What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

If you think no-date means no-fun on New Year’s Eve, think again. Then pick up your phone and call your friends, because some of our most memorable New Year’s Eve parties weren’t at all romantic.

Today, we’ll share two of our favorite friend-celebrations with you.

The first is a classic: the potluck supper. Put a fresh spin on it by using a little imagination.

Start by choosing a theme for the evening, such as:

· a region of focus, like Italian cuisine.

· the recipes of a particular chef. The Food Network site offers all kinds of recipes by celebrity chefs, like Jamie Oliver and Ina Garten, AKA the Barefoot Contessa.

· foods that are all the same color.

· an interesting era. (The medieval feast never gets old, especially when you take away the cutlery and make your guests eat with their hands.)

When we were roommates, we once threw a 70’s themed party, where everyone brought food from that era—including a huge glazed ham decorated with maraschino cherries and marshmallows. Disgusting, but hilarious!

After you’ve chosen a theme, you can decorate your dining room accordingly, create a theme-related playlist, and consider dressing the part. A 70’s party isn’t complete without a disco ball, and medieval feast must have a wench!

With potluck, the host never gets stuck with all the work and expense, however. Be sure to assign everyone a course. If your group is small, you may only need four courses. If it’s a big group, try doing what the big chefs do and create a tasting menu featuring many very small courses. Think soup in shot glasses, a scoop of salad on a romaine leaf, a skewer with a few chunks of grilled chicken and a veggie or two. Sorbet makes a great palate cleanser between courses and a pasta course is always a winner, especially before the cheese course. Sliced fruit makes a nice break before dessert, followed by espresso cups filled with hot chocolate. As the host, you can decide if you want to assign a specific dish to each guest, or simply share the theme and some general guidelines and allow your friends’ creativity to rule.

The second friend-celebration still involves divvying up the work and cost, but this time, you’ll get some exercise too. If you all live within walking distance of each other, why not plan a “progressive dinner”? This is where you have a different course at each house, giving everyone a chance to host.

Again, you’ll need to improvise, depending on the number of people participating. Let’s suppose there are six of you.

· Host One offers a fancy drink. (And by fancy, we don’t mean alcoholic—go online to find hundreds of tasty booze-free drinks).

· Host Two offers up hors d’oeuvres.

· Host Three makes an interesting salad (and yes, salad can be interesting!).

· Host Four makes a one-dish main course, like a pasta, curry or stew.

· Host Five treats you to a yummy dessert.

· Host Six closes out the evening with something bubbly for a toast, along with chocolate dipped strawberries.

Turn on the TV and watch the ball drop in Time’s Square, before playing your favorite tunes and dancing off those calories into the wee hours.

Now that sounds like a Happy New Year to us!

Haven’t got a thing to wear?

It’s party season, people, and if you’re anything like we are, you’ve probably already worn all of your favorite outfits to the various social gatherings that inevitably occur this time of year.

Now, New Year’s Eve is looming and you want to wear something different. Something fresh and unique. Something with a WOW factor. But unless you managed to score gift cards to clothing stores for Christmas, you’re probably a little cash poor today.

Well, fear not fair fashionistas, because we have a budget-friendly solution.

First of all, pick a basic item to design your outfit around: a great pair of jeans, a cool black skirt, or even some glittery tights. Then host a spontaneous Swap Party. Invite your friends over and ask them to bring at least three stylish items they’re willing to lend out for an evening. In that “swap” pile, you are likely to find something that works well with your basic item.

Next, hit up your mom/aunt/sister for some cool costume jewelry to accessorize.

If your outfit still isn’t doing it for you, head out to some local thrift stores. Combing through jammed racks takes patience, and you have to be able to envision a piece away from all the clutter, but the effort can really pay off. We’ve come back from the hunt with cashmere sweaters, great wool coats, and sequined tank tops. A small budget can stretch a long way.

But if you strike out at the thrift store, don’t despair, because there’s always the consignment store. It costs more, but it will be better organized so you can find what you need without having a meltdown. We’ve have scored some major label jeans, dresses, shirts and even unworn shoes for a fraction of the retail cost.

Last, for a bit more cash and a lot more caché, try visiting a vintage clothing store. Add zing to your look with a cool hat, or a giant cocktail ring, or maybe a fifties Mad Men-esque sweater or dress.

It can take work to pull together the perfect outfit on a budget, but in the end, you’ll be an original—and the envy of all the girls who took the easy way out at the mall. Especially when they show up at the party wearing the same dress!

Get Stacked this Holiday Season

Haystacked, that is. If you’re looking for another yummy, chocolately treat to make for the holidays, consider the haystack. These quick, easy and popular cookies are affectionately known among our friends and family as “blobs.” It wouldn’t be Christmas without them.

