SATURDAY, SEPT. 5 2014 >>>

1. Vicci Martinez, Tacoma native and finalist on NBC's The Voice will perform at the Pizza Klatch Gayla: A Slice of the Good Life tonight. Also on tap will be the outrageously funny singing group The Righteous Mothers. There will be a silent auction with items ranging from a wine tasting for 15 people; a night at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; a Seattle Storm fan pack and more. Featured speakers include Congressman Denny Heck, Sen. Karen Fraser, Rep. Laurie Jinkins and Marissa Rathbone of the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Other events at the Gayla include a youth art show, specialty wine and beers, advice booth run by teenagers, and a Panowicz Balloon Pop with a chance to win jewelry worth up to $1,500, all beginning at 7 p.m. in the Washington Center.

2. "Plastics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" will be the theme of the 4th annual Green Day at the Proctor Farmer's Market from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Expect a cluster of booths at the market, each focusing on different aspects of plastics in our lives, including volunteer programs you can join, children's activities, and drawings every half hour for prizes related to both the market, and going plastic-free.  And, of course, a marimba band. 

3. Meet national best-selling mystery writer Laurie King at a talk and book signing at 10 a.m. in the Lakewood Playhouse. Nine of King's books will be available for purchase and signing, including The Game and Locked Rooms - popular titles in the series about Mary Russell who partners with the retired Sherlock Holmes to solve cases. A former Pierce County resident, King graduated from Franklin Pierce High School in 1970. As a child, she lived in Dash Point in a house overlooking Puget Sound. She now lives on California's central coast.

4. The Fort Nisqually Living History Museum's Crafts of the Past program features milliner Dana Repp as this weekend's artist-in-residence from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The program - which will be ending this month - allows visitors to see the "creativity of daily life" in crafts of the 1800s (other crafts for September include tin whistles and cyanotypes, a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print). Repp makes period replicas of bonnets based upon examples in museum collections, period illustrations and photographs. Examples of various 19th century bonnets will be on display, and Repp will demonstrate bonnet construction methods.

5. The Phoenix, Arizona, band Electrisad makes music that's perfect for swooning young lovers. Simple synths and gentle melodies weave in and around the cooing vocals. When things rise above a tender whisper, the energy is offset by a lingering sense of melancholy. Cheap synthesizers lend everything the feeling of a heartbroken teenage girl shutting herself away in her bedroom and setting her journal entries to music and endlessly writing the name of her love in her notebook. Catch the band with Seth Boyer at 8 p.m. in Metronome Coffee.

LINK: Saturday, Sept. 6 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

Filed under: 5 Things To Do, Green Crush, Food & Drink, Tacoma, Benefits, Olympia, Events, History, Books, Lakewood,