Austin Day Trip - Mini Maker Fair

We went down to Austin on a spontaneous trip to Mini Maker Fair (found out about it the night before...we loved the regular Maker Fair and were sad to see it go, so when we found out someone had started up a smaller version, we jumped at the chance.)  If you ever get a chance to take your kids to this, do!  (It's not just for kids, but a lot of it is, and the rest is definitely family friendly).

There parked in the city to get some lunch, and had a mini-civics lesson when we passed a protest march (a peaceful one) for Immigration Reform.  (You can see a video here)

After lunch and a lot of walking, we got to the Maker Fair.  

No one was riding the bikes when we got there, but even better than seeing them go was getting a chance to MAKE them go. The kids got to flap the wings and move the head around on this owl bicycle....

This star wars ship was way cooler than my photo makes it out to be.

And yes, my friends...that is a Tardis Control Panel.

And you might recognize the two lego creations in the back

(if you've every played, or had a child who played, Minecraft).

There was so much cool stuff there.  Live animals (horses and a parrot). a tinkering area where they could make their own creations out of old computer parts, a planetarium, crafts, music, and more!  Just a ton of fun.  Really, it had a lot of what the original maker fair had (minus some of the big shows like the giant tesla coil and battling robots)...and for a fraction of the price.  We bought tickets online for $7 for the kids and $10 for us.  If we had known earlier we could have bought them for $5, and it was $10-$15 at the door if my memory serves me right.  

And then, of course, Austin itself is just beautiful.  We took this walking over the bridge into the city...