This was our first time attending the Dupage Native Plant Sale. It is now held at the Dupage Event…read moreCenter and Fairgrounds. Parking and admission were free. This is a 2 day event selling over 150 different types of native flowers,grasses,shrubs and trees. There were many volunteers around to ask questions and get recommendations. Plants are not restocked daily so best is to go early on the first day. It gets crowded and with so many people pulling wagons and carts,patience is required! They do have a few trays to use but best is to bring your own boxes. Cash,check or credit cards are accepted but I wish the checkout area was in a different location than where the plants were being sold as the lines for checkout were very long. Proceeds benefit the Dupage Forest Preserve.

Amazing! Loved checking out all the 4-H projects! Special shout out to @ikonicglass for an amazing…read moreglass blowing experience!

Its an amazing fest. I went for this fest for the 2nd time. Amazing performances, food stalls,…read morerides and best game stalls. Very good time.

The food court area is very messy and unorganized A lot of…read morehand washing stations, outdoor restrooms.Plenty of games and rides for all kids of different age groups. Very nice craft vendors- support local and small business please. Live concert by Don felder was amazing. Fireworks at the end-- everyone enjoyed. Overall great fest to go and have family time with great entertainment options. Bring your chairs, hoodie and may be picnic blanket.

2024 Review! This is…read morethe third year my partner and I have been to the Taste of Roselle! The festival is the first weekend in August every year on Friday evening and all day Saturday/Sunday. They have a mix of food vendors, artisan tents, and carnival rides. There is all live music each evening with 3-4 bands rotating timeslots. The entire event spans on Main Street from Park St to Roselle Rd. Each year we have gone, there have been some consistent food vendors but always some new! They always have Doctor Dogs, Italian Pizza Kitchen, and Pollyanna serving beers, seltzers, and some of Lynfred's wines. The first booth we stopped at was Chicago Culinary Kitchen out of Palatine. Their menu offered a variety of BBQ style sandwiches with unique flavors. My partner got the Pit Beef Sandwich ($17). Forewarning, the horseradish sauce did not disappoint on the spice level and meat was tasty! The second booth we stopped at was Aunt Tina's which offers souther style cuisine. They had a "tasting menu" where all items were $6; I got the mac and cheese as well as cornbread fritters. Mac and Cheese was creamy and hit the spot. The cornbread fritters I would pass in next time.

Lots of vendors and good entertainment. Went for the beer and music. The food is super expensive…read morefor what you get in my opinion. I did share a Mexican plate with my wife and it was very good.

Another year, another Itasca Fest…read more We live minutes from the Itasca border, so getting here is a breeze. And so is parking -- though you do have to be willing to walk a block or two. But downtown Itasca is lovely. I think most people, if they drove through this little village of 8,300 people, would not expect very big happenings. But Itasca Fest is pretty impressive for the size of the town. Free admission, and there's a huge carnival, a big tent set up with plenty of tables for noshing at and a stage with live entertainment, bingo, a rummage sale, educational events for the kids (including interacting with wild animals) and of course plenty of greasy food to go around. Last year, there was a super-cool NASA trailer set up where you could play with various gadgets and learn about life in a spaceship. Honestly, I enjoyed it as much as the kid with us did. Unfortunately, no NASA trailer this year. Still, four stars for a solidly good time nearby and on the cheap.

Considering the majority of my big fat Italian family lives in Itasca, it's shocking that this was…read moremy first time here. And let's be honest, I came for the Bingo. We started here on Sunday night, the last night of the fest. Bingo is run by the Lyons Club and they do a great job of keeping the natives restless while having some personality. The guy working our row was awesome, was so friendly. Cards are 3 for a dollar and my dreams were crushed when I saw they were the sliders and not the stamp kind of cards. I was really looking forward to having a big purple stamper to dot up my cards. Each round of Bingo could win somewhere between $50-$70 but alas, I didn't have any luck. The final round was a cover-all game and cards were $1 each. The jackpot for that final round was above the $200 mark. In order to entertain us before the final round (and possibly because it was the last night of the fest, we were able to get as many free drinks as we wanted before the last game). I spent about $13 total on an hour of Bingo, which I don't consider to be too much of a loss. Did I really just write about Bingo for a full paragraph? Back to the fest. They have about 8-10 vendors for food including local restaurants. Rides are plentiful here, I couldn't even guess how many. Upwards of a dozen? Games were also not scarce, and they had all the classic games. I ended up winning myself a stuffed monkey. It's what every 29 year old adult female needs. I can only compare Itasca fest to Bartlett fest or Naperville's Rib Fest. I would probably prefer Itasca fest over both because it has WAY more games and rides than Bartlett, and isn't as crowded as Rib Fest. It's a new summer tradition.

One of the best Chicago-area, family-friendly festivals I've been to. We found free parking at a…read morenearby lot, and waited to enter right when the festival opened. Luckily, we went on a not-so-crowded day (aka not the 4th of July), and the weather wasn't as scorching hot as previous days. We came prepared with folding chairs, sun umbrellas, blankets, sunscreen, hats, and sunglasses. It was really fun visiting all of the vendors' booths and spinning wheels for free stuff (sometimes only when you provide your info), taking photos at photobooths, etc. The food was so good; we had Uncle Bub's ribs which won 1st place, and they were so tasty. The carnival area had plenty of rides, and we really enjoyed the petting zoo. There were so many different animals, ranging from chickens to lambs. The music could have been better, but we also didn't go on the headlining day. All in all, a great, fun day. Hopefully we can go next year when it is hosted by Romeoville.

