You might celebrate St. Patrick's Day by singing "Danny Boy" or raising a glass of green beer to your mouth or sitting down to a dinner of corned beef and cabbage. But this year, I honored it with the whirr of a razor buzzing around my head.

The patron saint of my holiday is a cartoon leprechaun named Lucky, the mascot of the St. Baldrick's Foundation. Begun in 2000 on a St. Patrick's Day bet, St. Baldrick's has raised $50.5 million in the past decade to fund research for children's cancer treatment and to raise awareness of a disease that strikes an American child every three and a half minutes.

Head shaving events -- where volunteers are sponsored to go bald for cancer -- are the foundation's primary fundraiser, according to Foundation spokesperson Sara McCarthy. The parties are thrown by volunteers across the country to bring folks in the community who care about kids and cancer together to pony up their ponytails while friends and family plunk down money "on their heads" that will help St. Baldrick's fund grants for scientists searching for the cure for childhood cancer.

In the past decade, 130,000 people have plopped down in a chair at a St. Baldrick's event in the past 10 years and said so long to their hair to raise money to fight children's cancer. I'm proud to count myself among those 130,000 brave -- and bald -- souls. Since 2006, I've had my head shaved at four St. Baldrick's fundraisers, starting a year after the birth of my daughter.

My child has been blessed with good health, but time after time in the community newspaper business, I was forced to write articles about fundraisers for local children with cancer. And sometimes a year later, sometimes two years, I would sit down to write that same child's obituary. Each one tore away another piece of my resolve, until the journalistic code -- don't get involved in the story -- was no more.

I shaved first because I had to do something; I shave now because I've found joy in an unlikely place. In baldness, I've found the beauty of feeling like I have power over childhood cancer. I suppose it comes down to this: I'm Jeanne Sager, and I'm a mom, and I'm addicted to shaving my head to fight childhood cancer.

And fortunately, I'm not the only one.

Continue Reading

A little bird told us it's National Birdfeeding Month. How about some DIY? - Naturally Educational

Don't turn green with envy at these cooks' skills; take their recipes and make St. Pat's a blast. - Daily Buzz

Are cupcake candles a cruel trick or a sweet treat for someone's birthday? - Epicute

Lenten sacrifices could be good for your waistline -- is chocolate off the menu? - That's Fit

Bring out the Bailey's -- St. Patrick's has it's own pot de creme. - YumSugar

When a holiday goes to the dogs. You don't need an Irish wolfhound to celebrate this week. - PawNation

Did you celebrate Panic Day by running around like a loon last week? Yell "Hoodie Hoo" at noon on Feb. 20? You have Tom Roy to thank.

The Lebanon, Pa. resident is the creator of more than 80 holidays, each one wackier than the last. It started 23 years ago with Northern Hemisphere Hoodie Hoo Day, slated exactly one month before the spring equinox. On Feb. 20 at noon local time, Roy says you should "go outdoors and yell 'Hoodie-Hoo' to chase winter and make ready for spring, one month away."

So who's he to tell you what to do? Roy happens to have had his 80-some holidays printed in Chase's Calendar of Events, the book he was reading 23 years ago to create content for a show at the radio station where he was employed.

"I saw where it said submit your own holidays, and I said wow, I didn't you know you could do that," Roy tells Holidash. So he looked at the calendar in his office and started thinking.

"It was February, and I thought what's going through everyone's head right now? Cabin Fever," Roy continues. "So I looked at the start of spring and counted back one month."

That explains the date. But Hoodie Hoo? "I think it's something Gomer Pyle used to say," Roy confesses. "It just came to me."

Continue Reading

The urge to get to know your food source just got festive. Folks are turning their party planning over to their local butcher -- and making him their entertainment for the evening.

The term "butcher party" was coined in San Francisco, where David Budworth, who also goes by Dave the Butcher, has been throwing events for the past year that bring people together to watch him do his job. Literally.

Set up on a table in the front of a room, Budworth pulls out his knives and starts breaking down a side of beef or a pre-slaughtered goat while the partygoers shoot him questions on the process.

With each question -- from "What kind of knives do you use?" to "How does one get to be a butcher?" -- Budworth says he's reintroducing people to the concept of visiting their local butcher to buy fresh cut meat rather than stopping into the superstore for a slab of days old meat in plastic wrap.

"People are so removed from butchery," Budworth explains. "In Europe it's like being a mailman; it's no big deal. But here people don't know their butcher."

Helping to revive the art form is the national drive to know exactly where our food comes from. In the wake of box office successes for movies such as "Food, Inc.," book sales for "The Omnivore's Dilemma," federal initiatives pushing "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food," and even more grassroots efforts like the Eat Local Challenge, the numbers of people buying fresh meat or even coming together to purchase an entire side of beef -- which is then split among the families -- has grown significantly.

Continue Reading

Get back to basics. You don't need a computer to help celebrate a birthday when you're far away. - The Crafts Dept.

Printing out real menus and two more musts to make your dinner party amazing. - Ready Made

What's fizzing in the kitchen? Coca-Cola cupcakes let you have your cake and soda too. - Daily Buzz

Why your guests will be begging for another glass of wine (trust us, it's good for them). - Lemondrop

Looking for the best brew for your bash? DIY and do it here. - Asylum

Kick the cabbage: Change up the St. Patrick's menu with a corned beef sandwich that's free of the greens. - YumSugar

They're no longer kids, but they're not teens yet either, and tweens can be the hardest people on the planet to throw a party for.

