This Friday The Grand is hosting the Johnny Holm Dinner/Dance, which begins at 6 p.m. Joey Heinz & Friends are playing The Tavern Lounge, and The Cow is hosting Area 51.

The Northfield Arts Guild's Beaux Arts Ball: Fire and Ice is happening on Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Great Space at Carleton. The Tavern Lounge is hosting Joe Carey from 7-11 and Spruce Top Review is playing the Contented Cow.

The 8th annual Northfield Jingle Bell Run/Walk was held on Saturday the 12th and was a great success.

We had a super turn out and early numbers indicate that as a community we raised around $3,500 for the HealthFinders Collaborative.

The 2009 planning committee sincerely thanks everyone who came out to run, walk or volunteer!

The Northfield Public Schools Community Services Division Winter / Spring Brochure, "Learning and Recreation for Life," is arriving in your mailbox this week.

This brochure contains information on youth and adult recreation, KidVentures, youth and adult enrichment, Early Childhood Family Education, Project ABLE, and Adult Basic Education. Online registration is available for all programs.

Make sure to check the back cover of the brochure for two special deals!

Northfield Community Services
1651 Jefferson Parkway, Northfield, MN  55057
tel. 507-664-3649

How many miles can you skate?

Improve your fitness with a weekly lap class run by the YMCA and Northfield Skating School. Includes instruction with NSS and Professional Skaters Association Instructor Melanie Ritz.

Meets during Friday lunch hour (12:00 – 12:45) beginning in January. Open to YMCA members and non-members, and skaters of all levels, including beginners! Child care available. Register by 12/30.

View dates and flyer OR Register online with the YMCA.

On the night of December 17, the gym of Prairie Creek Community School will be transformed into London in the year 1602.  Visitors will exchange their U.S. dollars for English Pence, learn how to speak Elizabethan English and then cross the Thames (by ferry or bridge) to enter a new world.

The Herons at Prairie Creek Community School have been working on a Shakespeare theme that they started in late October. Students have been reading plays and making a newspaper (or broadsheet, as it was known), planning a performance, memorizing lines and learning about Shakespeare and his time. They have also learned how to insult each other in the language that Shakespeare used.

To share their learning, they are inviting the community to a dinner theater and their production of Hamlet. Tickets are a pence (20 U.S. cents), just like the tickets for the Globe Theater.

Just Food Co-op is celebrating five years of business this week - an accomplishment for not only the store itself but for the whole community. As a co-op, Just Food is equally owned by nearly 1,900 local households.

Those owners, as well as the many shoppers who are not yet owners, have supported their co-op for the past five years. It’s thanks to that support that Just Food recently posted its first profitable year.

Although the store opened its doors five years ago, the work started years before that. In the spring of 2002, there was an initial meeting to gauge interest in the idea of a community co-op. For the next two years, more people got involved and volunteered for everything from promotion and membership to organizing the writing of bylaws and the conduction a feasibility study.

By the time the doors opened on December 15, 2004, there were 750 owners who had invested. This community was ripe for a cooperatively owned venture, and for a store where local farmers could sell their products to community members. Access to local food was an important part of the reason that this store opened in the first place, and Just Food’s commitment to local food and local farmers continues today.

Looking for another gift?  Need to spruce up your home library collection?  Looking for unique Christmas decorations?

Come to the Friends of the Library sale this coming Saturday, Dec. 19th!

From 10 am to 3 pm a great assortment of items will be on sale to benefit the Friends of the Library! This organization directly benefits the community with their support of such library projects as Booker (the book bus), Infant Lapsit Books, the new children's book packs, and more.

Items available at the sale include:

• Music boxes
• Friends of the Library 2010 calendars & book bags
• Stuffed animals
• Yummy baked goods
• Handmade ornaments
• Books new and used!
• ...and more!

St. Dominic School will host their annual Christmas Concert on Thursday, December 17th starting at 7:00 PM in St. Dominic Church. Under the direction of music teacher Lorilee Malecha, students in Kindergarten through 8th grade will sing an array of Christmas music.

The concert is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served in the social hall following the concert.

Riverwalk Arts Quarter and Riverwalk (Summer Saturday) Market Faire have plenty of volunteer opportunities.

We are in need of talented and hard working Northfielders to get to work right after the Holidays so we can create the wonderful 'arts, eats and entertainment' activities we've planned for the riverwalk beginning in May 2010.

Give the gift of yourself!

The Riverwalk Arts Quarter website to find all the details about volunteer opportunities.

The new CD from the Brian Setzer Orchestra, Songs from Lonely Avenue, includes Northfielders and St. Olaf Artist in Residence David Hagedorn playing the vibraphone. Hagedorn, who teaches percussion and leads the St. Olaf jazz ensembles, plays on three selections that were recorded in Minneapolis: Dead Man Incorporated, Kiss Me Deadly, and Lonely Avenue.

Hagedorn told KYMN radio that the music on the CD is reminescent of the classic Sinatra/Nelson Riddle swing sound, with an emphasis on Setzer's guitar work.

Video filmed and produced by Northfield's own Adam Gurno and Tim Freeland.  This video was also featured on the the Minnesota Public Radio NewsCut blog!

 During December some families want to continue a family tradition of exchanging gifts. What they need to do is meet basic needs. Sometimes, there is nothing left over to fund the “wish list.” Some families have few things they really need. And they want to do more to help others. Sometimes, the satisfaction of helping others is more meaningful than a material gift. Bringing these differing wants and needs together has an impact.

Join your Friends and Neighbors in a Celebration of The Beautiful Arts on Saturday, December 19!

Next Saturday, Carleton College’s Great Space and Great Hall will add light to the night of the year when lucky ticket-holders don evening wear from the elegant to the fantastical and celebrate the Northfield Arts Guild’s 50th Anniversary with the Beaux Arts Ball. This centuries-old homage to the “beautiful arts” is a themed appreciation of the creative, to do with what you will; this year we present “Fire and Ice.” So, whether you light the night with shimmering crystals or lend a glow with your ruby red, do join us for a night of fanciful finery and delectible fare, dancing to the Bend in the River Big Band, original performances and visual works of art. It’s a celebration of the arts—for the artist in each of us.

There are performances of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat this weekend with evening performances on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 and matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. All performances are at Paradise Center for the Arts in Faribault.

On Friday, Area 51 is performing at The Tavern Lounge from 7-11 p.m. and New Moon Trio is playing the Cow.