ROYAL PALM BEACH - About 50 local vendors will be presenting their homemade and handmade crafts at the eighth annual Fall Fantasy Craft Show that takes place 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Veterans Park, 1036 Royal Palm Beach Blvd.

"We're overwhelmed with so many vendors and artists from the area. We have a waiting list," said Carlos Morales, facilities supervisor for the Royal Palm Beach Cultural Center. "It's a good community event. We expect a big crowd."

One of those vendors this year will be Alycia Mattingly of West Palm Beach and owner of The Plaid Bow. She creates non-edible cakes made of towels, diapers, blankets and gifts. She said she knows it sounds weird, but when people see it put together they're always amazed. Her crafts can be compared to gift baskets without the basket and in the shape of a cake.

"We're excited. I am looking forward to the festival, but I'm nervous to see how people respond to [my crafts]," Mattingly said. "It's a unique gift, a different idea. It's a great gift for somebody that you don't know what to get."

Most of her business are custom orders, but she'll be making up a few holiday gift cakes for the festival. Visit www.theplaidbow.com for more information.

Another vendor Vicki Hargraves of West Palm Beach and owner of Awesome Bows of the Palm Beaches has been making custom children and pet bows for 26 years.

"It's the job I do and I love it. It's a very nice business. I like designing and creating," she said. "These are something that never goes out of style. I make custom bows to order, whatever somebody wants I can do."

She said she's done bows for entire Christmas shows at Kings Academy, her bows have appeared at the White House on a whole school group of children, and they have even adorned a dance troop traveling to Russia.

"I have something for everybody," she said.

More about Awesome Bows can be found at www.awesomebows.com.

Agnieszka Adamus of West Palm Beach will be there selling her magnet wear for kids, which are T-shirts that have magnets sewn inside of them and have magnetic toys that attach to the shirts.

"It looks like magic for [the children] because it just sticks to the shirt," she said.

Visit www.magnetwear.net for more information.

While Barbara Hedman will be there selling little flower arrangements inside of silicone cupcake cups with traditional sayings like "Happy Birthday" and "It's a girl" on them. She'll also be selling handmade decorative plates.

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WELLINGTON - Operation Christmas Child's national collection week began Monday and ends Nov. 23.

They're looking for shoe boxes filled with school supplies, toys, necessity items, hard candy and letters of encouragement. Those boxes will be sent to children in more than 100 countries. The organization also sends stories from the bible with the boxes in order to introduce the children to Christianity.

Last year the organizations collected more than 8 million shoe boxes and since 1993 they've delivered more than 69 million shoe boxes to needy children in 130 countries.

Tyla Morris, who is co-owner of Apple of His Eye Teacher Supply Store, 880-2 S. State Road 7, is a drop-off point again this year. They are the only drop-off location in Palm Beach County. Last year they collected more than 2,500 shoe boxes. This year's goal is 3,500. To make the process even easier Apple of His Eye is giving out free shoeboxes.

"This will help not just [the kids] physical but their spiritual needs as well," Morris said. "One lady that came in here…she packed 200 boxes herself. She shopped all year. She doesn't have kids of her own and this is how she has kids. This lady made me cry. Every one of these boxes were immaculate. It is such an amazing testimony of kindness."

Visit www.samaritanspurse.org to learn more information about Operation Christmas Child.

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LOXAHATCHEE - The Vinceremos Therapeutic Riding Center, 13300 Sixth Court N., in Loxahatchee, will be hosting its annual Holiday Horse Show and Picnic from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21.

There will be 65 riders expected to show off their skills at this year's event, which will also feature a potluck lunch. VTRC will provide pizza and soda for the event, while family members and spectators are encouraged to bring a dish to share. Spectators are also encouraged to bring folding chairs to setup during the show and picnic.

The VTRC is a nonprofit organization that provides recreational and therapeutic riding instruction to people of all ages with varying developmental, physical, and psychological disabilities.

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WELLINGTON - The following parks are closed on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, and Nov. 27:

Village Park, 11700 Pierson Road

Olympia Park, 9840 Pierson Road

Community Park (Boys and Girls Club), 3401 South Shore Blvd.

Tiger Shark Cove Park is closed on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, but will be open on Friday, Nov. 27. All neighborhood parks will remain open both days.

Starting Dec. 4 Village Park will begin new hours. The indoor gym will be open from 4 to 10 p.m. and other outdoor amenities will be available during daytime hours.

For information on other village programs, events, activities and updates, visitwww.wellingtonfl.gov or watch Channel 18.

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GREENACRES - More than 12,000 people are expected to celebrate Hispanic culture this weekend at the Palms West Chamber of Commerce's third annual SalsaFest from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Greenacres Community Park, 2095 Jog Road. Admission is $10, children younger than 7 are admitted free, and parking is free.