Just ask Lisa Kothari. The owner of Peppers and Pollywogs used to plan big budget children's parties in some of the nation's biggest cities. But even Kothari admits tweens are tough. They are too old to let Mom and Dad make all the decisions, and peer pressure is running at an all time high, she warns.

"They are not children where the parents plan everything," Kothari says. "And they're not teens who are almost lackadaisical about their parties, who just want to hang out with their friends."

Fortunately there's one place no tween ever said no to: The mall.

"A mall scavenger hunt is a great idea for a tween party," Kothari tells Holidash. And while the parents chill out in the food court, the kids take over the mall -- and leave your house as clean as it was when you left it.

Kothari tells us how make it happen:

Continue Reading

Daisy Martinez is on a mission to bring Latin America to your kitchen.

The host of the Food Network's "Viva Daisy" says when the average American thinks of throwing a party with Latin flair, they plunk a bowl of nachos on the table and pull out the salsa. But in a new book that's one part cookbook, one part travel log, "Daisy: Morning, Noon and Night," Martinez is flavoring American entertaining with the real tastes of Latin America.

While prepping for a dinner party at her home in Brooklyn, Martinez told Holidash how to put a Latin flavor on your next party.

We were excited to hear at Holidash that there's a holiday story behind your new book. Can you tell us about it?

Santa Claus stopped visiting my home when my youngest daughter, Angela, turned 8. I sat the kids down, and I said to them, "Up until now, Dad and I have spent a ridiculous amount of money on stuff that in two weeks is under the bed, in the back of the closet or never to be seen again. We're going to stop doing that." Of course, I was met with eyes that just were full of pure mortification, like what does that even mean?

How did you talk them down?

What I said to them was, "From now on, Daddy and I are going to take you on a trip; from now on we're going to travel somewhere we've never been and spend that entire week as a family." The premise for the book was, we were traveling as a family, and I would take pictures of everything we ate, and takes notes on those pictures so that I could recreate those memories for my family when we came back home.

How did that translate to a book?

I would make the recipe and tweak it and tweak it and tweak it until I got it the way we remembered it. By serving the meal, the meal would inspire the family to talk about the memories, about the things that happened on the trip. It was just such a wonderful coming together, that kept those memories alive. I'm very fond of saying "my children can't tell you what they got for Christmas of 2003, but they can very definitely tell you what they were eating Christmas Day of 2006."

What about Latin food has really spoken to you?

This is my mission in life! My mission is to bring to the mainstream the extreme diversity within the Latin kitchen. Here in the United States, when the mainstream thinks of Latin food, it's not even real Latin food. It's really TexMex. Most people when they think of Latin food they think of spicy. I don't like to think of Latin food as spicy. I like to think of Latin food as sassy, because the food of Latin America isn't all spicy. We love heat in Puerto Rico, but Cuba and the Dominican Republic don't really care for hot food. In Mexico, the different regions, some food is very spicy where some food is very citrusy. The other thing I'd like to dispel is that adding black beans, chorizo or chipotle to a dish does not make it Latin! We eat the same stuff that everyone else eats, we just prepare it a little differently!

Continue Reading

Cooking fun with films doesn't have to end on Oscar night -- try Coraline cookies for a kid's party or lobster cupcakes for your beach bash. - Bakerella

The Easter candy is out, but don't eat that Peep yet. Snap a photo of your marshmallow bunny for a big prize. - Gadling

Alice in Wonderland is taking over the birthday party -- let's hope none of the kids are allergic to Cheshire cats. - Hostess With the Mostess

Celebrate National Sauce Month with a saucy quiz -- do your Asian sauce smarts end at soy? - YumSugar

Holidays just aren't the same without the whole family. Find out how to get your pets in on the action. - PawNation

What's cuter than bunnies at Easter? Babies dressed as bunnies have won our hearts. - MomLogic

Is pulling together the party favor bag the hardest part of party planning? - Droolicious

Friday the 13th gets all the horror movies, but beware, the Ides of March falls on a Monday this year!

Maybe you remember it from your required high school reading of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," where a soothsayer warned the Roman emperor to "beware the Ides of March." Fast forward to the 15th day of the third month in the Julian calendar, and the arrogant autocrat was dead -- murdered by a host of Roman senators, including his best buddy Brutus.

And the line "Et, tu, Brute?" was born to haunt traitors and high schoolers everywhere.

The ides concept originated as a way for the Romans to track the full moon. Usually falling in the center of the month -- like the full moon - the word ides came from "idus," a Latin word for "divide." When the Romans later separated their calendar from the moon, the ides showed up on the 15th of any month with 31 days (at that time March, May, July and October), on the 13th of all other months.

Still, the ides have a bad reputation to uphold -- or fight off. And you don't have to be superstitious to buy in.

"People tend to give special significance to certain dates -- birthdays, anniversaries, leap years, Friday the 13^th, and so on," explains Benjamin Radford, managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. "That belief is similar to numerology, where people seek cosmic significance in numbers and dates, seeing them as good or bad, lucky or unlucky."

Continue Reading

The best way to watch the Oscars: One good friend, trivia and are those microwaved pretzels? - Lemondrop

Easter meets St. Patrick's Day in a hunt for the hidden gold. - Makes and Takes

Staging the Oscars DIY style - prepare for the curtains to rise on part one. - Twig & Thistle

Forget the pre-made invitations. Try your own letterhead on for size. - CasaSugar

You won't be making a peep with all this chocolate-covered Easter goodness in your mouth. - Slashfood

Don't let these common cooking mistakes ruin your party. - AOL Food