It started in the seventh grade with a challenge of making her first cake … and spiraled into running her own cake business a short time later. Alyssa Ruggles, 18, of Stanton, has been running her own cake-making business called “The Cake Kid” from her home after her mother received a request to make a graduation cake.

It’s no hidden secret that Michiganians take pride in leading the nation as a beacon in the auto-production industry. However, ask almost any car-owner in the state what they are paying in insurance to keep their own vehicles on the road and instead of a specific figure you will hear simply “too much.”

After the success of last year’s inaugural New Beginnings Fashion Show in Sheridan, it was a given that organizers would provide an encore performance. They weren’t disappointed by the turnout Saturday at Central Montcalm Community Church. Seating for the show, held to raise funding for the New Beginnings Upscale Resale Shop in Sheridan, was sold out well in advance of the actual event.

A Sheridan woman pleaded guilty as charged Thursday after 62 animals were seized from her home last autumn. Nancy Muller, 57, pleaded guilty to abandoning/cruelty to 10 or more animals, a felony with a possible four-year prison sentence. However, it’s possible she will serve 60 days of jail or less due to a sentencing agreement with the Montcalm County Prosecutor’s Office.

The issue of possible pay raises for some village employees was an unexpected entry under the “new business” portion of Sheridan’s village council meeting Tuesday evening. Although some employees received 2 percent raises earlier this year, Councilman Pete Gehoski contends those raises — when considered in tandem with increased insurance premiums — actually constituted a pay cut. Gehoski said he has contacted several other area municipalities and all of them pay their Department of Public Works employees significantly higher wages than does the village of Sheridan.

For more than 20 years, members of the Stanton Lions Club could be spotted each winter in various locations throughout town; buckets, spigots and hammers in hand, tapping the city’s abundant maple trees for their sap. Every spring, that sap would be boiled down and reduced into some of the finest maple syrup you’ve ever tasted. The sale of that syrup went to fund Lions Club projects throughout the year.

A controversial bill that died before appearing before the state House of Representatives or state Senate in December has emerged with new life after passing before the House last Thursday. The establishment of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), which is defined in House Bill 4269, was approved by the House in a narrow 57-53 vote. The bill must pass in the Senate and be signed by Gov. Rick Snyder in order to become a law.

Sen. Carl Levin may have had one of his busier weekends in Washington, D.C., in recent memory, but that didn’t stop him from making a scheduled stop in Montcalm County Saturday evening. After a 13-hour process resulting in the first formal United States budget proposal in four years finally ended at 5 a.m. Saturday, Levin boarded a plane and flew back to Michigan with his sights on the VFW Hall in Sheridan for the eighth annual Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner, hosted by the Montcalm County Democrats.

An exotic jungle halfway across the world, deep beneath the ocean, or in a hallway towering with pieces of artwork, a walk through the doors of the 39th annual Education Showcase at the Central Montcalm High School/Middle School Complex Thursday evening was a trip that offered endless opportunities for one’s imagination to wander. Featuring hundreds of projects created by students from preschool through 12th grade at Central Montcalm Public School, there was no end to the creativity and hard work displayed from the minds at work within the school district.

Shannan Kooistra and her husband, Josh, can’t help thinking of their 3-year-old son, Zade, as their “miracle” child. The rambunctious tyke, paralyzed from the hips down as a result of being born with myelomeningocele spina bifida, had undergone eight major surgeries before his second birthday. A shunt embedded in his brain carries excess spinal fluid from his head to his abdomen. And of course, he cannot walk. But these days, thanks to a coordinated effort by several area Lions Clubs, Zade zips around the Kooistra home with an ease he never could manage in a traditional wheelchair.