"It's a great event. We have activities happening all day," said Jaene Miranda, CEO of the Palms West Chamber of Commerce. The inaugural SalsaFest two years ago attracted more than 4,000 people. But that paled in comparison to the 12,000 that attended last year. Despite the economy the event continues to grow. Miranda said, "It's affordable to go the event. It's inexpensive entertainment considering you get international recording artists that are very well known. You get three artists and a bunch of other entertainment for $8."

While admission is $10 advance tickets for $8 can be purchased until Friday at SalsaFest's website, Havana Restaurant and El Bodegon. In addition they're selling a family four-pack for $30.

Back again this year is the popular chihuahua races, competitions by young chefs from the school district and salsa cooking demonstrations. The mayors of Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Greenacres, Loxahatchee Groves and the president of Indian Trail Improvement District will compete in a salsa showdown. Last year Loxahatchee Mayor David Browning took the top prize of “Best Salsa” in the cook-off. He'll be back again to defend his title.

The major entertainment acts this year include three world renowned salsa musical acts including headliner Rey Ruiz and Puerto Rican international sensations Lalo Rodriquez and Anthony Cruz.

This year they're also placing more focus on the children's entertainment by bringing in costume characters, bounce houses, and other activities. They'll have a safety fair where they Red Cross with teach children about safety.
Also again this year a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Greenacres Department of Leisure Services for the purpose of expanding its award-winning youth programs to underprivileged children in the community.

If You Go Box

What: 3rd Annual SalsaFest presented by The Palms West Chamber of Commerce

Where: Greenacres Community Park 2095 Jog Road; Park is located on Jog Road, one block north of 10th Ave.

When: Saturday, Nov 21

Time: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Admission: $10; children under 7 free; free parking

Mini Schedule: Noon salsa showdown with mayors; 1 p.m. salsa showdown with fire rescue and domino competition; 3:00 p.m. Chihuahua Race; 4:30 p.m. Anthony Cruz; 5:30 p.m. dance competition; 6:30 p.m. Lalo Rodriguez; 8:30 p.m. Rey Ruiz.

Contact: 561-790-6200

Web site: www.salsafest.net

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WELLINGTON - Local director/actress Keri Lurtz premiers her film "Lost Angel" at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Mos Art Theatre, 700 Park Ave., in Lake Park. At 6:15 p.m., hors d'oeuvres will be served.

"Lost Angel" follows three aspiring actors who move to Los Angeles in hopes of finding stardom, but instead their lives take drastically different paths.

Besides just directing the film Lurtz also plays Samantha, a small town Christian girl who finds success early, but ends up in a downward spiral of sex and drugs.

Some of the filming took place in L.A. and Boston, but more took place in South Florida.

Visit www.lostangelthemovie.com for more information about the movie and more information about Keri Lurtz can be found at www.kerilurtz.com.

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THE ACREAGE - The Acreage Fall Fest takes place Saturday from noon to 10 p.m. at the Acreage Community Park, 6701 140th Ave., in Loxahatchee. Admission is $10; children ages 4 to 10 are $5 and younger than 3 are admitted free. Active duty military are also admitted free.

Headlining the evening is eighth-place finisher on Season 5 of American Idol Bucky Covington. Since being booted from Idol he released a self-titled album in 2007 that topped the U.S. country charts and has a second album "I'm Alright" that's due out next year. He is expected to take the stage at 9 p.m.

Other entertainment includes Steve Azar, Trailer Choir, Tim Dugger, Chili Chicks, Cecilia Lauren, Casey Raines & CO, The Electric Hearts, 10-year-old Emily Brooke and The Frictionator.

Visit their Web site for more information.

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WELLINGTON - The deadline to donate new or gently used shoes to Soles4Souls, a charity that collects shoes for the needy is Nov. 15.

Soles4Souls will distribute the shoes to children and adults around the world, including several places in the U.S.

The shoe drive is being organized by 10th grade Wellington High School student Alivia Mazzarella.

She said she wanted to give something back to the community this year and was looking for a way to do so when she came across Soles4Souls.

"I know that lot of people don't have shoes, especially in other parts of the world," Mazzarella said. "People are getting infections and dying of diseases because they don't have shoes. It's a fashion thing here but it's a necessity there."

So far she's been able to collect more than 100 pairs of shoes. The type of shoes needed are sneakers, casual, boots, sandals, flip flops, work shoes and low-heeled pumps.

The Soles4Souls drop off locations include Village Park, 11700 Pierson Road, and the Wellington Community Center, 12165 W. Forest Hill Blvd. Students at Wellington High School and Wellington Landings Middle School can drop off shoes at school.

Contact Mazzarella at hope4charity@aol.com for more information. Visit www.soles4souls.org to learn more about Soles4Souls.