Here’s what you’ll need:

300g (1 bag) of butterscotch chips

300g (1bag) of high quality semi-sweet chocolate chips (or the equivalent amount of dark chocolate bars, chopped up into small pieces)

2 1/2 cups of crunchy chow mein noodles, broken roughly in half.

2 1/2 cups of salted peanuts

Line two or three cookie sheets with parchment paper or wax paper.

Melt butterscotch chips and chocolate chips together in a double boiler over low heat (or in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on a low setting). When the chips are nearly completely melted, remove from the heat and stir until smooth.

Add noodles and peanuts and stir until they are completely coated with the chocolate mixture.

Spoon the mixture onto the prepared cookie sheets, using a heaping tablespoon to create each haystack.

Refrigerate until firm and then store in an airtight container, in the refrigerator.

They keep for about three weeks, if you don’t eat them all first!

Yvonne’s cheap, original last minute gift idea

It’s crunch time on the gift front, and if you’re low on cash and strapped for ideas, why not stick your head in the clouds. Word clouds, that is. Otherwise known as Wordles.

So, what’s a Wordle? It’s a visual depiction of a set of words that have been grouped together in a meaningful way.

Wordles are fun, personal and attractive. Most important of all, they’re easy to do!

Here’s a set of Wordles I made for Sandy to commemorate each of our nine books:

Pretty cool, huh?

To make these, I visited http://www.wordle.net/ and fed content from each book into the wordle application. Then I customized the color palette to match our book covers. The words we used the most showed up in the biggest font.

But you don’t have to have an entire manuscript on your hands to create a wordle. You can make a meaningful wordle for friends or a family just by using the lyrics of your best friend’s favorite song, or your mom’s favorite poem.

Check out this one I just made in honor of the holiday season:

To make your own wordle:

• Click CREATE
• Type in the words you want to use.
• Repeat the most important words several times so that they will be prominently featured in the word cloud.
• Click GO.

Wordle automatically removes common English words and numbers, so if you want these to appear, click on LANGUAGE and make your selections.

Click on FONT to customize the look. I used “Telephoto” for the book wordles and “Coolvetica” for my Christmas wordle.

Click on LAYOUT to rearrange words in a manner you find most appealing to the eye. I used half and half for the books wordles, with straighter edges, but rounder edges and mostly horizontal for the Christmas one. Once you’ve found the layout you like the most, you can hit “re-layout with current settings” to move the words around.

COLOR allows you to choose from a pre-existing palette, but you can customize the palette by selecting “edit custom palette.” Click on each sample color to change. Once you have selected your swatch color, you can hit OK to keep it, or enhance the shade a little by selecting HSB, and moving the little ball onto the specific shade you’d like. When you’re happy with your choice, hit OK and do the same thing for the rest of the four colors.

When you’re finished selecting your palette, you have one last choice. Hit the COLOR button again and at the bottom you see that you can select your exact palette, or vary it by several degrees.

Finally, you can save your wordle to the public gallery or print it. To make a PDF, select the PRINT button on the website page, and then select PRINT on your computer. Click on the PDF button to save and voila, you’re done!

If you like your work of art, stick it in a cheap frame to really make a statement. Or make a greeting card out of it.

Now… stop reading and start creating.

Under Construction

The release of LOVE, INC. is just weeks away and reviews are trickling in. Here’s what Kirkus had to say:

Following her parents' separation, Zahra is forced into group therapy, where she meets Kali and Syd. The three girls quickly find that fractured families are not all they have in common - it turns out that they are all dating the same guy. Despite their differences, they find they are all good at one thing: revenge. After trashing their boyfriend's reputation, they decide to offer their services to others. The specialty at Love, Inc., is initially payback, but the three jilted girls find they have a wider range of love-related services to offer. Genuinely endearing, narrator Zahra reacts authentically to betrayal, her parents' separation and the confusion of assimilating her Pakistani and Scottish- American roots. Smart dialogue and a hip cast of characters keep the story engaging...

Our web elves have been busy updating our website and creating a whole new micro-site for the new book. Although it’s still a work-in-progress, the website is live at LoveIncBook.com. Check it out!

In the next week or two, we’ll be launching a “fortune teller” game on LoveIncBook.com. Do you find yourself asking tough questions like:

· Who should pay on a first date—him, or me?

· Can I dump a guy by e-mail or text?

· I kissed a guy who has a girlfriend and now he wants to dump her for me. What do I do?

If so, Zahra, Syd and Kali—LOVE, INC.’s mediation, revenge and matchmaking experts—are ready to give you a unique spin on these, and dozens of other questions.

Sign up to follow us on Twitter and you’ll be the first to know when the game goes live. LOVE, INC.’s opinionated panel welcomes any and all questions on Love, Friends, Family and Life in general.

Meanwhile, to win a free copy of the LOVE, INC., enter the giveaway at http://teens.freebookfriday.com/