from all over the country showing off their awesome handmade goodies including etsy staples like this…

Which I have to admit is actually pretty cute. (I didn’t get the name of the artist on this – if everyone knows, let me know!)

I was specifically looking to find some jewelry this time around (my jewelry collection is sadly lacking) and this fun felted teal and yellow necklace from PrettyKiku was one of the first that caught my eye.

These reclaimed wood vases by BDJ Craft Works have been on my mind since I saw them at the spring Renegade Craft Fair last year. The square succulent planter especially caught my eye since we all know I’ve become a little obsessed with succulents lately.

These typographic neighborhood prints from Ork Posters were right up my alley but sadly they didn’t have any for places we’ve actually lived. Where’s the San Antonio love, huh?

These whimsically nerdy prints by anna todaro were one of my favorites of the day. There’s just something about Yoda or Spock surrounded by girly flowers that is hilariously awesome.

Seriously, Abe Lincoln in a flowery top hat? I can’t handle it. Adam and I were really tempted to bring one of these guys home with us but we weren’t sure where we’d put it. Although I totally think it’d be awesome to have one mixed into a gallery full of more normal photos.

You know I love bold patterns so this geometric pottery from Ceramica Botanica totally caught my eye.

These shirts from The Social Dept. were so fun. But I’m pretty sure I mostly took this photo to prove to Adam there were in fact other men at this event.

I especially liked this shirt on the right:

These home items from Cloth and Ink were right up my alley. I loved the mix of colors and patterns.

This notebook from makemynotebook totally made me laugh. I love the idea of a notebook specifically for scheming.

I’m always on the lookout for cute cards I can use as art and I really liked these ones from Satchel & Sage.

These guys from hello wars may just be the most adorable things I’ve ever seen in my life. The Chewbacca one with a bow was totally calling my name but I’m not sure I could handle that amount of cuteness on a daily basis.

This jewelry from Favor Jewelry were some of my favorites. They were the perfect mix of simple yet sophisticated.

If you’re wondering about our process for tackling the craft fair, this is what we do:

We always make two passes – one for browsing and one for buying. The first pass we pick up business cards from any of the booths we like. This way we remember which ones we liked and we have links to their stores if we end up wanting to buy from them in the future. Adam also marked down on the map the booths we for sure wanted to go back to purchase from.

Then once we’ve finished the first pass, we usually take a little break and talk about which items we actually want to purchase (and which fit into our budget). While it might not seem like a lot of fun, I highly recommend setting a general budget of how much you want to spend before you go – with so much awesome stuff, it’d be easy to go a bit crazy!

Once we’ve figured out what we want to purchase we go back to those booths and pick up our stuff. So what did we buy this time?

First up, we bought this card and print from Satchel & Sage to use as artwork for our bedroom:

I also picked out this necklace from Favor Jewelry. A huge shout out to the girl working the booth – she was SO patient with me as I tried on pretty much every necklace they had. They were all so pretty I couldn’t decide!

And of course, I also picked up this succulent planter from BDJ Craft Works:

Afterward we headed to one of our favorite food trucks, Coolhaus, for some delicious homemade ice cream sandwiches.

I’m telling ya, food bribery? It works. 

If you’ve never been to Austin before, the food truck scene is basically like this. There are food truck areas scattered around town where groups of trucks gather. Some of them travel around but a lot of them tend to be in the same spot all the time. Which is great because it makes it both easy to find them and you almost always have lots of options in one place.

We love Coolhaus because for $5 you get to choose your very own combo of fresh baked cookie and homemade ice cream.

I went with the chocolate chip cookie and root beer ice cream. And yes, that wrapper is edible – it’s made out of some kind of potato paper I think so you don’t have to worry about eating around it.

Adam went with a chocolate cookie with the Guinness Chip ice cream. I’m not sure what Adam is doing in this photo but I like to think he’s pondering the magic that is the Coolhaus ice cream sandwich. Or praying to the sandwich gods for making it so deliciously amazing. You choose.

Here’s me with my sandwich. What this photo doesn’t show you is these babies were melting like a polar ice caps on the sun – and it wasn’t even that hot by Texas standards!

So despite the fact that we look all nice and calm eating our sandwiches, the reality looked a bit more like this…

…as we quickly scarfed them down before they turned into big melty messes.

And yes I’m going to leave you with this gem of a shot because well, it’s awesome.

Anyone else ever been to a Renegade Craft Fair? Are food trucks a thing where you live? We have some here in San Antonio now but I don’t think it’s quite at the level of Austin just yet.

Psst…want more Renegade Craft Fair goodness? Check out my recap from our 1st Renegade Craft Fair experience here. 

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