popping the cork on wine etiquette

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Reader Christen asks, "If a guest brings a bottle of wine as a gift, is the host/hostess supposed to open the bottle of wine for all the guests to enjoy, or is it ok to save it?"

Excellent question, Christen! Technically, a host gift is just that: a gift. And the recipient is entitled to enjoy that gift however he or she likes. That said, a gracious host considers the gift and the giver when determining whether to open the bottle. And smart guests find a polite way to let the host know if they would like their gift enjoyed at a certain time.

If you're a guest who hopes to share the wine you've brought with the group, present it to the host with that suggestion: "I thought this could go well with the BBQ we're having." Or, if you don't want your gift to get lost among the other bottles on the wine table, let the host know: "This is something for you to enjoy another time."

As a host, you can prevent any post-party wine whining by asking your guests if their bottle was meant for the group. Something as simple as "Thanks so much for the wine. Should we open it tonight?" resolves the issue for both of you. Or if you don't want to open the bottle, let the guest know you appreciate the gift and look forward to enjoying it later.

A gesture that's always appreciated by guests when they bring you a special bottle? Suggesting you'll share the wine with them another time. The guest knows the gift was appreciated, you both have new, fun plans, and you both know you'll get to taste what they brought. Cheers to that!

question of the week: the final four

Get behind your favorite college basketball team and tell us who you're cheering for in the Final Four. If you're planning a get-together for the big games this weekend, send one of our March Madness invitations. And here's a handy tip: You can change the image on any of our designs by clicking the "Upload New Main Image" button on the invitation — perfect for adding your favorite team's mascot or logo!

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happy feet

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With wedding season approaching, we ladies get to look forward to what is my least favorite thing about weddings: dancing the night away in horrifically uncomfortable shoes. If you're one of those people who's either barefoot or in flip-flops by the end of the evening, here are some tips for saving your feet from the clutches of those evil (but adorable) stilettos:

• If your shoes are new, wear them around the house for a few days before your party. You'll break them in a little and figure out if there are any trouble spots where you'll need reinforcements, such as...
• Band-Aid Friction Block — my new best friend. It looks like a tiny stick of deodorant, and it's packed with emollients that keep friction from causing blisters in places where your shoes rub.
• If your shoes are slightly big and your heel comes out, stick an insert in your shoe at the ball of your foot. The extra padding pushes your heel back slightly. (I like Tip Toes from Foot Petals because they're cushy and cute.)
• Slingbacks are lovely, but by the end of the night, the straps tend to slip. Plan ahead by cutting a strip of double-stick tape in half and putting the pieces into your clutch. If you find yourself yanking the straps back into place, duck into the powder room and stick on the tape. Violà — your straps stay put!
• Whatever you do, resist the temptation to slip your shoes off under the table unless you have no intention of putting them back on. Once your feet are free, they swell immediately. And you thought your shoes were uncomfortable before you took them off!
• At the end of the night, calm your barking dogs with a hit of Peppermint Cooling Foot Spray from The Body Shop. The combination of peppermint oil and menthol soothes your puffy skin and feels fantastic.

makin' whoopie pies

A recent New York Times article reports that whoopie pies are the new cupcake. These cakey, sandwich cookie-like sweet treats are apparently becoming the hot new thing in desserts, and are being added to the menus of trendy dessert shops around the country as well as to the shelves of markets like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.

Fortunately, they're easy enough to make yourself. Here are some recipes for the traditional chocolate-and-vanilla flavor combo:

• Gourmet goes for a rich, classic chocolate cookie with a marshmallowy, creamy center
• Emeril's version skips the marshmallow for an egg white- and vanilla-based cream
• Boxed cake mixes more your speed? No shame in that game. These delicious whoopie-esque sandwich cookies from Annie's Eats are rolled in multicolored non-pareils for a supercute twist that's perfect for kids' parties and girls' nights.

