April 19, 2024

Holiday to Holiday is back for a ninth year

By DENISE CASKEY

Pam Ostroski of Creston, left, takes a free sample of cinnamon apple ice cream from Dennis Kuyper, who made the ice cream, under the big tent at the Holiday to Holiday Extravaganza at Creston Hy-Vee in October 2017. Holiday to Holiday, which is being held Saturday at Creston Hy-Vee, features vendor booths, free samples and several presentations throughout the day. (CNA file)

The annual Holiday to Holiday Extravaganza sponsored by the Creston News Advertiser, Hy-Vee and Atlantic Coca-Cola Bottling Company rounds up local vendors in one location giving Creston area residents an opportunity to start their holiday shopping early.

The event will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in the Hy-Vee parking lot and will coincide with the grand re-opening of the Creston Hy-Vee store, which has been closed this week so crews can put the finishing touches on the new look inside and out.

Hy-Vee Store Director Chris Gordy said the store is planning wine and beer tasting stations in its newly revamped wine and spirits department for the event, as well as other product sampling stations set up throughout the store that, as time goes on, he said customers can expect to see more often.

In addition to the product sampling and other events taking place for the store’s grand re-opening and Holiday to Holiday Extravaganza, Hy-Vee will be hosting its Halloween Walk party for children from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday.

“We’ll set up most of our kids’ stuff up front,” said Gordy. “We’ll have some tables where they can decorate pumpkins and they can color. We’ll have some candy kind of spread out through departments, so they can kind of trick or treat through the store and pick up some candy.”

This is the ninth year the Creston News Advertiser has organized the Holiday to Holiday Extravaganza, but only the second year the event is being co-sponsored by Hy-Vee.

“We had a lot of people who really enjoyed it,” said Creston News Advertiser Account Executive Craig Mittag. “We don’t make much money at it. It’s a great community event that we can host and sponsor for the community.”

It used to be held at Southwestern Community College, and he said every other year the newspaper would bring in the Taste of Home Cooking School to do cooking demonstrations, but after awhile, it found a better, more economical way to offer cooking demonstrations that was also a little closer to home.

“They [Taste of Home] charged us a boatload of money, and we did all the work,” said Mittag. “We thought, ‘Well, this is stupid. We’ve got Kyp who can do the show and all of this kind of stuff.’”

He won’t be doing a  cooking demonstration, but Dennis Kyp from “What’s Cooking in Kyp’s Kitchen?” fame will be offering samples of some of his best recipes.

Also under the tent, shoppers will find vendors such as Usborne Books and More, Damsel in Defense, Pampered Chef and many more.

“We’ll put up a 40 foot by 80 foot tent on the west side of the Hy-Vee building, and there we’ll have — I think there’s 25 vendors signed up for this year’s event,” said Mittag. “We had, I’m guessing, 200-250 people last year and are expecting more this year simply due to the grand opening at Hy-Vee. Everybody is going to kind of come out and see what they did and check out the booths.”

A complete list of vendors can be found on the back page of today’s Creston News Advertiser.