Home and Garden Show inspires

Even the little ones were inspired to build at the Home and Garden Show in Coeur d'Alene over the weekend.

The kids hammered away, making wooden monster trucks, planter boxes and picture frames.

"Get Inspired" was the theme of the North Idaho Building Contractors Association's 44th annual Home and Garden Show, held at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds.

Keith Rea from Lowe's Home Improvement in Coeur d'Alene brought the store's "Build and Grow Clinic" to the Home and Garden Show. The Kids Zone was one of the new additions to the show this year.

"It's a great learning experience for the kids to get to build something fun, especially when it's cold out," Rea said.

NIBCA member Therese Goodwin said Sunday there were between 150-200 kids who attended on Saturday and another 100 estimated on Sunday. They also had face painting and games available to keep the youngsters busy. The Coeur d'Alene High School dance team came in each afternoon to perform and help the kids with their projects, and the kids received "goodies" to take home, such as flashlights, learning cubes and coloring books donated by Avista.

About 100 vendors were at the show this year, and David Gibson from Coeur d'Alene Ultra Lawn and co-chair of the event, said Sunday that the weekend had been very good. He said at least 2,000 people had been through the show by Sunday morning and was hoping to reach 3,000 by the end of the day.

"Coming out of winter and people are thinking about the projects they want to do," Gibson said. "You come here to get inspired about all that stuff."

He said the weather was just about right for the show. He said sometimes it can be "touchy" this time of year because it could be snowing or it could be sunny.

NIBCA gave away flowers to the first 300 people through the door, which Gibson said encouraged people to get into their yards and buy more flowers to plant.

Along with the new Kids Zone this year, Gibson said the event added multiple food vendors, hoping to expand even more next year.

Yochum Landscaping from Post Falls made its first appearance at the show by donating a permanent landscape structure to the fairgrounds. Chad Yochum had set up his booth outdoors, in front of the main office. The pergola-covered brick patio was complete with a small fountain with flowers planted around it. Yochum said he started the project last Tuesday, finishing by the time the weekend rolled around. Some of the materials were donated by Mutual Materials in Hayden and the fountain was supplied by Tumble Stone in Hayden.

He said it gives him the opportunity to use it in the future and the fair employees could use it as well.

"I just figured if I'm going to build it, I don't want to tear it apart," Yochum said.