Author: Joanna Werch Takes

As a girl, Rena Heegaard sought refuge from Liberia’s civil war in her family’s bathroom. As an adult, she wants that space to offer comfort for everyone.

Eden Prairie Lioness Lions and Lions clubs held the 14th annual Art & Craft Fair and 50th Wild Game Dinner as fundraising events the first week of December.

High school students in an auto body repair class at Hennepin Technical College had the chance for hands-on learning with a professional pinstriper.

The Eden Prairie Lions will host their 50th Wild Game Dinner on Dec. 4. The event originated with former principal Bob Hallett’s duck and pheasant hunts.

Panelists, subject matter experts, and Eden Prairie community members convened this week for a discussion of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impacts – current and potential – on our lives. The town hall-style event, titled “AI: Hype, Harm, or Hope?” asked participants to weigh in via interactive polls at the beginning and the end of the event on which of the three options best described their personal feelings about AI. The number of participants choosing “hope” for their poll response at the end of the event increased from the results of the poll at the beginning of the event, with…

Kids grow fast – and outgrow their clothes, toys, and more. It’s a fact of life, and the basis for the Just Between Friends (JBF) consignment sales. Eden Prairie’s fall edition of the pop-up sale takes place this year, Oct. 12-14, at Champions Hall. Jeni Crabtree, an EP resident, has owned the Eden Prairie JBF franchise since 2020. Although she owned the Edina franchise for a few years before that, her first experience with the JBF sales was as a shopper at the Eden Prairie event in 2014, while expecting her first child. “I remember going with my mom and…

After 26 years in Eden Prairie, the Prairie School of Dance (PSOD) studios are moving across the border to Chanhassen. Classes begin this week at the new location just west of the intersection of Dell Road and Highway 5. “It was a long-term goal for us to consolidate all of our studios into one place,” said Sarah Steichen Stiles, owner and executive director of PSOD. A construction project at Grace Church in Eden Prairie that meant PSOD would be unable to use its studios at that location accelerated the search for a new space. Founded in 1997 by Sarah Linner…

The Eden Prairie Lions Club hosted its annual Corn Feed on Saturday, Aug. 5 at Round Lake Park. Over 4,000 ears of corn arrived freshly picked that morning from Untiedt’s Vegetable Farms in Waverly, Minnesota. The total shipment was 85 bags of corn, with 4 dozen ears in each: 4,080 ears of corn. As of Saturday afternoon, Lions Club member Darrell Rodenz had been chopping the tasseled ends off fresh corn for several hours, making his way through 30 bags. After the choppers finished that task, the ears were loaded in wheelbarrows and made their way to the cooking area,…

The band was founded in 1973 by original director Emmet “Em” Stark with 23 people. The current 60-plus members are directed by Tom Muehlbauer.

Currently “on tour” at Eden Prairie’s Pax Christi Catholic Community is a Heritage Edition of the Saint John’s Bible. Commissioned 25 years ago in 1998 and completed in 2011, the Saint John’s Bible is the first handwritten, hand-illuminated Bible to be produced in more than 500 years. A collaboration between St. John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and Donald Jackson, calligrapher to the late Queen Elizabeth II, the 7-volume, 1,150-page Bible was crafted by Jackson and a team of calligraphers on calfskin vellum using turkey, goose, and swan quills and handmade inks. The Heritage Edition is a fine arts…