A couple of weeks ago, Guest Contributor Lisa Fulk taught a private canning class for a group of women in Sarasota. Between the mimosas, the yummy snacks and the chitchat, they managed to cover the ins and outs of boiling water bath canning and made a delightful jam of strawberries, blueberries and blackberries.

In our relentless pursuit of building a place for the creative class, we looked for ways you can build your skills, meet the players, have a little fun and then advocate like crazy for that place. Here’s the thing in Sarasota and the new economy: You can’t just go to the networking events sponsored by your own (fill-in-the-blank profession) monthly meetings. Here are five events to start; in talking with several of the sponsors, they would be thrilled to have you attend. Thrilled. These five events (many free, some with [...]

The giant “WTF” in life is: We are given a bag of skin with no instructions and have about 78.2 years to figure it out. My toothpaste has instructions printed on the tube, as does the bottle of shampoo in my shower, and I can’t help but wonder how we got shafted by the lack of our instruction book to life. So get this … I discovered our instruction book (well, video-adapted-from-a-book), and as it turns out, our instruction manual is so frickin’ simple it will make you cry (or [...]

Tropical Storm Debby-Downer’s showers may be putting a damper on the sunny Sarasota lifestyle this week, but there is a silver lining: Debby brought the rain just in time to water fresh flowers for a month-long series of flower arranging classes starting Tuesday at the Victoria Blooms downtown flower shop. After launching the popular series when the shop opened in January, floral arranger and shop owner Victoria Warren is offering a summer edition consisting of five classes that cover the ins-and-outs of the art of floral arrangement. The classes, Warren said, will cater [...]