Lifestyle

Chad Rhoden and Robert and Jackie Palmer took top awards in the inaugrial chili cookoff which garnered more than $30,000 to benefit the Community Food Bank of Franklin County in Mount Vernon Saturday.

With the biggest spending season of the year approaching, financial planning experts in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offer some advice on budgeting for the holidays — and having a meaningful Christmas without overspending. Nathan Harness, Ph.D., director of the Financial Planning Program, and Nick Kilmer, Ph.D., a lecturer and designer of the money education program, both in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Bryan-College Station, have combined experience in both short- and long-term financial planning.

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On Veterans Day, Nov. 11, relatives and friends from several families with ties to Clarksville mobilized in a cleanup effort as a force that was stronger and much greater than the EF-4 tornado that violently destroyed everything in its path, including the families’ generational, cornerstone church located in Acworth off FM 1159.

Volunteers needed to place flags on the graves of those identified as being veterans this Saturday starting at 10:30 a.m The exercise is done to ensure that all veterans’s gravesites are marked to indicate where live Christmas wreaths will be placed two weeks later.

Texas Christmas tree production continues to hold strong despite impacts from extreme drought, according to a Texas A&M Forest Service expert. Fred Raley, Ph.D., Texas A&M Forest Service tree improvement coordinator, said he is expecting another year of high demand for Christmas trees.