Tales of the Flowers: 2025 Pasadena Chalk Festival Day 2 - Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day! I love that I get to spend it with my kids doing something together at the Pasadena Chalk Festival! We started our "Grogu Goes to Hogwarts" mural yesterday, and today we'll be finishing it up!

Since we made such good progress yesterday, we decided to sleep in a little bit. It wouldn't be until 9:15am that we'd finally show up to our mural. It looks like all our overnight protections did their job. No footprints, bike tires, or any other vandalism here! We're good to start right away!

Chartlotte and Curt got an early start, but they're making good progress. Aww, I love that the Bot-y Bunch has Rosie (the maid) in the center, just like Alice (the maid) in The Brady Bunch.

Before we get started, the kids wanted to check out the artists area. Last year, they loved that it was so close by, running off by themselves to get as many drinks and snacks as they were allowed. It's a little further away this year, and across the street, but they still got to go visit it a few times throughout the day.

Breakfast? I even see a Snickers bar.

Ah, the chalk exchange. The kids would make a couple trips here as we tried to find identical colors for our large background areas.

10am and the plastic covering is all pulled up. Let's get started.

The kids kept filling in the massive background.

Theresa is cleaning up the grays, and tightening up the transitions. Where two colors come together, we don't want to leave a strip of white. We want colors from both sides to blend together, but we also want to keep the colors distinct to give the impression of nice sharp lines.

And I'm adding black lines to the snitch.

Nice job Team Flowers! We're just about done!

Ruston thought he was done yesterday, but really wanted to add those Northern Lights from his poster. "But what if I mess everything up? But then, when else will I get a chance to draw the Northern Lights." In the end, he took the leap and I think it turned out fantastic!

The kids finished just a little bit more of the background and viola, it's done!

Theresa - There's just a little spot I want to touch up.

Okay, now it's done!

Our character cheering squad.

High five from our neighbor Jordyn.

Theresa - Just a little more on the Mudhorn badge.

Looks great! We got a lot of fun compliments. Parents and kids alike loved seeing Grogu and thought the mashup was a cute idea.

Time for Ruston to pull up his tape.

Great job Ruston! It looks beautiful.

Theresa - I just want to fix this smudge here.

Our chalk neighbor Jordyn is making good progress on hers too.

And now, it's done. Time to pull up the tape. This has been the kids' job ever since they could do it.

Ian helping back in 2016.

And Alli in 2017.

Some things never change.

THERESA! Be done!

In the end, Ruston came back with his car and we put all our gear, including all the chalk, into it. Now we have to be done. Let's head to lunch!

Here's the timelapse from Day 1 and Day 2 with just the important parts. All the times we left for lunch, or weren't working on it have been trimmed out.

Curt and Charlotte are almost finished too.

And Jamie finished his too! I love the subject. It's an art class with nude drawing, but the artists are crayons, and the subject has their wrapper on the ground. Oh my! And we can't forget the pictures hanging on the art classroom wall which were made by Jamie's kids.

Lunch was Blaze Pizza. It is Sunday, which is typically pizza day at our house.

After lunch, we wandered through the entire chalk festival, checking out what all the other artists have been working on. I'll post those separately. As artists, we get to vote for each other's murals in different categories.

While we were wandering around, I saw a text from a friend we had met last year. Albert and his girlfriend Amanda live nearby and are both artists. We struck up a conversation last year and I was hoping they'd be able to participate this year. Life got in the way though, and they weren't able to do it, but he said he was stopping by with some cold drinks for us.

And these weren't just any drinks. They are something special! And KitKat from Japan!

Great to see you Albert! Thank you for the drinks and treats! Hopefully everything works out to chalk things up next year!

For dinner, we met up with Jamie, Sarah, and family and went to the Urth Cafe.

We can't stay too long though because at 7pm we need to get back for the awards!

Tom Coston welcomed us all. We gave a big thanks to all the volunteers and the people who organized this whole event. It's a lot to organize to be sure. But from our vantage point, everything went smoothly. Volunteers walked around during the day with cold water, wet towels soaked in ice water, extra chalk, etc.

Our mural is cute, but there's other artists here who are amazing. We don't expect to win anything, but we're very happy for those who do. We get a lot of joy out of it either way, and as long as others are enjoying it, we're having fun.

We didn't end up winning anything this year. We know the categories ahead of time, but we never try to make something just to fit into it. We just do something we think will be fun.

We didn't win, but our friend Jamie did! His mural was voted Best Animation! Congratulations Jamie! His son was so proud of him.

His son even got to say a couple words.

Jamie said - He was so proud. He keeps saying every so often "I can't believe we won the whole chalk festival!"

Don't let him think any different.

After the awards, the sun had set enough such that it was a great time to go around looking at everyone's murals and take photos without all the harsh shadows falling across them. We posed with our friends in a long line, looking down at the pieces we made this year. Great job everyone!

I'm proud of the work we did, and proud of the kids for all their efforts. They were both a big help this year and did everything without complaining. At the end of the night, we were all sore, our fingertips burned from rubbing the ground, and we were hot and sweaty. But we all had some great memories working on this together as a family. The kids asked me if I had a good Father's Day and I told them "the best".