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WELLINGTON - The village of Wellington along with help from the Citizens Volunteer Organization and local schools collected 935 pounds of aluminum cans in October for the Cans for Cash City Recycling Challenge.

The Cans for Cash challenge is sponsored by the United States Conference of Mayors in partnership with Keep America Beautiful and Novelis. It pits like-sized cities against each other to see which can collect the most aluminum cans.

The winners will be announced in January. Programs Manager for the U.S. Conference for Mayors Susan Jarvis said one of last year's winners Hesperia, Calif., collected 951 pounds.

The four $5,000 awards will be divided up by the city's population so like-sized cities will compete against each other.

In Wellington the village sponsored a local challenge to see which schools could collects the most cans. Wellington Elementary won the challenge, second place went to Polo Park and third place went to Wellington Landings.

Jarvis said the challenge started because they wanted to bring more awareness to recycling. She said it made sense because they already had a relationship with Novelis, a company that claims to be world's leader in recycling of aluminum beverage cans. Jarvis said the company recycles 35 billion cans a year.

"Aluminum cans are 100 percent recyclable," she said. "We just wanted to raise awareness. There's no reason aluminum cans should be sitting in landfills. So we dedicated the month of October to recycling."

Jarvis said last year more than 3 million cans were collected. Last year the winners were Milwaukee, Wis.; Fontana, Calif.; Hesperia, Calif.; and University City, Mo.

Jesse Wright, Solid Waste and Recycling Supervisor for Wellington, had said he hoped the challenge would get people interested in recycling, but also noted that Wellington already has a strong and vibrant recycling program.

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WELLINGTON - In honor of Veterans Day Motor City Car Wash, 135 State Road 7, is giving away free car washes to veterans at all three of its Palm Beach County locations.

Any retired or current member of the U.S. Armed Forces who visits Motor City Car Wash will receive a complimentary car wash on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Veterans only need to inform the staff verbally that they are veterans in order to receive a free wash.

The Grace for Vets program was started by a car wash company in Pennsylvania six years ago to show support for veterans and thank them for their service. Since then the Grace for Vets has grown into a national program sponsored by participating car wash companies.

Motor City's other two locations are in Boynton Beach off of Hypoluxo Road between Military Trail and Congress Avenue and in West Palm Beach off of Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard and Tamarind Avenue, north of the Kravis Center.

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WEST PALM BEACH - The South Florida Fairground's annual garage sale takes place from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m Saturday, Nov. 14 at the Fairground's Americraft Expo Center, 9067 Southern Blvd.

More than 150 local vendors will display everything from clothing, books and equipment to household items. Parking is free. Admission is $1.

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WELLINGTON — Palm Beach Atlantic University will host an open house from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at its Wellington Campus, 1047 State Road 7, Building H, for prospective students to learn about its accelerated evening and graduate degree programs.

PBAU's Wellington Campus offers a bachelor's in Organizational Management and master's in Organizational Leadership.

PBAU is a private Christian university with campuses in West Palm Beach, Orlando and Wellington. Visit http://www.pba.edu call 561-803-2850 for more information.

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The Grace Fellowship Acreage Campus' Clothes Closet has been renamed to the Grace Acreage Trading Post. It will be open Nov. 8 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m at Seminole Ridge High School, 4601 Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, on the sidewalk by the gym.

They're also looking for donations such as preemie baby clothes/items, newborn items, a twin size box spring, vehicles in good working order that are safe for families to drive, 3T girls clothing, and gift cards for thanksgiving dinners, groceries, and gas for local families.

Call Cathy Hamilton at 753-0315 or e-mail her at cuzimthemama4@aol.com.

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After taking a year off the Wellington Community Fitness 5K Run & Walk is back.

Co-chair Terri Priore said it will be the same great community event that Wellington residents have come to love.

"This is truly a community event…and it was missed," she said.

The Palms West Community Foundation took the event over this year and it will become the organization's first community event.

"This will be our inaugural event," said Maureen Gross, director of development for the foundation. "We've had so many sponsors step up and fund this event. It really shows that Wellington really wanted it. Despite the economy businesses are coming out in a big way."

While Priore added: "We've been overwhelmed with people wanting to get involved. I hope that the Palms West Community Foundation will keep the event going for many years to come."

The event is taking place 7:30 a.m. Nov. 7. Participants will gather at the Wellington Plaza. Runners and walkers will head west along Wellington Trace, turn south onto Big Blue Trace until they reach the half-way point and then loop back around to the Wellington Plaza. The fitness run features a USTAF certified 5k Run and a noncompetitive walk.

This year Priore said they're anticipating about 800 runners and walkers and decided to not set a fundraising goal.

"Our goal was just to bring it back," she said. "It wasn't necessarily designed to be a fundraiser, just a fun time. We want to encourage fitness and healthy lifestyles."

