Things to Do in Xenia

Stone pathways meander among bubbling fountains and glowing reflecting pools. Soil beds teem with gold, violet, and red perennials. Professional designers cobble together sculptures from flowers, glass, fabric, and light. This veritable bouquet of domestic inspiration takes place during the three-day Dayton Home & Garden Show. Each year, the exposition's gardeners and floral designers craft a range of displays based on a chosen theme. Many of the sample gardens incorporate this theme with a focus on whimsical water features, fire pits and paved patios, or modern conservation methods, such as using cupid statues to make birds fall in love.

Beyond the botanical spectacle, more than 250 local and national exhibitors answer questions and proffer goods related to home improvement: siding, windows, cookware, candles, garden ornaments, and bath products. While the professionally landscaped gardens create a simulated outdoor world, area interior designers use color, furnishings, and lights to transform eight small, vacant spaces into living rooms convincing enough to attract and profoundly bewilder Santa Claus. At the Garden Academy stage, professional gardeners lead more than 60 educational seminars and demonstrations on such topics as invasive insects, patio construction, and water gardens. At the cooking stage, area chefs demonstrate kitchen basics and culinary techniques while distributing free samples to the audience.

The FAA certified flight instructors at Champion City Aviation jet students into the skies with both college and casual training programs. The facility's combination of ground school and in-the-air education covers vital aviation techniques, including flight rules and regulations, radio procedures, and how to handle inclement weather. Ground school sessions unfold inside a modern classroom equipped with computer technology, and air training utilizes Champion City's fleet of training aircraft.

Easy as A-B-C, the artists behind Life in Letters craft custom photographic gifts available both in their shop and online. Over the years, they've amassed a vast collection of black-and-white photos of common objects and sights that resemble letters—such as arches, golf balls, fences, and palm trees—which they assemble into meaningful words, such as love, laugh, family, and nihilism. Once customers have chosen their word and selected each letter, they can have their piece matted and framed to suit their own decor or that of a loved one. The photographers also share their skills with aspiring shutterbugs during regular introductory photography classes.

Winning best haunted house in Active Dayton's 2011 Best of Dayton awards and lauded by the bloggers of Ohio Valley Haunts for a "very loud soundtrack [that] assaults the senses in accompaniment to the various atrocities," the designers of Dayton's Haunted Butcher House horrify guests with new macabre spectacles each year. Characters, such as clowns wielding meat cleavers and the undead springing forth from oversize jack-in-the-boxes, are just some of the haunts that have rattled visitors in years past on the unguided tour. To further heighten fear levels, the building itself becomes another character, confounding the living with moving floors, strobe lights, and mysterious voices that predict another year of slow economic growth.

Act Out Talent Studio offers classes for all levels of entertainers to begin or continue their path towards a successful acting, modeling, or performing career. The studio employs a stable of coaches, each with experience working within their industry, that imparts students with an inside understanding of show business. Acting classes instill confidence and foster talent using emoting exercises covering such basics as observation, improvisation, and translating Shakespeare from the original Swedish. Aspiring models learn everything from expressing an image to nutrition in order to help build a marketable portfolio, and vocal classes allow singers and songwriters to step into an actual recording booth to practice chugging honey before crooning into the mic.

At Skateworld of Kettering, families strap on their gliding shoes to coast across the rink to the sounds of kid-appropriate tunes. During themed skating sessions, guests can glide to Radio Disney tracks, Top 40 hits, and disco ballads before feeding one of many arcade games with their hard-earned tokens. Tired tots can refuel by sinking their teeth into pizza or working on the blueprints for their perpetual-motion clone at the concessions stand.