By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Shop local - check. Get a Christmas discount - check. Mark all the holiday shopping boxes at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center's Holiday Open House. Director Curtis Wolf said shoppers can save 40 percent off a single item in the gift store, but that's only part of the fun planned.
"We're doing our Holiday Open House again on Saturday, Dec. 13, from 9 a.m. to noon," he said. "It's a great opportunity to come out, check out the gift store, and do some shopping. We'll have some other activities, though."
Nature-related crafts are a staple of KWEC programming. Visitors at the Holiday Open House can decorate some festive cookies.
"We'll be decorating sugar cookies again, so bird-shaped sugar cookies," Wolf said. "You can do all the decorations onto them. There will be another craft activity, making a bald eagle ornament-type thing."
New this year, KWEC has created and planted some stained-glass items along the nature trail as part of a scavenger hunt. Hunters can find the prizes as they keep them. Staff will again be hiding KWEC's Christmas goose in the exhibit hall. Hunters can find it, write down its location, and be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate at the KWEC gift store.