Tausi Insider

Meryl Streep’s Thanksgiving Disaster You don’t have to go it alone. If your guests offer to help out on Thanksgiving, tell them “hell yes” and take them up on it. Unless your friends and family are complete jerk-faces, at least one guest will at least offer to help clean up after dinner, and everyone else should be shamed into helping. Under no circumstances should you say, “oh, no, I’ll take care of the clean-up.” That’s what they want you to do, and they will leave you with a disaster area of a kitchen and some serious grudges to nurse. That said, if your friends and close family offer to help, and you take them up on it, don’t go too far with their services. You could end up with the people you care about most preparing and serving food to the people you only invited because you felt obligated to. https://www.tausiinsider.com/the-7-deadly-sins-of-hosting-a-big-thanksgiving-dinner/?feed_id=389931&_unique_id=649244a097958

Photo : SeventyFour ( Shutterstock ) While there’s no way to guarantee that your Thanksgiving gathering will be 100% conflict-free, setting a few boundaries with your guests ahead of the big dinner can help to at least minimize confrontations and awkward moments. Here are a few examples of topics to discuss and agree on before coming together for the holiday. Come up with a food plan Food is a crucial part of most holidays, so it makes sense that when the day’s main activities are preparing and then eating a meal, things can get heated. Between competing recipes and cooking techniques—not to mention literal cases of too many cooks in a kitchen—food-related tensions can run high on Thanksgiving. If this is a yearly problem at your gatherings, agree to a plan ahead of time. In addition to specifying who will make each dish (to avoid duplicates and hurt feelings), also sort out some sort of cooking and heating schedule to ensure that people aren’t competing for kitchen space and oven...

Screenshot : Google With less than a week to go before Christmas, the kids are probably off from school, high on sugar, and getting antsy for presents, or whatever your family does to celebrate the holidays. At this point, you may be running low on cash and out of options for keeping them entertained while you’re still working. If that’s the case, Google’s Santa Tracker website has all kinds of games and activities to hold their attention—including several that are educational. Here’s what to know. How to access free holiday games and activities for kids Before switching over to tracking Santa on Christmas Eve, the site offers an array of holiday-themed games and activities. They’ll come up as you scroll through the site; if you want to pull up a particular feature, you may be able to find it faster through the Family Guide . Some of the activities available on the site include: Coding games : Kids (or adults) can learn the basics of how to code by playing Code Boogie or Code Lab...