STL Free For All

This weekend is one of the best opportunities in awhile to get a look at local artisans and artists in fiber, clay, wood, photography, sculpture, mixed media, painting, jewelry, glass and more. And, as the Cool Art, Hot Jazz name implies, the music is going to be first rate, too, starting Saturday (Apr. 5) at 10 a.m. with the excellent guitarist Dave Black (who happens to be extremely kid-friendly — he’s even let M. handle his guitar strings a time or two).

The festival runs until 5 p.m. Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday (Apr. 6). The location is Queeny Park, 550 Weidman Road in Manchester, a space large enough to handle the scores of artists exhibiting. Admission is free for kids under 18 and $5 for adults. There’s a kids’ area (what would an arts festival be without one???) but no special food court. For details, visit the Web site or call 314.889.0433.

This week I made the semi-annual trip out to Chesterfield Mall to buy spring and summer clothes for the boys. I visited exactly one store: H&M. I left with two huge bags (31 items, to be exact) and a mere $300 dent in my pocketbook. I felt so good about my thriftiness on a season’s worth of cute, trendy clothes that I celebrated with a $30 lunch at Annie Gunn’s. (A note to fellow recovering foodies: Morel mushrooms are on the menu!!)

Financially, it’s probably for the best that the only H&M kids’ department in the St. Louis area is a good 40-minute drive from our house now that I-64 is closed, Annie Gunn’s notwithstanding. I am a huge, huge fan of the Swedish discount clothing company and have been for about a decade, ever since we lived in Germany — which happens to be H&M’s biggest market. Here’s an example of how omnipresent it is there: In our “hometown” of Stuttgart, in the main shopping downtown shopping district alone, there were three H&M stores in walking distance of each other, two of which had extensive kids’ departments, including nursing booths, changing stations, etc. — and all of which had different selections. Pure nirvana.

My kids, without really knowing it, are huge fans of L.O.G.G., which complements the H&M brand in the kidswear section — for example, M. was over the moon about this new shirt yesterday.

Being the second son, S. gets stuck with a lot of hand-me-downs; this is one of his L.O.G.G. favorites, a hockey-playin’ Snoopy montage. Refreshingy, the chain doesn’t carry a lot of pop-culture-driven merchandise, but it does have a few cartoon characters scattered about. However, most of the graphics are generated by 60+ in-house designers. I wanted to get a nice picture of S. in the Snoopy sweatshirt to insert here, but while I was distracted in the kitchen, he was in the dining room raiding the cupcakes that were supposed to be for dessert … so I settled for a cute-but-naughty shot! Another piece of good news is that pretty much everything at H&M is easy to care for (machine wash warm, toss in the dryer) and more durable than one would expect for an average of $10 per item.

Of course, H&M has women’s and men’s clothes too, but you can get those at the Galleria or West County Center. That’s what I reminded my husband when he wondered why he didn’t rate one single item from my binge! And his cupcake got eaten too. Life is hard for dads sometimes!