It gets bigger every year, according to Katie Tabares, who attended the Padanaram Business Association’s annual Summer Festival with her family and the Meyer family on Saturday, July 27.

Grace Tabares, 9, said she loves that “everyone gets to participate — not just the adults.”

Maddie Meyer, 5, highlighted how “everyone has fun and enjoys the stuff at the booths.”

There were dozens of vendors and entertainers lined down the streets of Padanaram, with visits from the Laundry Monster, dance performances, cornhole, snow cones, tacos and lots of shopping.

Gabby Meyer, 8, said it’s a way for the community to get together and “show what we can do.”

Maggie Sloan, 13, said she loved seeing “all the beautiful creations” and is happy to see they have an opportunity to showcase them.

Katie said, “It’s crazy how many people come from out of state, out of town — it just attracts so many people from all over the place.”

Some of those people include Dawn Mostow, Ben Gould and Tobias Gould, 3, who came all the way up from Roswell, Georgia and have attended the festival for the last decade.

“Everybody shows up,” Ben said. “We rode our bikes here today, got a free watermelon slice — it’s been just charming.”

Mostow highlighted the variety of activities available for kids and the creativity of all the local artists.

“It’s just amazing how everybody in the whole town and all the towns around show up for it,” she said.

At the Kids Zone, Achusnet’s Chloe Martins, 11 and Juliana Matias, 10, sold a variety of jewelry and baked goods.

The girls said it was their first time coming to the festival and they were having a good time with “really good” sales.

Matias said she has especially enjoyed “buying from other people because they are just so kind about it and they say, ‘Thank you,’ and all that.”

At the Dartmouth Cultural Center, kids painted rocks and shells. 

Among those kids was Geneviev DiCorto, 8, who was layering pink paint onto a rock.

Though she was unsure of what exactly she was painting at the time, she had already completed a “sandy beach” scene, which uniquely included a flock of cardinals flying over the horizon — an artistic choice made by DiCorto due to the lack of white for seagulls.

Christian Moreira, 8, joined DiCorto at the table, painting the words “Orlando Magic” onto his rock in support of the basketball team.

Motion Dance Studio performed for the festival and among the dancers was Skye Bright, 8.

“It was really fun,” she said, adding how she did tricks like aerial, which are no-handed cartwheels, on cement that she’s never done on that type of surface before.

Skye said she was enjoying the festival, especially her “dino chicken nugget” stuffed animal she got.

Her father, Will Bright, said, “It seems pretty cool. I just came here for the first time and there’s a whole bunch of people out here. Seems like a good time. I guess the family unit is together and we are about to go and enjoy it.”

Making their way to the Toe Jam Puppet Band performance, Bridget Mullane, 5, joined her mom eating a green watermelon snow cone from Anne Whiting Real Estate.

“We are so excited to have this great festival in our town,” said Anne Marie Mullane. “We are so appreciative of all the business sponsors who make this happen.”