Blog Posts by Glamour Magazine

Hello! It is fall! I know this because the calendar says "October," the temperature has dropped from the 80s down into the icies, and I am starting to panic about getting my Halloween costume together. Also, the pumpkins have arrived at the market! You can get pumpkin seeds pretty much any time of the year, I know, but there is nothing like the messy, gloppy fun of digging the guts out of a real, live pumpkin to carve up in a fancy art project, and then taking that flesh and making something delicious, like roasted pumpkin seeds for before-dinner snacking, for sprinkling on big salads, for many healthful minerals, protein and monounsaturated fat, and for making you glad it is fall.

image via ehow.com

You can make a whole lot more with pumpkins than pumpkin pie. Try this delicious recipe for Orange-Pumpkin Roulade.

More from Elastic Waist and SELF:

• Top 10 reasons i'm in love with fall
• SELF's 10 Most Inspiring Women
  Check out the top movers, shakers and history

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesLet kids celebrate Halloween in all its gory glory--with spooky pizza, toilet-paper mummies, even a graveyard bone hunt.

5:00 P.M.
Make Wax Hands (simultaneous with pumpkins)

Melt the wax in a slow cooker on "keep warm" (under 120° F); remove from heat. Have each kid coat one hand in Vaseline and dip it in ice water, then wax. Repeat several times. When the wax has set, it will come off like a glove. Girls Sizzling Devil Costume, $30, Devil Tail and Horns, $9, and pitchfork, $3, Celebrate Express.

5:00 P.M.
Decorate Pumpkins (simultaneous with wax hands)

Have each guest choose a small pumpkin and place it on a paper plate with her name on it. Let her create a face with acrylic paints and air-hardening clay (attached with toothpicks, skewers, or glue) and make hair from paint or pipe cleaners. Wicked Witch Pumpkin Party, $120 for art gift basket for six children, GiveTheGiftOfArt.com. Place

My bangs are driving me nuts--they've gotten insanely long and I haven't had time to go in for a trim. For the last couple of days I've been toying with the idea of grabbing a pair of scissors and snipping them myself. I've had some experience--I used to cut my forehead fringe all the time when I was a teenager. The results? Well, they were mixed. (Get your bangs out of the way. A simple solution that involves no cutting or clipping.)

It usually turned out all right, but there were a couple of times when I ended up looking like a four-year-old child attacked me with safety scissors. So I'm a little nervous. But I do remember some things from my self-trimming days, like to hold the scissors vertically while snipping into the hair to keep the ends from looking too blunt. That's a start, right?

I need some encouragement--or perhaps what I really need is some sense talked into me. So I'll open it up to you guys: Do you trim your own bangs? Have you ever in the past? Any horror

I'm a huge fan of dairy products, which is awesome, since I hail from the Dairy State. When I was a kid, I often had to deal with milk on my cereal that was still a cow's body temperature, and also had clots of cream clinging to my Kix balls. But in a fit of Mother Nature's cruelty, I'm pretty much allergic to dairy fat. It is unfair, but it is my burden, and even though things like cream and some cheeses and delicious, delicious butter make my throat close tight and go all itchy, I enjoy them just the same by seriously limiting the consumption and also with the assistance of a very good antihistamine.

Now, please understand that my allergic reaction has driven me to try every single dairy-free and ice milk product on the market but Breyers new Fat Free Double Churned offering is the very first fat free anything that has tricked my tastebuds into thinking I was eating the Full O'Fat Delicious Variety. It's made with skim milk (which is one of the few dairy products I can ingest and

It is not my intention to load you up with gadgets--to tell you that if only you had X, Y or Z, your life would be perfect, your abs would be taut, your dinners a dream, healthy and so fast you practically don't even remember making them every night. Only a gourmet robot will provide that kind of happy satisfaction, and we are not far enough into the future for that.

We are far enough into the future, though, where rice cookers are filled with fuzzy logic that makes rice come out perfectly every single time--even brown rice--and that it's not just for rice cooking. You can steam, poach, simmer, make a mean risotto, and this New York Times article suggests that you can even make a little loaf of bread in your tiny rice cooker. That is possibly not what you're going to be doing for dinner--instead, you can try these awesome-sounding, reasonably healthy and easy recipes that let you throw stuff together and then collapse on the couch for awhile.

Check out this great recipe from SELF:

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesIt's good for kids to have goals, to have ambitions. Crabkid wants to be a gambler when she grows up.

Which got me thinking.

Maybe our kids' goals aren't quite what Mom and Dad had in mind, but we all know it's good to let them dream their own dreams and make their own decisions. So no matter what Crabkid tells me she wants to be, I tell her it's all cool with me. And for her at the moment, it's all about gambling.

It started at the QFC grocery store. There's a bank of bingo machines or Lotto or whatever those cards are. Me, I'm not a gambling woman so I don't know much about them, but Crabkid adores the machines and races over to them every chance she can. "Nothing's coming out!" she said the first time she banged on the buttons. "Where's the money?" She was confused and thought the machine was some sort of very glittery ATM.

"This machine doesn't give you money. It just takes it from you," I explained, as she punched the lit panels sporting pictures of various

I know this seems like a crazy question--of course it's worse to have cancer, right? Well I'm not so sure.

I know this sounds like a ludicrous question but for those of us who've been the patient and seen what our loved ones go through, it's not crazy at all. I've been both the patient and the caregiver and, for me, watching my sister get diagnosed and go through treatment was far worse that experiencing it myself. It's true, I have an "easy" cancer (more on that label another time) and Melissa did not so maybe that's part of it. But I honestly feel like when you're the patient, you know exactly how you're feeling and when you're the loved one, you can only what-if and speculate. You are helpless and no one likes to feel that way. Anyone agree?

What got me thinking about the topic is a story called "Is My Cancer Bothering You?" that smstemp mentioned in the comments the

My friend Emily was writing/thinking about tights last week, the dilemma being: Should you buy expensive brands or stick with the budget kind? I usually buy my tights wherever I remember to pick them up--usually last minute at the Gap. But I have long loved and coveted the appearance of woolly, sweater-like versions, especially once the weather gets really cold. The whole situation made me wonder if maybe eBay could help. Yes! I found an adorable textured cashmere pair by Betsey Johnson, which I am definitely scooping up immediately, these by See By Chloe, which are deeply discounted and beyond chic, and--if you dare--styles in off-white and bright red by the old-timey stockings company Bloch (founded 1932!).

The Hosiery Debate: Splurge or Save? What Do You Think?

More from Lucky:

• The Under $150 Fall Bag Guide
  16 favorite options for fall--all completely affordable and all available online.
• Fall Accessories Under $100
  The most sophisticated--and