Shopping in Lake Forest Park

The Second Ascent staff works diligently to repair cycles, assemble skis, and outfit customers with gear and apparel for all backcountry and outdoor pursuits. They stock and fold apparel from brands such as Patagonia and Vibram FiveFingers to dress adventurers from head to toe, and accessorize them with essential equipment such as headlamps, chalk bags, and backpacks. Technicians in both the full-service bike shop and onsite ski shop repair and tune cycles and skis to help customers ride more smoothly. And the other members of the well-traveled staff remain eager to assist and answer any questions about appropriate adventure equipment, conditions, and the safest way to tickle a napping grizzly.

Vera Auvil's passion in life has always been cultivating knick-knacks and odds-and-ends—her "sweet nothings," as her husband used to say—so when the opportunity to purchase her own store came her way, she knew she wanted to fill its shelves and aisles with her favorite little things: clothes, jewelry, home décor, and makeup. She christened the shop Auvil's Sweet Nothings and set to work cultivating local artisans and national vendors who proffer goods such as De Novo, Waterford crystal, and Yellow Box Shoes. The skilled staffers at her vendor-based store can even help clients brighten smiles with Beaming White teeth-whitening services, make-over mugs with Jane Iredale cosmetics, and learn to cheat during shopping-cart races.

Named Best Gift/Book Store in the Bothell Reporter's Best of Northshore 2010 Readers' Choice Awards, Ostroms Drug & Gift has presented patrons with greeting cards, novelty gifts, and pharmaceuticals for half a century. Owned and operated by three generations of the Ramsey family, the store has amassed a loyal staff, with each employee averaging 10 years. In addition to greeting their customers with a friendly face and an enthusiastic chest bump during regular business hours, the staff's community-minded pharmacists make emergency house calls.

With a degree in landscape architecture from Washington State and more than 20 years of experience, Chris McAuslan crafts custom designs for both residential and commercial properties. When he isn't stocking his nursery with beautiful trees and shrubs, he installs landscape lighting, waterfalls, synthetic grass, and eco-friendly, solar-powered flowers.

Making good on their lifelong dream to run their own stationery store, mother-daughter team Kathy Perkins and Alicia Olsen opened Paper Delights in 2008, filling the tidy shop with charming letters, notes, and wrapping paper for birthdays, baby showers, and nuptials. Notebooks, cards, invitations, and envelopes burst with lively floral prints, lace borders, and sunny pastels, ready to bear messages such as, "Thank you for the generous graduation present," or "Please come to my surprise birthday party." In addition to announcing the arrival of impending weddings, births, and engagements with a plethora of classic and contemporary prints, Paper Delights helps customers organize and accessorize with items such as stylish reusable totes, crystal jewelry, and lustrous nail lacquer.

In 1991, comic experts Marv Brost and Steve Beard decided Seattle needed a new outlet for mainstream, underground, and adult comics, and Comic Dungeon was born. Now owned by family oriented enthusiast Scott Tomlin, the store focuses on new and vintage comics and has attracted visits from illustrators and writers across the business. The store's shelves host scores of inky adventures, ranging from the whiz-bang derring-do of superheroes from the Green Lantern and Spider-Man to the surreal grabbed-from-TV exploits of Finn and Jake in Adventure Time. In addition to newly featured merchandise, Comics Dungeon also honors time-tested plotlines in the form of anthologies, graphic novels, and etchings on the front of old VHS tapes.