State Fair News

State Fair of Texas issues 2025 guide for arts & crafts blue ribbons

State Fair of Texas blue ribbons

SFOT

The time has come for crafty Texans to showcase their creativity: The State Fair of Texas has issued the 2025 version of its Arts & Crafts and Cooking Contest Guides, now available for download at BigTex.com/CreativeArts.

The State Fair’s Creative Arts team holds two kinds of contests: pre-Fair arts and crafts contests like quilting and jam-making; and Fair-time cooking contests, like best bread and best dish with cheese. There are more than 1,100 arts and crafts categories and 26 cooking contests.

Pre-fair contests
The 2025 Arts & Crafts Contests include Fine Art; Ceramics; Designer Craftsman; Dolls; Canning; Hobby Collections; Holiday Corner; Needlepoint, Crewel, and Counted Cross-Stitch; Needlework and Sewing; Afghans, Rugs, Quilts, and Bedspreads; Photography; Scale Models; Glue-a-Shoe; and The Great Pumpkin Challenge.

Actual registration for the 2025 pre-Fair contests will open online on May 7 with a deadline of Monday, July 28, to submit online entry forms and fees.

Contestants can submit their entries via mail by July 28 or hand-deliver items to the Creative Arts building in Fair Park on August 1, 2, and 3 from 9 am-5 pm.

In the weeks following, entries will be judged, and contestants will be notified once the results are finalized. Entries awarded a ribbon will be displayed during the 2025 State Fair of Texas.

Cooking Contests
The 2025 Cooking Contests include Bread; Cooking With Cheese; Honey, the Magic Ingredient; Beekeepers Honey, Farm to Fork; Chocolate; Pizza Cook-Off; Youth Cooking Contest; Best of Show-Down (invitation only); Play with your Food; Dough-Re-Me Pastry; Soup or Salad; Ice Cream Freeze-Off; The Ultimate Grilled Cheese Challenge; Charcuterie Board; Texas Chuck Wagon; International Cuisine; Speedy Dishes; Fair Concoctions; Chicken or the Egg; Cobbler Cook-Off; Tex Mex; and Candy.

The 2025 State Fair of Texas Cooking Contest Guide and the Cooking Contest Calendar are now available, with online registration opening on May 7, and closing Monday, July 28.

Blue Ribbon Battle
The State Fair of Texas is bringing back the Battle for the Blue Ribbons – a spring cooking competition consisting of three of the Fair’s most popular Creative Arts Cooking Contests: Cookies, Cakes, and Pies, running from May 16-May 18.

Amateur home cooks of all ages may enter for the chance to be awarded first, second, third, and honorable mention for a total of 40 blue-ribbon winners who will be invited to compete in their respective contests at the exclusive Best of Show-Down in the Competition Kitchen during the 2025 State Fair of Texas on October 5, 2025.

One contestant from each of the three contests will be awarded a Best of Show ribbon, allowing them to advance to a head-to-head battle for the Best of Show-Down grand prize. For more information about this specific competition and to register, visit BigTex.com/Battle.

Registration
Participants are encouraged use the online registration system for all contests. It allows the creation of a family account, which permits adults in the household to add additional contestants to the account and register youth contestants. Youth contestants will have their own designated entries for Creative Arts competitions, but all communications regarding those entries are sent to the primary adult on the account.

Although there are paper registration forms in the Arts & Crafts and Cooking Contest Guides that can be mailed to the Fair, it is recommended to use the online registration portal to ensure contestants receive helpful reminders and judging results of their respective contests.

The 2025 State Fair of Texas will opening on Friday, September 26, and run through Sunday, October 19.

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Movie Review

Lust eclipses romance in new adaptation of 'Wuthering Heights'

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights.

Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights is one of those classic books assigned in high school English classes, and it has received a number of film adaptations over the years, each of which differ in numerous ways from the source material. Purists won’t receive any reprieve from Emerald Fennell’s 2026 adaptation, with a title that is stylized as "Wuthering Heights” for good reason.

Cathy (played as an adult by Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) have known each other their entire lives, with Cathy’s alcoholic and inveterate gambler father (Martin Clunes) taking in Heathcliff on a whim when he was a boy. The two bond as they grow up together, although Cathy always seems to have an eye on moving up in society from their relatively impoverished lifestyle.

Cathy finally gets her wish when the rich Linton familyled by Edgar (Shazad Latif), moves in down the road, Despite discovering she has feelings for the now grown-up Heathcliff, Cathy sees Edgar as her way out and agrees to marry him. A scorned Heathcliff flees, returning years later as mysteriously wealthy. His reappearance ignites something in Cathy’s soul, and the two engage in a perhaps unwise affair.

Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) infuses the dusty material with an energy that’s not typically present in stories set in this particular time and place. Aside from the occasional Charli XCX song (the singer created a whole concept album for the film), the film looks and feels like a period piece, albeit one that doesn’t get bogged down in the drudgery that can sometimes come from films set in the distant past.

Much of that has to do with the lust the filmmaker puts into the story. Even if you’re not familiar with Brontë’s book, you can rest assured that Fennell has strayed far from the text, giving Cathy and Heathcliff thoughts and actions unthinkable in the 19th century. Fennell plays with expectations by opening the film with audio featuring creaking noises and a man grunting, conjuring up a situation far different than what is actually happening, and she also makes liberal use of rain, sweat, and tears to make the actors enticing.

What she can’t do, however, is make the two lead characters compelling. Cathy is a striver who never seems to know what she wants out of life, and Heathcliff goes from a bore to a brute over the course of the film, with no clear indication that he likes anybody, much less Cathy. Anyone expecting some kind of grand romance will be disappointed as Fennell is much more interested in making the film weird, like having the walls of Cathy’s room look like her skin, complete with freckles.

Robbie and Elordi do well enough with the material, and it’s clear that both of them are committed to bringing Fennell’s vision to life. Their styles tend to balance each other out, and if the story had been committed to their characters’ relationship, they might be lauded for their chemistry. In the end, though, the supporting actors feel more interesting, including ones played by Hong Chau, Alison Miller, and Clunes.

This version of Wuthering Heights should never be construed as an alternative to reading the book for any high schoolers out there. While Fennell makes the film interesting with her technical filmmaking choices, the story never finds its footing as it fails to sell the one thing that it seems to promise.

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Wuthering Heights opens in theaters on February 13.

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