Remember this year to OccupyChristmas and support home-made goodies over store-bought ones. Hey, with the jobless rate it’s not as if you have anything else to do with your time!

Here’s how to troll Big Cookie and triumph in your (secretly competitive) neighborhood cookie wars:

trolling Big Cookie

Fantastic! Now that that’s sorted, we can move on to building home-made gingerbread houses and quaffing eggnog with Hannah from My Drunk Kitchen.

Sure, a lot of people hate fruitcake (a lot of people whose friends need to buy more expensive fruitcake). But really, to challenge one to a rap battle?

I think, as well, to then lose to the fruitcake? That, my friends, is no way to celebrate Christmas.

OH Little Lard of Bethlehem

That’s not kosher!

Happy Thanksgiving from Megyn and John

Don’t be left in the past! Recipes are constantly evolving.

Chimpsharktypus

Stories about turducken are old hat. This year’s hip new entree is chimpsharktypus.

November 21, 2011 12:00 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@FakeAPStylebook

Fake AP Stylebook

Women laughing "alone" with salad Halloween Costume

If you’re at all like me (and who would admit it if they were?) you’ve got a stack of Self magazines head-high taking up the space where your life-size Aragorn used to stand proudly, and what have you got to show for it except an exhaustive knowledge of the phytochemical composition of any grocery item, the ability to perform a flawless  plié squat, and about ten million pictures of Women Laughing Alone With Salad.

Well, now you can put that collection to practical use as the model for a cheap and un-constricting Halloween costume! Bonus cultural literacy points for timely meme reference that only about 25% of your friends will get, even if you’re all on Tumblr.

If putting on and keeping on a happy face is too much for you, then you could always fall back on our suggestion of last year.

There’s nothing like a summer picnic, is there?

Here’s wishing you all bright colors and delicious foods in great profusion!

Happy Mother’s Day, y’all! I, alas, am an orphan, so I’m stuck at home ordering marked-down perfume from Sephora and cracking bittersweet Norman Bates jokes; presumably, you’re hanging out with at least one parent. Are you taking Mom out for her special day, or slaving away in the kitchen gaining a new appreciation of how hard she toiled re-heating all those Swanson dinners while you were growing up (Team Salisbury Steak, represent!)?

Now THAT is fancy! A formal dinner for Mother's Day. Collage by Beth Hoeckel

and don’t forget dessert:

It's like a unicorn chaser for your belleh!

Try to find an activity for the whole family for the after-dinner festivities!
No:

Yes:

Bye Bye Bunny

I’ll be honest: I’ve had a grudge against Easter ever since I realized that, when I was growing up (before the invention of fire) we got a basket of chocolates with one big bunny, a couple of Easter Creme Eggs, and a lot of jellybeans, and only a few years later my much younger stepbrothers got Rollerblades, BUT I’M SO OVER THAT REALLY.

Ahem. Anyway, I didn’t do anything special on Easter and I didn’t get any chocolate except the Hazelnut truffle my friend Raul bought me from the charming Portuguese fellow at the market and no, I’m not sulking, I’M SO OVER THAT I TELL YOU WHY DO YOU KEEP LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY?

I did have a delightful and delicious Easter tea on Friday with a good friend and the most adorable 14-month-old baby you’ve ever seen, and a post will be forthcoming on that shortly, once I’ve gotten my hands on the pictures. I’d almost have a baby so I’d have an excuse to buy those adorable little baby shoes!

On Easter Sunday I got up late, put the kettle on, made myself a French Press of Kenya (yes, from Starbucks: their Kenya AAA is one of the most perfectly balanced coffees in the world FACT and the VP of coffee there once told me it had the second highest caffeine level of any of their offerings, right behind Columbia) and then had a big mess of vegetarian chili while re-reading Toby Young’s extremely addictive memoir How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (curse you, Toby Young, how many rainy days have you cost me in lost productivity???) and then, as always, I went to the cafe with the dreadful coffee and had the green tea while I went online. Hey, a blogger’s gotta blog, eh?

What did you do? Do people still have Easter traditions? Holding out for Monday? Favorite candy? Gawker has a What Your Favorite Easter Candy Says About You quiz, and I present the following Cadbury Easter Creme Egg result without comment:

You normally have things under control but are subject to wild and uncontrollable cravings. While your life is typically together, you suffer from a serious flaw like constant tardiness, chronic attitude problems, or the lack of discipline to keep yourself in check when around seasonal chocolate treats. When you dedicate yourself to your vice, you go in whole hog. If you don’t have a drinking problem now, you probably will in a year or so. Also, you hate people who like those tiny little eggs they sell in packs of twelve. They’re like people who get wasted on New Years Eve and St. Paddy’s Day.