We went on July 4 hoping to see fireworks and hear Melissa Etheridge and the Stray Cats. It was a…read moreno to the first and partials for the 2nd two. We got an online discount so buying online isn't always a ripoff. I wasn't crazy about the lack of info for the shuttle service. We took the Metra in and read that shuttles came there, but we go off the train and foolishly crossed over, looking for a bus or a sign. After 10 min we got an Uber, THEN realized where the shuttles were; next time they should post signs on where to look for the shuttle. It was great when we arrived, you gotta go to Just North of Memphis for ribs and PEACH BREAD PUDDING. The mac n cheese was ok, so-so, but I never heard of peach bread pudding, it was to LIVE for! They cleared the park around 6 when no lightning was present, and we stood in the HOT gym across the street. Luckily Melissa had barely started, and we were able to stand outside as nothing major happened yet. We went back in, ate more and missed most of Melissa, then around 8 or so it really was lightning and about to rain, and we just managed to hear the Stray Cats do their #1 song 'Stray Cat Strut'. By 9 the whole thing was cancelled, and we sought out the shuttle buses as the rain started. I may go again next year in a car.

After experiencing the difficulty of getting near the launch site of the fireworks shows, this year…read moreI decided to watch Itasca's firework show from a distance in Elk Grove Village. Though there was still quite a line off 53 and onto Biesterfield and Arlington Heights Roads, this is still much better than what I've experienced closer where the fireworks are launched. It's a good idea to allow a minimum of 30 min before and 30 min after for heavy congestion though even an hour after the show, the traffic was still quite heavy on the main roads. The show itself really dazzled with both a higher frequency of fireworks than many nearby spots as was a larger size fireworks. This spanned a large array of different firework types though I wish there was a little more variety in the colors available. Regardless, even from over a mile away, the show was amazing and well worth the drive nearby. It's still crowded in the surrounding towns and there were a substantial number of lines at local businesses like McDonalds who were serving food. Overall, great fireworks show to watch -- even if you're not experiencing it directly at Hamilton Lakes.

Great shot with lots of beautiful and very patriotic colors and styles of designs above our heads…read moregoing off, but was a little too short.

Visiting the Glen Ellyn French Market was a bit of a surprise, since my family and I are used to…read morethe bustling Saturday market in Wheaton. From what I gather, this market is newer, maybe still getting rolling. It happens on Sundays, from 9am to 2pm, in the parking lot at the corner of Crescent Blvd and Glenwood Ave. It's expected to continue until the end of October. On our visit here, there were a couple farms selling produce, several bakeries, stands selling granola, tea, iced coffee, sausage and cheeses. A lady was selling Usbourne books (love those!). Hmm what am I missing? Oh yea, two guys were making the most delicious chicken tacos. The amount of vendors and the crowd size are definitely more manageable than the Saturday market in Wheaton. I didn't care for the iced coffee I tried, which had me missing my Saturday cup from I Have A Bean. I'd skip that next time, but the rest of the market is worth checking out. If you see the guys grilling chicken, you must try a taco!

Very small market, I'd probably only come if I was going to be in the area. Nice assortment of…read morevendors: sweets, jams, produce, jewelry. Probably 6-8 vendors in total. Market goes through mid-October. Located right by the metra. Great location to walk to stores or restaurants afterwards.

The real highlight here is the carnival Giant Drop ride. Go…read moreon it with someone who is scared of heights, you'll doubt yourself.

This past weekend Glen Ellyn sponsored their annual Taste. This was my first time to Glen Ellyn's…read moreversion of a family fun weekend that most times is overrun by annoying teenage punks. Lombard Taste, you know what I'm talking about. I would say this is your average, run-of-the-mill, get what you pay for (it was free) local festival. For being a "Taste" there wasn't all that much being offered from local vendors. There were maybe 4 vendors with local treats like Tap House Grill, Chicks 'n Salsa, Chicago Prime Meat Market and a pizza joint. The rest of the food was your "eat with caution, likely to induce some serious commode time" typical carni-culprits like gyros and meat on a stick. Who doesn't love deep fried snickers that are advertised as "tastes like warm fudge"? ughhhhh. The arts and crafts were a sight for sore eyes. Actually, eyes that hurt really, really bad. They did have a climbing wall that seemed to be quite a hit with the youngsters. And I totally would have scaled that thing if not for the fear of ripping my pants open in front of the school-aged innocent. The free concerts on Saturday night made up for what could have been a bust of a weekend. Tin Horse, a country chick's band, and The New Invaders, a 60's cover band, kept us highly entertained throughout the cold night. Part of that might have had to do with the beer tent and those little $5 red tickets. My advice to next years Taste Committee - pick it up a notch, think about what people actually want to see/do at a festival, not just what's always been done. Promote local biz but do it in a modern way that will make people want to come back next year.

I love this place so much. It's a 1890s living history museum, and there's so many interesting…read morethings to learn about here. In the winter, they do ice carving demonstrations that you can participate in. In the summer, they make hand-churned ice cream with the harvested ice from the winter and host an "ice cream social" for everyone to participate in. They also do maple sugaring demonstrations in the spring. Every hour, there are house tours where you can learn some history about life in the 1890s. The farm animals are adorable too. It's also free to get in. Perfect for adults and kids!

The website promotes the idea of having several things to do, which we didn't find to be the case…read more We arrived at 10am which is supposed to be tours of the farmhouse, didn't happen. One lady did say that, "someone probably looked outside and didn't immediately see anyone so they skipped it." We did walk around and see pigs, pet the sheep, saw cows. The horses were off under the sheds. A 30 min walk. Tha