It’s that time again! Time to tell us where the best displays of holiday lights are around Salem and western Roanoke County — and all of Western Virginia.

We have the submission form on the Datasphere, our site for searchable data.

Once we get it populated, you can see a map of the biggest and brightest displays.

We also have tips for taking great photos of Christmas lights, from photographer Eric Brady of The Roanoke Times.

Evan in front of the Fort Lewis Fire & EMS building

Evan T. DeHart graduated from Marine recruit bootcamp Parris Island on Wednesday, November 24, 2010, just in time for Thanksgiving. Evan is a 2010 graduate of Glenvar High School. All of his family & friends are proud and grateful of Evan for making this sacifice for his country.

Submitted by Andrew Moore.

BLACKSBURG, Va., Nov. 29, 2010 — Josh Kestner a senior from Salem, Va. (24153), majoring in hospitality and tourism management in the Pamplin College of Business is being recognized for their dedication to their school, serving as a Vice President of Membership to the Hokie Ambassadors for Virginia Tech.

Hokie Ambassadors dedicate themselves to helping others. Primarily, they provide the tours for prospective undergraduate students. The Hokie Ambassadors exemplify what it means to be a Hokie through their strong sense of dedication, service, and community. They are committed to highlighting the best qualities of Virginia Tech and exciting future university hopefuls. Most tours last an hour, so each ambassador has a short amount of time to open the eyes of every prospect about how spectacular Virginia Tech is. They show them around the university grounds, tell them about the top campus food in the nation and describe the feeling of when “Enter Sandman” plays at a home football game.

This student was chosen to represent Virginia Tech because their interest in the community and their love of their school and campus. The job of the Hokie Ambassadors is to learn more about Virginia Tech than the average student and be the face of the university.

Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech<http://www.vt.edu/> (http://www.vt.edu/) is the most comprehensive university in the Commonwealth of Virginia and is among the top research universities in the nation. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to quality, innovation, and results through teaching, research, and outreach activities. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, Southside, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.

Teresa sent us these photos of shopping on Black Friday, and her great grandson Brayden, decked out for the holidays.

Teresa Howell shopping on Black Friday

Teresa Howell's great grandson Brayden, ready for the holidays

How have you celebrated the holidays so far? Send us your pictures at news@sosalem.com.

Teresa Howell submitted these photos from recent accidents on I-81 in Salem.

Kevin Myatt

A flash flood watch is in effect over much of Western Virginia from noon until 6:30 p.m. The National Weather Service is forecasting 2-3 inches of rain, with higher amounts possible in some areas.

Weather journalist Kevin Myatt has more details on his Weather Journal blog.

If you see weather news happening, post a comment below or share photos at news@sosalem.com.

Nothing replaces seeing this work up close and personal (and smelling the sugary structures is nice, too), so we thought it wouldn’t hurt to give a sneak peek of the Gingerbread Festival.

The festival is this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Carriage House in Longwood Park. Inside, a gingerbread house competition is on display. Outside, a marshmallow roast, raffle prizes, arts and crafts vendors, and food vendors alongside live entertainment.

Live entertainment will include guitar entertainers Rich and Andy, the Salem High Jazz band, a Karate demonstration by Superkicks, and music by “Pure and Simple,” a four-sister singing group.

They’re also raffling off a Kindle at the Salem Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce!

Admission and parking for this event are free. For more information, contact the chamber at 387-0267.

There’s plenty more going on in Salem this weekend, especially on Saturday. Click here for a link to a post with a listing of all events in order.

During a recent School Board meeting parents spoke up about the grading scale for Roanoke County. Parents are asking the school board to vote to change the grading scale from its current seven point grading scale to a 10 point grading scale.

We have more details in this post on our Southwest Roanoke County community news site.

Last November, Salem husband and wife Scott and Ashley Tayloe Switzer found themselves on the sidewalk at 210/212 East Main Street in Salem, peering into a vacant storefront, wondering about the right place to start Scott’s first restaurant. He’s a Culinary Institute of America grad and came back to Roanoke as the head chef of Metro.

Early this December, they will open The Blue Apron Restaurant and Red Rooster Bar in that very spot. It’s planned to be a cozy upscale restaurant and college downtown bar all in one, separated by a wall and kitchen, connected by a carefully designed entrance.

The menu is geared towards “authentic, modern, classic, American” with a nod to the European side of things. Scott will integrate local farm-raised product in his dishes as much as he can, especially when crops come into season, he said.

“I want lunch to be pretty vivacious,” he said of the 45-seat eatery. “Every college town that I’ve ever been to had at least one, if not two, small little upscale places [that are] fun, high energy, packed, and served upscale food.”

“Sizewise, it was just right for what Scott wanted to do, and it had good ‘bones,’” said Ashley, the architect of the two. She works with Balford Beatty Construction as an assistant project manager.

The European side of things, food-wise, comes from Scott’s culinary education, but a fondness for France, also expressed in much of Ashley’s design, comes from where he proposed to her  – atop the Eiffel Tower.

“It was a good opportunity for her to jump in with two feet on a remodeling project that needs a lot of savvy,” Scott said. The inside was completely gutted and redone, but with attention to the circa 1880 building’s original structure.

Postcard, courtesy of the Switzers

Double doors found in the former back wall were restored and placed in the front of the restaurant. The outline of a mantel in the now-dish room is recognized by a faux mantel in the dining room. The tin-style ceiling, which was almost completely water damaged and behind several other layers of ceiling, is now honored in the ceiling’s paint scheme.

Some of the wooden table bases even come from the Patrick Henry Hotel in Roanoke – the old Fort Lewis Hotel (demolished in 1974) used to sit just beside the restaurant, where there is parking lot now.

“I think being sensitive to the past, to its historical references and trying to restore those references,” is important, she said.

*Post edited at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 30

Logan Means is twelve years old and shot his first buck with a muzzle loader. The buck was taken near the poor mountain area.

Submitted by Logan Means

Click here for slideshow images.