Spending is Up This Valentine's Day: Most Popular Gifts of 2013

Men will spend twice as much money buying for their loved one as women will today, the National Retail Association reports.

  Money can’t buy love, but on Valentine’s Day, most people are cashing in to please their significant other, GoBankingRates.com reports. According to the National Retail Federation, women will spend $88.78 on Valentine’s Day gifts, while men will spend $175.61. Americans will spend more than $4 billion on jewelry alone, according to the U.S. News & Report. The news source ranks the most popular Valentine’s Day gifts as follows:  What did you give or receive this Valentine’s Day? Share it with us in the comments section.  

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Holiday Recipes: Cookies, Candy and More

Patch editors from across Chicagoland share some of their favorite Christmas recipes.

Patch.com editors from across the Chicago area dug into their cookbooks and came back with some of their favorite holiday recipes to share with readers. We hope you enjoy. Happy Holidays! Share your favorite holiday recipes with Patch! Send your recipe as well as any photos to Editor Amie Schaenzer at amie.schaenzer@patch.com and we will include your recipe in this article.

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7 Creative Ways to Use Your Leftover Halloween Candy

Fun ideas on how to use up all of that Halloween Candy

  It's the day after Halloween and we have way too much candy in the house. Waaaay too much candy. Between the kids' haul from trick or treating to the leftover candy we didn't get to give away, we have a small mountain on the kitchen table. There's no way we can, or even want to eat it all. You can’t bring it to work because everyone else brought their extra candy to work. Your waistline doesn’t need to collect on the “Mommy or Daddy Tax” from the candy haul. You don’t want to throw it out but you certainly don’t want to urge your kids to eat more candy, so it doesn’t go to waste. That won’t win you any Mom-of-the-Year awards. So, what should you do with the leftover candy?  1.      Play with it Use the candy to have some fun. Have your …

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Let Me Be Frank

I Love Halloween!

This week Jessie Frank dishes about costumes (the fun and the sleazy), Trick-Or-Treating and Fright Fest.

Let me be frank – I love Halloween! There are many great things about Halloween; the costumes, the trick-or-treating, and of course Six Flags Great America's Fright Fest! Costumes I think Halloween is one of the most fun holidays of the year, especially since dressing up in a stupid costume is right up my alley. At my mom's dance studio, all of the staff dresses up within the same theme, and this year it is Crayola Crayons.  My mom had this fabulous idea to make them all, and guess who got to do that? I had to sew a total of 14 costumes, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but they look pretty freakin' spectacular!  (Yea, I made the costume I'm wearing in the picture.) For the past couple of years, my friends and I have been piecing …

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