Well, I finally did it. I went out and bought myself a minivan.

It wasn’t as vanity-stealing as I thought it would be. Especially once I kicked up my heels and did the can-can thanks to the extra leg room and discovered I was able to knock $70 off my current car payment.

Many of us make the same New Year’s resolution — to go on a diet. We deprive ourselves, measure out our portions and count calories only to realize we’re not losing the weight we expected — or worse, we lose the weight, but still feel lousy. By the end of January, we’re curled up on the couch with a tub of Cool Whip and a bottle of chocolate syrup while we watch The Biggest Loser. Not that I would ever do that.

Ok, I lied. I’m typing with one hand while squirting Reddi-wip in my mouth with the other.

Back in my advertising days, the company I worked for forced us to take the Myers-Briggs personality test.

When the results were tallied, we were instructed on how to use the information to communicate more efficiently with one another. The extroverts were basically taught how to handle us introverts with kid gloves. The introverts, on the other hand, were provided with zero instruction on how to deal with extroverts – which pretty much told us that as introspective folks we were weird freaks of nature that needed to be put in a cage and studied by our louder counterparts.

To Mr. Andy Cohen, Senior Vice President of Original Programming and Development for Bravo:

It was reported on Wednesday that reality star and ray of sunshine, Camille Grammer, may not be returning to my favorite Housewives – Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Like 85 percent of new moms, Erica Heslop suffered the baby blues after the birth of her first child. When she became pregnant with her second, this mom and nurse vowed not to let post-partum gloom steal a moment of happiness again.

Explained Heslop, “After I got pregnant with Drew, I looked back on my first weeks with Jay and realized that my mood swings, fatigue and tearfulness had clouded my early time with him. My husband even referred to the shower as my ‘sobbing box’ because every time I would shower, I would cry. I wanted the time after our second child’s birth to be less crying and more joy.”

Heslop’s solution: placenta encapsulation.

Now, in all honesty, when Heslop mentioned the practice to our moms’ group, I gagged a little. All I could picture was a placenta simmering in the crockpot with some Lipton’s onion soup mix. But the more she shared the benefits of encapsulation, the more I began to respect the practice. Instead of serving up the placenta with a side of au jus, Heslop explained, it’s cooked, dried and formed into caplets for taste-free ingestion, restoring necessary hormones that are lost within three to five days of giving birth and helping reduce the risk of the blues.

The holidays are a busy time for us parents. If shopping and decorating weren’t enough, now you want us to bake?

We all have these perfect Norman Rockwell holiday dinners in our heads. But the truth is, those dinner tables loaded with a glistening ham and homemade eggnog are hard to achieve for any one with toddlers underfoot – unless Ina Garten invades our kitchen or we steal Jessie Spano’s caffeine pills.

In the quest for perfection, we often neglect to focus on what’s really important during the holidays – spending time with family instead of the stove. So instead of stressing, follow a few tricks to ease the baking rush.

For art lovers in St. Louis, the region offers a vibrant array of opportunities to find our creative fix. Now we can boast one more incredible organization. In 2011, St. Louis Dance Theatre, the region’s first professional jazz dance company, will kick off its inaugural season, introducing audiences of all ages to dance and offering local dancers a new stage on which to showcase their talents.

Like many dancers from St. Louis, Morgan Cameron trained for years to perfect her craft but eventually joined dance companies in other cities due to limited opportunities in the St. Louis region. After returning to St. Louis, Cameron started a family and a business with her husband and founded a part-time dance company. However, beginning in 2011, StLDT will allow her and her fellow dancers to fulfill their dreams full time right here in the region.