Our Trip To Magnolia Market in Waco Texas!

I’ve been a Fixer Upper Fan since season one and it’s been my dream to go visit Magnolia Market in Waco ever since it opened! I never thought we actually would be able to make it happen, but when we decided to attend a homeschool convention with our Character Badges business in Fort Worth, we thought it would be fun to go a day early and visit Magnolia!

Little did we know that we would be going on the busiest weekend of the year! More about that later….

So what is Waco like? You see the best of Waco on the tv show. We were really surprised when we arrived to realize the town is pretty old and run down. It isn’t scary, but it was crazy to drive down a really run down street and then suddenly here is a Fixer Upper home that looks nice. Chip and Joanna are a huge blessing for Waco!

Magnolia Market is right in the heart of downtown surrounded by a lot of old mom and pop type stores and mechanic shops. You can’t miss the silos, it’s like the landmark for Waco. Sort of like St. Louis is known for the arch. They really stand out and are so neat!

We couldn’t seem to get a picture without someone in the way, so just ignore the guy standing there. 🙂

It was SO sunny every time we tried to take a picture! I should mention that we only brought the four oldest children with us, which is why you don’t see our youngest two girls in the pictures. Since we were headed to a three day homeschool convention after this we left them home with my sister. 🙂

The Spring at the Silos is apparently a huge event they do each year, and it’s the busiest weekend of the year! We got there 30 minutes before it opened up and there was already a long line just to get into the store. So, so crazy.

The children had so much fun playing on the lawn at Magnolia. They kicked the ball around, threw beanbags, and played a game of dominos with oversized wooden dominoes.

This was such a pretty photography spot by the silos! They had flowers everywhere outside for the Spring festival and it was just breathtaking!

The doors finally opened and we could go inside! These pictures show you just how crowded it was. The noise was crazy, and everyone seemed to be in a buying frenzy.

The lower part of the Magnolia Store. This has the signs in the back wall, Chip’s corner, flowers, t-shirts and hats and the shipping station where you could buy things in the store and have it shipped for free with a certain amount of purchase (I think it was $100.00).

I loved the ceiling with the industrial look combined with the fun lights strung everywhere.

I took pictures of a few display areas they had. I meant to take even more pictures but the store was just so crowded that it was hard to take them. Over the years I’ve decorated with old books, but I love how they put the pages facing forward here. My boys loved these little trees!

A simple display but I liked the basket hung up!

I love old wooden tables, and I really loved these cloth napkins!

If you can believe it, I left the store without buying anything. I’m still surprised that I did that, my mother in law had sent me birthday money along to use there if I wanted, but I was a little overwhelmed with how crazy busy it was and couldn’t think clearly to decide what to get. The biggest reason though was the prices. I kept looking at everything and thinking about how I could find something so similar at Hobby Lobby for half the price! I adore Magnolia and Chip and Joanna, but I also know we are on a tight budget right now so I really did walk away with nothing.

Not quite nothing though. We went to the bakery next!

The lines were long for the bakery as well, but we only waited 30 minutes to get in.

As you wait in line they walk through and hand everyone a menu and a pencil. I was so glad they did that so we could have time to look through and decide what everyone wanted. Once we got inside I realized they had the most amazing cinnamon rolls, and I would have gotten that for everyone to try instead of the cookie, but oh well. We couldn’t get everything!

I’ve always heard how good the cupcakes are, and everything I’ve heard is true and then some. These were the absolute best any of us had ever had! The icing was amazing!

We wanted to try everything, but finally got our order and went outside to find a table to sit down.

Don’t they look scrumptious? I wish I knew how to make cupcakes that turned out so pretty!

Overall I loved going to visit Magnolia. We all left happy, but our family vote was that it wasn’t worth the trip to drive 8 hours just to see Magnolia. Since we were close it totally felt worth the extra effort we put into going, just to actually see it for ourselves, but I would have been disappointed if this was the main reason we went to Texas.

If we had gone when it wasn’t quite as busy I think that would have really helped. There were so many areas of the store that I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of, just because of how full the store was. I did leave inspired, and free inspiration is always great. 😉 We have taken a break from working on our house, but hope to start the next phase of house projects after convention season is over! I have a better plan in place, and will go to Hobby Lobby with that plan soon. I still have birthday money to spend!

Joanna does have a new recipe book coming out soon that I already have on pre-order. I’m really hoping a cupcake recipe might end up in the book!