Shop ‘til you drop today and Saturday from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Parkrview Christian Retirement Center Spring Craft Fair.

Residents and area crafters will offer wooden items, handcrafted cards and toys, needle work gifts, scarves, jewelry, bird houses and more.

The Flower Lane Garden Club will be on hand with inexpensive plants to fill blank spots in your garden.

Parkview is located at 1825 N.E. 108th Ave. in Gateway.

The May 2012 Mid-county Memo is posted online. A recap of its contents:

Last month, the top three mayoral candidates debated at David Douglas High School’s Howard Horner Performing Arts Center; the new Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative areas are approved; Parkrose School District averts a teacher’s strike; David Douglas special education teacher Annie Harrell is named Outstanding Teacher of the Year; Lee Perlman interviews City Commissioner Amanda Fritz and opponent, state Rep. Mary Nolan; the Planning and Sustainability Commission endorsed the Outer Powell Conceptual Design Plan; since 2006, east Portland neighborhood associations have been operating illegally; the Portland Housing Bureau is changing tax abatement area boundaries in east Portland … again; and, longtime Gateway hairstylist June Bauer’s obituary.

For fifty years the most popular restaurant in the Hollywood neighborhood, Yaw’s Top Notch, is reopening in Gateway.

Despite being out of the restaurant business for more than thirty years, Steve Yaw, whose grandparents opened the first Yaw’s Top Notch in 1926, thinks he can capture lightning in a bottle again, this time in east Portland.

Set to open in Mid-July, Yaw's Top Notch Restaurant, depicted here by artist Mike Hill, is coming to Gateway.

The April 2012 Mid-county Memo is posted online. A recap of its contents follows:

Bre’Shay Barnes was named Rose Festival Princess from Parkrose; the new Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative areas struggle to meet financial goals; Parkrose School District declares impasse with teachers; PSD Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray is one of four finalists for Reynolds job; the first meeting between Metro and Glendoveer golf course lovers since a contentious open house in August; the Argay Neighborhood Association hires a lawyer to help fight infill development across the street from Argay Park and an east Portland high school winter sports roundup.

There is another five-year wait for new sidewalks, crosswalk improvements, bike lanes, and neighborhood greenway construction in east Portland.

According to transportation planner Ellen Vanderslice, the 'holistic' approach to street improvements is being taken in east Portland. Results: five more years waiting for new sidewalks, crosswalk improvements, bike lanes, and neighborhood greenway construction in east Portland.

Last month transportation planner Ellen Vanderslice presented the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission with East Portland in Motion, a multi-modal program of traffic improvements set for implementation in the next five years. The projects were culled from the “known universe” of previously identified plans, including the East Portland Action Plan, and supplemented with outreach to community groups. Students from Portland State University, volunteers from the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition, and EPAP’s Land Use and Transportation, and Bicycle, committees aided the outreach effort.

Posted online, here’s a recap of the February 2012 edition of the Mid-county Memo ….

Tom West, girls varsity basketball coach at Portland Christian for 30 years, was named Oregon’s 2010-2011 National Federation of State High School Associations Coach of the Year.

Former Portland Christian girls varsity coach Tom West, center, holding plaque, was named 2011 National Federation of State High School Associations Coach of the Year. West quit coaching after 30 years at the school. He won three state titles, including a 29-0, undefeated record in 2007.

Art students at Portland Christian Schools will offer their works for sale at the Portland Christian Art Show on Saturday, Jan. 14 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the secondary campus in east Portland; 12425 N.E. San Rafael St.

Attendees will be able to bid on auction items as well while shopping for original art.

Kento Sato, a Portland Christian sophomore, will display this untitled work at the PC Art show on Saturday, Jan. 14. COURTESY AUBREY PARK, PORTLAND CHRISTIAN ART TEACHER

The $2 admission fee includes light refreshments. Additional fare will be available for purchase. Children six and under are free.

To meet the emergency needs of homeless families in the community this winter, 60 shelter beds were opened for homeless families with children in November by the Family Shelter-to-Housing Partnership, a group of faith-based and non-profit agencies. However, before November was over, the Homeless Family Winter Shelter exceeded its 60-person capacity.

On any night this winter, dozens of homeless families spend the night at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in east Portland. Dozens of kids fill the hallways including, from left, nine-year-old Marley McFallo, five-year-old Daniel, and his seven-year-old brother Elisha Smith, six-year-old Jeremiah Moreno and eight-year-old Dante McFallo. The Human Solutions run shelter needs volunteer overnight hosts. Mid-county Memo photos/Tim Curran

Carolyn Johansen feels she and her husband Jan were designed by God to help other people. For years, while running a small business and raising two sons in the Wilkes neighborhood of outer east Portland, they talked about how they could do just that.

To pursue their dream of helping people look and feel better, when their two adult sons took over the day-today operations of the family business — a measurement testing and calibration company — they opened A Better You, a holistic health spa in Gateway. “This is my second vocation,” said Jan. “I’m still in the National Guard. I’m in the Army band; I do all the programming for both companies. I’m a techno-geek.”

Glisan Commons, a collaborative development by three non-profits planned for Northeast Glisan Street at 99th Avenue, had a Design Advisory — an informal discussion prior to a formal application — with the Portland Design Commission last month. The Commission called for some changes, but generally gave both the project and its design high marks.

The Glisan Commons is a new building slated to occupy the corner of Northeast Glisan at 99th Avenue.

The project is a joint venture by Human Solutions, which provides affordable housing and social services primarily in east Portland; Ride Connection, a transit services provider for the elderly and disabled throughout the city; and REACH Community Development, the city’s largest non-profit, low-income housing provider.