Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

Parents are budgeting $500 or more for back-to-school shopping this year. (Photo: Thinkstock)Many parents are planning to spend $500 or more on back-to-school shopping, a new survey says, with general school supplies and clothes at the top of the list. But budget-shopping experts insist that getting ready for the school year doesn't have to cost quite that much.

WATCH: Back to school sales start early

Forty-six percent of consumers surveyed by PriceGrabber in May and June said that they planned to spend more this year than they did last year. Sixty-three percent said they were budgeting up to $500 for school-related gear (up from 48 percent last year), while 20 percent said they had between $500 and $1,000 set aside for back-to-school purchases.

"If you're not budget-savvy I could see feeling like you 'had' to spend that," frugal shopping expert Mir Kamin told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. "You really don't!"

One reason the back-to-school budget seems so high is that part of it is allocated for electronics. According to the Pricegrabber survey, 40 percent of respondents

Two people share this tiny, 240-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Photo: Erin Boyle / Readingmytealeaves.com)While most people dream of having more space and complain about being overwhelmed by clutter, one Brooklyn couple has found a way to live comfortably in just 240 square feet -- a space smaller than a one-car garage.

Related: NYC asks developers to test out tiny "micro-unit" apartments

Writer and photographer Erin Boyle, 28, and her fiance, biologist James Casey, 30, share a 240-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn Heights, which they described to the New York Post as "dungeon-esque."

"Our last apartment was in Providence, Rhode Island," Boyle told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. "It was probably around 1,000 square feet, though I admit, I never took a tape measure to it."

They moved to Brooklyn in June 2011, and their main living space -- which includes their kitchen, dining table, and living room -- is a mere 140 square feet. The $1,500-a-month studio also has tiny bathroom off to one side, a 4-square-foot closet in the hallway, and a sleeping loft built over the kitchen; a

The producer of Dance Moms is creating a new reality TV show about extreme parenting, thanks to this Time magazine cover. (Photo: Time.com)Inspired by the controversial "Are You Mom Enough?" Time magazine cover featuring an attractive young woman breastfeeding her nearly 4-year-old son, the executive producer of "Dance Moms" says that he's developing a new TV show about extreme parenting.

Related: Jamie Lynne Grumet defends her Time magazine breastfeeding cover

"That [Time magazine] cover proves what I've been saying for the last year -- America has become a country of extremes," Jeff Collins, president of Collins Avenue Productions, told Yahoo! Shine. "I think it's so fascinating that some Americans find the image of woman breastfeeding to be provocative, shocking, even sexual when, in fact, it's the most natural thing in the world."

Contrary to the current buzz, the show won't focus exclusively on extended breast feeding, he says.

"Breastfeeding beyond infancy is just one of the topics we plan to cover," he explains. "We've discovered people are raising kids in all kinds of un-traditional ways these days and some

Photo: ThinkstockWhile health experts focus on how fast food can affect everything from your mood to your waistline, some fast-food workers are weighing in on the menu items they think people should never, ever eat -- and the reasons have little to do with childhood obesity, calorie counts, or fat content.

Related: The 5 worst "healthy" fast food meals for kids

"When I was a young buck, I worked at Burger King," writes JohnnyDollar at Reddit.com. "Here is how the oil rotation went. You had four vats of oil that you cooked fries in. And boy did you cook fries. Tons of them. After about 2 days worth, the oil got too dark for fries. So we switched it over to the ones for chicken. Since it was darker, it was ok. Then that goes on for a week. After a week of massive frying. The oil is black as motor oil. At that point, it's switched to the Fish Filet vat. That's the only thing you cook in that vat."

"When I worked at McDonald's, I accidentally left a whole bag of about 100 chicken nuggets out on a counter

Can a sports club define what makes a family?When Will Trinkle signed up for a family membership at the Roanoke Athletic Club, he was looking forward to bringing his 2-year-old son, Oliver Trinkle-Granados, to the pool. A real-estate agent, he even relocated his office to be closer to the club. He filled out the application in front of a club employee, paid an application fee and handed over his credit card for the monthly dues, and got his membership card and one for Oliver's other dad, Trinkle's partner Juan Granados.

But about a week later, Trinkle was told that his membership had been invalidated. The club had made a big mistake in accepting the application, he says the manager told him, and the club's parent company, Carilion Clinic, did not recognize his household as a family. Furthermore, "Carilion Clinic and RAC were really going to tighten up their procedures and application so that no gay couple would ever get in again on a family membership," the manager allegedly said.

Related: North Carolina's ban on gay marriage

Lauren Luke's latest makeup tutorial is actually about domestic violence.British makeup artist Lauren Luke's newest tutorial, "How to look your best the morning after," seems like a something young women might use to learn how to hide a hangover. But when the 30-year-old YouTube sensation sits down in front of her camera, she's not sporting dark circles or disheveled hair. She has bruises along her jaw, a split lip, and a massive black eye. She looks like she's been beaten up.

"Hiya everyone! Sorry I haven't been online much lately, but I'm back, I'm here," she chirps, smiling sheepishly. "I've had a bit of a rough time, but I'm going to do a video today on how to cover up." Then she launches into her tutorial as if it's any other beauty video.

But her instructions, delivered in a steady, matter-of-fact tone, are chilling. "If you've got a lot of bruising from being pushed hard against a coffee table, you can gently apply layer after layer and you will cover it up slightly," she says, wincing as she dabs a brush around her swollen-looking eye. "Now, it

A new study hints at the devastating psychological effects of infertility: Women who want to become mothers but are unable to bear children are more than twice as likely to end up hospitalized for alcoholism, and 47 percent more likely to require medical treatment for schizophrenia.

Related: Common IVF belief is wrong, study says

The effects of infertility on a woman's mental well-being may be even more far-reaching, the study's author, Dr. Birgitte Baldur-Felskov, an epidemiologist at the Danish Cancer Society Research Centre, noted.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg," she told The Telegraph. "We were only able to analyze the risk of severe psychiatric disorders resulting in hospitalization." Other women may have been treated for psychiatric issues on an out-patient basis, or even not treated at all, she pointed out.

10 things you should never say to a friend coping with infertility

The study has led British fertility specialists to call infertility a disease and urge the

Women who are scared of childbirth spend more time in labor, a new study has found.We tend to expect to be scared about giving birth. Movies and TV shows offer up worst-case scenarios, horror stories about hospital births and home births abound, and we hear plenty about how painful labor can be. But all that focus on fear may be making things worse for moms-to-be: A new study shows that pregnant women who are afraid of childbirth end up spending more time in labor than women who aren't.

Related: What does a contraction really feel like?

In the study, published on Wednesday in "BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology," researchers analyzed data from more than 2,206 patients at a hospital in Norway who took a survey about fear and childbirth when they were 32 weeks pregnant. Women who indicated a high level of fear spent, on average, one hour and 32 minutes longer in labor than those who weren't as afraid of giving birth -- 8 hours with contractions coming at least every 3 or so minutes, compared with 6 hours and 28 minutes for those who were less