If you don't want to swat bar-flies all night or deal with the drama of your town's hot spots, you can stay home for a fun, laid-back bachelorette party.

Chat Chew & Chocolate offers party kits, which include games, plates, cups, BROWNIES & COOKIES, goodie bags, and a "Sex and the City" DVDis an instant party for eight women: just add wine. Okay, so I added the "wine" part -- good chocolate would be plenty intoxicating for many women!

When the weather turns cold and our clothes turn clunky, our closets seem to shrink. That's especially true if you -- like me -- still have leftover bridesmaid dresses crammed in there.

My sister is only a few weeks away from delivering my first nephew (okay, her first child) and she's been "nesting" for months. She's cleaned out any extra stuff from every closet, drawer and shelf in her whole house. Every time I visit, she offers some of her unearthed findings to me before she makes another trip to make a donation to Goodwill. One of the items I happily took home with me was a box of Space Bags.

We've all seen the infomercial (photo at left): take a closet full of bulky comforters, clothes and pillows, stuff it in the clear plastic bag, zip, and attach your vacuum hose to the bag. Voila -- the stack shrinks to a shadow of its former huge self. Could it really be that easy? Yes, it is!

I reclaimed some precious space in the closet by putting all of those dresses into a slimmer, shrunken hanging space bag. There are only two caveats. One: don't overfill the hanging bag or the hanger holder at the top could come apart, which breaks the vacuum seal. Two: don't put in clothes you want to access easily -- you'll have to re-seal and vacuum the bag every time you remove/add items.

Overall, though, it feels fantastic to reclaim some closet space. It's the closest thing to returning to a time when you didn't have to allocate a corner of the closet to dresses you didn't even pick out... back in the BB era... "Before Bridesmaid-dom."

Oh the lengths we'll go to show our love!

My Mom had grand plans to grow out her hair and cut it off to donate to Locks of Love in celebration of her 65th birthday. Nearly eight months before her big milestone, her hair was barely long enough to make a ponytail so we assumed she wouldn't be able to cross that finish line in time.

But in a bittersweet twist, she was able to make the hair donation after all... because she shaved her head before the hair started falling out from the chemotherapy treatments she'd just started.

It was a year ago this week that our family heard news that changed our lives forever: my Mom told us she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time, she was only 64 years old. The good news is she's OK now. After a lumpectomy then months of chemotherapy and radiation, she's finished her treatment with a positive prognosis. The bad news is, she's not alone.
I went to my favorite hair stylist to make the big cut (photo above) for my Mom's one-year anniversary to donate to Locks of Love or Pantene Beautiful Lengths. I'm incredibly thankful and relieved that this small gesture was in HONOR of my Mom... not in memory.

Sadly though, at the exact moment the stylist was cutting off my ponytail, the mobile phone in his pocket began ringing. It was unthinkably terrible news: his Mom has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

I'm disheartened that I have an idea what the next year will be like for him and his family. But I told him that the support of loved ones will sustain him. The women who were my bridesmaids were among those who kept my spirits high during the lows.

Be grateful for your friends... they'll stand beside you during the wedding and every day thereafter.

Hug your loved ones... get regular screenings... pray/send positive thoughts to those who are on the path to get well again -- and to those who are just beginning.