Last night in New York, Rihanna was busy making outfit changes for charity. She started the night in a red, one-shouldered cocktail frock for the lighting of the UNICEF Snowflake/Gucci Tattoo Heart Collection for UNICEF launch and then she went to the dinner for the new Gucci line in a long, body-hugging mauve floor-length number. Both dresses have a gold hardware accent piece, gather on one side of the body and are made from a lovely, drapey fabric.

How quickly we forget! We claim that this holiday season won't be as costly as the last, but how can we be sure? If last year's holidays are a blur of parties, cookies, and mistletoe, dig up your credit card or bank statements from the end of last year to get an idea of how much you spent last year on new party clothes, gifts, and the cost of hosting gatherings.

This year, consumers witnessed a lot of
cost increases in food, so it's only natural that the price of Thanksgiving dinner has crept up, too. Agriculture experts estimate that
Thanksgiving costs have
risen by an average of six percent this year, and the
American Farm Bureau, which conducts a Thanksgiving yearly survey, cited
$44.61 as the average cost of a Thanksgiving for 10 in 2007.
I'm not surprised; in fact, I'm certain that I spend at least twice as much on my Thanksgiving dinner.

Does a swig of the bottle help the medicine go down? With the onset of cold and flu season,
sixty-five percent of you will give your children medicine and trying to get your darling to take his full dose can be a battle. The creators of the
Medibottle ($15) have designed a bottle with a syringe attachment that tricks the tot into swallowing meds.

I remember my excuses for not having or doing my homework to have been pretty lame, but as for tech excuses, like my computer "ate" the file — well, let's just say I'm sure I made them do it too. A study found that these days, the new
homework excuses are tech-related, such as blaming hackers for getting into your laptop to snag just your 10-page paper on 12th century witchcraft.
So has one of your gadgets ever eaten or ruined your work, somehow?
Earlier this week, Motrin
removed its controversial moms' advertising campaign after tech-savvy mamas created an online uproar over the campaign's tongue-in-cheek positioning of babies as fashion accessories. Did you find the ad insensitive to mothers?

Ever since the concept of a
checkpoint-friendly bag came onto the scene, I've been underwhelmed. So far, the bags produced
haven't been so stylish, including these newly-released
checkpoint-friendly bags by MobileEdge "for her."
The main reason I'm wary to purchase a new bag is that I just don't believe I'll get through the security line without having to remove my computer from one of these special bags.

On Monday, Wired posted a comical story about
five gadgets that have been killed by the cell phone, then yesterday amended the post to
include even more gadgets that have been tossed aside for the convenience of all-in-one cell features.
This got me wondering if your cell phone has taken the place of your other gadgets? I know that my iPhone has inadvertently replaced several on this list, but there are a few I can't live without (hello, proper digital camera!).