Tips and tidbits:
1. Get a cookie scoop! These handy tools (like ice creams scoops, only smaller) are the key to successful cookies. Scooping your dough is faster than the two-spoon method, and the identical size means your dough will bake evenly and at the same speed, resulting in cookies that are uniform in size and shape.

2. When your cookies have cooled, compare them and find each one's best match in size so the cookies will look as profesh as bakery goods, and you'll have less filling squishing out the ends.

3. Chill your filling before spreading it (or piping it, fancypants) to keep it from oozing out the sides when you press the top cookie down.

4. Did you know that in some parts of the country, whoopie pies are known as gobs? Gob is a fine word, but it speaks more to the amount of cookies I plan to eat rather than the cookie itself.

i think you're ready for this jelly bean

A bean is a bean is a bean, right? Not quite. We bought five drugstore brands of jelly beans and let the Evite team loose to help you find the right snack for your Easter baskets.

Aside from noting which were not safe for people with nut allergies, the beans were as identical as we could make them. There was nothing we could do about the logo branding on one (I’m looking at you, Starburst) or the intriguingly nontraditional colors of the Jolly Rancher beans.

The results, of course, depend in part on your candy preferences: Do you have a sentimental attachment to the traditional-tasting beans of your youth? Do you prefer your candies chewy, soft or crunchy? Has your palate been altered by those other beans, Jelly Bellies, with their tiny size and tremendous, Wonka-style flavors?

To analyze each bean on its own merits, we asked our team to assess the taste and texture separately and then add their own comments. Here are the not-so-scientific but very tasty results:

question of the week: splitting the check

Even though I go out to dinner with the same group of friends almost every Friday, we still have difficulty when it comes to splitting the check at the end of the meal. Dividing everything evenly is definitely the easiest way to go, but it's usually not the fairest. What if one person had wine when another person just drank water? But you could argue that since it's usually the same group of people, it all evens out week over week.

We want to know what you guys do in these situations. And if you have some genius method to making things simple and fair, by all means, tell us in the comments!

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And here's one of my favorite tips for when each person is paying a different amount: Always carry a pen with you to write down how much the server should put on each card. We flip the check over and write out each person's last name along with exactly how much to charge. The server is always so grateful for not having to remember which of the half-dozen cards goes with which amount.

nailing it

Spring is in the air, and nothing makes me happier this time of year than the look of lacquered fingers and toes. It’s time to stash those dark, vampy shades and lighten up with the bright bolds of spring.

Celebrity manicurist Ashlie Johnson, who paints the nails of Reese Witherspoon, Eva Mendes and Liv Tyler, says that anything bright is a good way to go. She recommends bright pink, coral and turquoise. Barielle, OPI and Essie all have spring collections that include fresh, wearable shades that range from soft to bright. You might even be inspired to dress up your nails in lavender for Easter, and opt for pink or blue for a baby shower. (I’m just throwing it out there.)

While I tend to reach for more neutral shades, even I’m welcoming spring with a surge of color in the form of "IM Beauty," a buttery yellow from the Sephora by OPI Digital Diva collection — it’s like sunshine in a bottle! Go ahead and add a little color to your day.

to a tea

As I write up this post on tea, I am, appropriately enough, drinking tea. It’s a milk tea that I sweetened with cranberry honey crème; I’m sipping it out of a china teacup, all while under a blanket and typing on my laptop. Sounds not so bad, right?

Lucky for me — a bona fide tea lover — tea is just as good for an occasion as it is for a solitary pick-me-up. Here are some tea tips in case you’d like to host a tea party:

• Easy, elegant tea bars, like the one in the picture above, are growing in popularity at weddings and showers. Rather conveniently, a row of different teas in the same tins — such as these from Portsmouth — makes a striking presentation. I’m also a fan of Lupica teas, especially their “ume verte,” which is a delicate and lovely blend of green and white teas scented with Japanese apricot.

