Shopping in Merriam

Meals by the Week takes the effort out of menu planning by providing families of all sizes with dinner menus and customizable shopping lists that make frugal use of local grocery store discounts. Each week, subscribers get a list of fresh recipes accompanied by a shopping list with ingredients linked to supermarket sale ads. The recipes come from a huge, ever-changing database to ensure subscribers get a variety of meals that might include beef-barley stew, oven-roasted chicken with lemon and garlic, shrimp fried rice, or pasta primavera. Each recipe also comes with suggested side dishes to simplify meal planning and food-fight prep. Once subscribers have their weekly menu set, they decide how many people each meal should feed: two, four, six, or eight. Then they can simply print out a shopping list and hit the grocery store, taking advantage of sale produce and dry goods along the way.

Urban Beauty Supply stocks clients’ beauty cabinets with a bounty of popular and hard-to-find beauty products, including shampoos, styling tools, hair extensions, wigs, and makeup. Born from such product lines as Kinky-Curly, Bobbi Boss, and KeraCare, Urban Beauty’s merchandise aids in hair restoration, lengthening, and cleansing. Dread Head products help customers build their own knotted locks, while Curls products attract positive attention instead of negatively charged balloons with frizz-reducing organic ingredients and exotic oils.

The designers at Miche Bag of Kansas accessorize ladies with versatile handbags that can be enveloped in interchangeable shells to complement any outfit. Choose from three sizes of base bags, including a standard two-handled purse, a satchel-style big bag, or a miniature clutch. The unclad handbags can be fitted with an array of striking magnetic bag shells that fit as snugly and fashionably as a leopard-print cocoon. Declare tartan allegiance with a plaid Alyssa shell, or renovate your reticule with a Jayne's four rectangles of sage, canary, soft tangerine, and eggplant. Accessories such as carabiners, charms, and magnets add pizzazz to handles and an organizer neatly holds shells and keeps closets clutter free.

Evolve Paleo Chef aims to recreate the human diet before the age of agriculture and civilization, crafting nourishing meals of smoked fish, grilled chicken, and steaks that satisfy primal hunger pangs. The kitchen's paleo (short for paleolithic) diet fuels the body with the same nourishment that was available to our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors—little to no sugar, no dairy, no gluten, plenty of meat, and the fear of sabertooth tigers. Chefs design delicious meals and snacks around these core nutrients, which can be picked up or delivered directly to your doorstep every week. Each meaty meal is made with products from local companies such as Dodge City Beef, a rancher-owned producer of pork and beef, or Campo Lindo Farms, a source for flavorful, pasture-raised poultry.

Stamper's, Ink celebrates the wondrous world of design with a vast array of tools and classes for creating handmade cards, customized business stamps, and artistically altered books and binders. The store boasts a supply of more than 35,000 different rubber stamps—enough material to suit the needs of the most avid scrapbooker or send a midlevel clerk in the state agriculture department into a rapturous swoon. An arsenal of Tim Holtz craft products, glitter accents, adhesives and cardstock pairs with scissors, stencils, and jewelry to equip hobbyists for any endeavor. An ever-evolving schedule of craft classes teaches students a variety of skills, from making decorated recipe pages to adorable canvas houses.

Clark's Tool & Equipment opened in the 1970s as a discount tool shop, but when Don Gamble took the helm, he swapped out the supply of inexpensive outlet supplies to feature quality, American-made tools. Since then, the single shop has blossomed into four retail stores and a 15,000-square-foot warehouse stocked with a full line of brands such as SK Hand Tools, Ingersoll Rand, and Eagle Industries. The emporium of tools is an authorized supplier to industry students and teachers with a strong clientele in the rail, trucking, and manufacturing sectors.

Clark's catalog of tools and accessories includes hand tools, electric tools, and abrasives that summon the steady hands and keen eyes of everyone from industrial veterans to DIY enthusiasts. Safety equipment, tool accessories, and compressors are available to round out every toolbox with the appropriate fixings. Expert technicians also sharpen dulled blades, saws, and gardening tools and bring damaged or broken power tools back to life with skilled repair services.