A confession: I haven’t done any of my holiday shopping.

Well, let me backtrack a bit; I’ve bought a few things, mostly small and falling in the “ancillary gift” category, but we’re getting down to the wire now and ABRAMS calendars for the whole family isn’t going to cut it.

If you’re in a similar pickle, I recommend Pinterest—no, not to distract yourself with photos of dream homes, foreign places, or fanciful desserts, but to find last-minute gifts.* We asked three of our colleagues to curate boards featuring unique presents and party ideas, many of which can be quickly made or quickly shipped.

In Pierre Hermé Pastries, the man whom Vogue calls “the Picasso of Pastry” pairs fifty classic recipes with a unique Hermé version of each. Since it’s December and I’ve been feeling all holiday-cheer-full and adventurous, I cracked open the book and chose a recipe that felt appropriate to the season: Hermé’s Glace Forêt-Noire, a modern revision of a Black Forest Cake.

If you don’t have a son or daughter under the age of 15 (or so) and you work in an office (as I do) you may not have the chance to actually visualize the success of the Wimpy Kid books first hand. My boys are grown-ups (18, 22, 27) and will read a Wimpy book if there’s one lying around the house, but they aren’t Mr. Kinney’s audience.

It’s been a while since the last time I posted on this blog about the happenings in the local NYC art world. Summer is always a bit quieter at the galleries and I just haven’t had the chance to get there on the weekends. But a visit from an artist friend of ours this past weekend, made for a great reason to head to Chelsea. Hurricane Sandy hit some of the Chelsea galleries pretty hard, much art was lost and there are still some places that are closed for renovations. However, there are still a number of galleries that are open and the art scene is still bustling. Highlights of the day included after the break…

Nearly everyone likes sweet stuff now and then, and lots of people bake. But why don’t more people make candy at home? Well, probably because it always seems to involve a lot of hassle and specialty equipment. Any recipe that requires you to first go buy silicone molds, or glycerin, or various tips and nozzles —anything you can’t get at the grocery store, really—is usually not the first one where you dog-ear the page in a new cookbook. I know because I’m precisely that sort of a lazy cook myself, and if I’m going to bother with a specialty project, it needs to be easy. And fun. Pretty fast. And delicious.

The Dark Knight Trilogy DVD will go on sale globally today – and it will include an exclusive on-pack booklet distilled from our New York Times bestseller The Art and Making of the Dark Knight Trilogy.