• If you want to cover a range of teas without putting out a crazy amount, I recommend going with whatever flavor suits your fancy within these four differently caffeinated categories: black tea (strongly caffeinated), green (lightly caffeinated), white (lightly caffeinated) and red (no caffeine). You may want to remind your guests that some teas, such as white and green, need to steep for less time (roughly two minutes, depending on the brand) and can become bitter if over-steeped.

• As for tea accessories, put out spoons, milk, lemon wedges, sugar in cube or lump form (it’s easier that way) and honey. If you go the loose tea route, be sure to supply tea sacks as well so attendees can create their own little teabags; Portsmouth carries some. Also, to make things less messy for your guests, have either teacups with saucers, so guests can place their teabags on the saucers when they’re done steeping, or provide some other place for guests to put their teabags, like these tea trays from Tea Forte.

• Favors are obvious and not hard on the wallet (some might say “in the bag,” but not me). Just send guests home with an individually packaged teabag such as Tea Forte’s cone-shaped teas or Tea Revolution’s single-serving boxes. After all, the tea-drinking doesn't have to stop just because the party is over.

drawn together

Most brides will concur that finding the perfect dress is one of the most painstaking albeit rewarding parts of the whole wedding process. It involves going to umpteen bridal salons and abandoning all shame to get undressed in front of sales people who are complete strangers and a tad overzealous to profess how every dress she tries on is the dress. But for the bride, it's all worth it when she ends up with the most beautiful and special article of clothing she'll ever wear.

After all that time, effort and money, wouldn't it be nice to give her an extra-special keepsake to remember her beloved gown? We've decided that a one-of-a-kind illustration of her wedding dress just might be the most ingenious wedding, bridal shower or anniversary gift.

Send Dreamlines a photo of the bride on her wedding day, and the company will do a pencil illustration of the dress that looks like it could be straight from the hand of the designer. For a small fee, you can have them add an accessory like the bride's bouquet. If you want something even more personalized, Etsy artist Brooke Hagel includes the bride in her colorful illustrations.

So even though she'll only get to wear her dress for a few short hours, she'll have a truly unique portrait in which she can always behold it.

it's mad, i tell you. mad!

Mad scientist parties are one of my favorite kids' party themes. Not only do they offer an endless amount of activity and decoration options, but they also let you sneak in a little learning and give kids some new ways to get messy.

To find out how to plan a bash worthy of Mr. Wizard without blowing up your budget, we talked to party-planning whiz Brenda of the Party Planning Mom blog, who created a mad scientist extravaganza for her lucky birthday boy.

There were lab coats, magnifying glasses and experiment stations where each kid got to make Mentos-in-soda geysers, towers constructed using marshmallows and toothpicks, lava lamps and more.

Here are Brenda's tips for hosting your own mad scientist party:

• Try all of the planned experiments a few days before the party. This way you know that you have all of the correct components, that it will be simple to execute, and that it will be a success. One of the experiments I planned for our party was an "Edible Volcano" (a foaming homemade candy using citric acid, baking soda & powdered sugar). In theory, this sounded like a cool experiment, but my kids hated the taste of it! No matter how I tweaked the recipe, I couldn't get it to taste quite right. So, I knew not to do that one at the party.
• The best advice I can give is to pre-mix components for each guest before the party. At each experiment station, I had plastic containers with lids (4 for $1 from the dollar store) labeled with each boy's name containing ingredients for that experiment. For example, at the Slimed station, there was a container for each guest with the glue solution and another with the Borax solution. Everything was pre-measured and the boys just had to mix the 2 solutions together to make slime.
• I made self-stick computer labels with the guests' names and labeled everything. It made it so much easier to keep track of which experiment belonged to which child.  Each guest also had a handled bag to put all of their experiments into.
• Get helpers. Before the party, I enlisted the help of my husband, parents and a couple of friends to help run the experiments. I had simple instructions at each station so that no matter what adult helped out, they would be able to lead the experiment.

You'll find more photos and great tips from Brenda's mad scientist party on her blog.