I was a brownie for a day. My mom made me stop. She didn't want me to conform.

I really love laser-cutting. I do a lot of laser-cut jewelry and laser-etched stationery. I'll even etch my food sometimes. You can download an image online and etch it onto a tortilla or a brownie. It's so cool to meld the digital and analog worlds together.

Classic Christmas cookies are really time-consuming. Instead, make a bar you can bake in a pan and just cut up, like a brownie or a blondie or a shortbread, which still has that Christmas vibe.

Each time a person passes by you and you say 'hello', imagine that person turning into a candle. The more positivity, love and light you reflect, the more light is mirrored your way. Sharing beautiful hellos is the quickest way to earn spiritual brownie points. You should start seeing hellos as small declarations of faith. Every time you say hello to a stranger, your heart acknowledges over and over again that we are all family.

I've learned that you know your husband still loves you when there are two brownies left and he takes the smaller one.

Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?

"Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go.

I was a brownie for a day. My mom made me stop. She didn't want me to conform.