Call Maureen Gross at 561-790-6200 for more information.

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Dream Sponsors is holding its largest fundraising event since its formation in 2006 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Nov. 7 at Whole Foods Market, 2635 U.S. Highway 441.

The Wellington based group helps sponsor orphans in Kenya providing them with the necessities, such as food, shelter and education. The event will feature a sampling of Kenyan culture with coffee, tea, wine, appetizers, artwork, crafts, photography and jewelry. There will also be music and dance performed by the group Positively Africa. Admission is $10.

The group currently sponsors 11 children and founder Carla Neumann said it takes about $1,000 a year to meet each child's needs. So far the group has raised about $25,000 since its inception.

Palm Beach Central High School's Interact club has sponsored one child through Dream Sponsors for the past 3 years.

"The Dream Sponsors is one of our biggest events. We've held a bunch of car washes," said President of Interact Senior Samantha Yorke. "We've adopted one of the little girls. Now she's at the top of her class. It's really cool to be able to change someone's life so much."

Before Palm Beach Central's Interact adopted the 8-year-old she had nothing, Neumann said. In fact, she had never even owned a pair of shoes. But despite having no shoes, the girl walked back and forth two miles each day to school in her bare feet.

Visit www.dreamsponsorsinc.org for more information about the organization.

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Nov. 8 marks the opening of the Village Farmer's Market which will bring locally grown flowers, fruits, vegetables and other goods to the Western Communities.

"This is going to be a true farmer's market," said Jaene Miranda, CEO of Palms West Chamber of Commerce. "It will give our local growers the opportunity to really feature their products. We're not looking to sell sunglasses and things like that."

The Chamber has been working to bring the idea to fruition. They found Peter Robinson to run it. He brings years of experience running farmer's markets to Royal Palm Beach. He used to be in charge of a market in West Palm Beach and currently runs the Ocean Side Farmer's Market in downtown Lake Worth on Saturdays 8 a.m. to noon. He said he even had a farmer's market in Wellington about 10 years ago at the Wellington Community Center.

"We consider [Peter] a true farmer's market expert," Miranda said.

The market will be open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays, November through April, in the west side of the parking lot at the Southern Palm Crossing shopping plaza at 11001 Southern Blvd.

Robinson said he likes his markets to resemble European markets, which he said are cozy and social and where everybody grows their own products.

One difference in the RPB market will be its hours. Most markets end at noon or 1 p.m. and open early in the morning. Robinson said he thinks there's a later crowd in the Western Communities.

The grand opening will feature Jeannette Parssi from the local nonprofit organization ArtStart. She will demonstrate her art using actual vegetables to paint landscapes, abstract, and still life’s in bold colors on recycled paper.

The market will have everything from fresh potted herbs and vegetable plants, orchids, artisan breads, locally grown lettuces and Asian greens, assorted and exotic fresh mushrooms, nursery plants, bromeliads, Bonsai trees, fresh fruit smoothies, local raw honey to gourmet pickles and all-natural dog biscuits.

Robinson said he doesn't think the economy will have an impact on the market.

"Markets are more strongly attended now because they're free events," he said. "I think it will do incredibly well out here. There's already a lot of buzz."

Visit www.villagefarmersmarket.org for more information.

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Officials from the Village of Wellington and Palm Tran held a ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday morning for a new park and ride lot that will officially open Nov.9.

Commuters from the Western Communities will be able to park their cars at the lot and ride a modified, limited-stop express Route 40 bus into downtown West Palm Beach or out to the Lake Communities. The lot is located off of Wellington Green Drive, behind the Estates Shopping Center near the Mall at Wellington Green.

The $400,000 project was funded by the Florida Department of Transportation and the Village donated the land.

"With the help of the county and county facilities and the active work of Wellington...this project will be fully completed under $400,000. That to me is an amazing feat. We were $300,000 under our original budget," said Charles Cohen, executive director of Palm Tran.

The park and ride has a 140 parking spaces and it will eventually include an electronic board announcing the bus schedule. There are also plans for security cameras to be installed.

Even though the idea of the park and ride lot started when gas prices were more than $4 a gallon Cohen believes the residents will make good use of the new lot and downtown connection.

"We truly believe we can compete with the travel times of people in their automobiles
and with the rising price of gas we believe we can get people out of their cars and take the bus," he said. "I share the vision that we're going to have overflows here."

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WELLINGTON - The Wycliffe Stiffs Stickball League starts Tuesday with their first game beginning at 12:45 p.m. at Village Park, 14000 Pierson Road. This is their eighth season. They'll meet every Tuesday until March 23.

Stickball is similar to baseball except it has no bases and players use a rubber ball and a long thin stick for a bat. Bases are scored by hitting the ball to certain locations on the field.

Call Mary Ross at 561-433-5150 for more information.

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