Getting back to everyday life after a holly-jolly holiday season requires serious adjustments. Instead of cozying up to the fire with a good book, you're stuck analyzing lifeless spreadsheets and sending uninspired emails.

Reintroduction to the 9 to 5 grind combined with a shocking influx of credit card bills often leads to a general refusal to spend money.  But stashing credit cards away and vowing not to buy until the weather warms up may actually do more harm than good.  According to The Best Time to Buy Guide from FreeShipping.org, certain products are offered at some of the best prices of the year in January.

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The holiday decorations are packed away -- or should be -- and the goose is no longer getting fat. With a new year upon us, it's time to consider what we've learned from the 2011 shopping season so we can create smarter spending habits in 2012.  Here are eight shopping trends seen during last year's revelries:

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Hopefully, you've read my previous posts in the Build a Faster Blog Series which detailed some excellent resources with which to discover the real health of your blog and how fast it is performing for your readers.  You may or may not be pleased with what you've discovered so far and might be wondering how you can change things for the better.  The purpose of the rest of the posts in the Build a Faster Blog Series is to try and steer you in the right direction on how to really speed up your site.  Unfortunately, this might mean drastically changing the way you're doing things right now.  I promise though, that you will see big results if you embrace the attitude of "if it's slow...it has to go!"

Believe me when I tell you that I have changed virtually everything about my original blog, for I had no idea what poor choices I had made when it came to my blog's speed. I definitely am not claiming to know everything there is about improving a blog, for I still have plenty of challenges I am working on, but here's the things I've come to find are horrible speed stealers thus far. Do the absolute best you can to ditch as many of the following as possible. (Also remember that I am running a self-hosted WordPress blog, so some of my tips and lingo won't really be applicable for those of you running Blogger, Typepad, etc.)

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The point of this post is to provide a step-by-step guide to creating a partial RSS feed WITH pictures using both WordPress and Feedburner.  Now at this point, you may be wanting to get into the age-old debate of which version to serve your readers: a full or partial RSS feed?  I will briefly give my opinion on this issue, but then quickly move on to the real topic at hand.

I have been blogging for a few years now and for the greater amount of that time have served my readers with a full RSS feed.  Unfortunately, I found that the traffic to my actual blog started to diminish rather substantially.  I wanted to provide my readers with content that was easily accessible to them, but I work very hard on the "experience" that is my blog.  Only interacting with my blog from a feed is like watching a football game on TV.  It's nice, but definitely not as exciting as being there in person.  Thus, I've decided to pull my readers in from their armchairs and onto the sidelines.  {Okay, enough football metaphors...geesh, I shouldn't write a post after watching hours of Monday Night Football with my husband}.

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Returning gifts is such a drag that many of us simply toss unwanted presents into a closet with the hopes of re-gifting them in the future.  Sadly, waiting in line for returns and exchanges is a ritual many of us still honor.  A recent Consumer Reports survey revealed one-in-five Americans plan on celebrating this post-holiday tradition.  If you anticipate joining the lengthy queues, keep these seven tips in mind:

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As we plunge into 2012, many of us will be resolving to lose those few extra pounds, save more money, or spend a few more hours with our families and friends.  But there are also some resolutions we can keep to make our lives a little greener.  Each of us, especially in the United States, can make a commitment to reducing our environmental impacts.

"The global community, and particularly people living in industrialized societies, have put unsustainable demands on our planet's limited resources," says Robert Engelman, President of the Worldwatch Institute, a global environmental research organization based on Washington, D.C.  "If we expect to be able to feed, shelter, and provide even basic living conditions to our growing population in years to come, we must act now to change."

The United Nations has designated 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.  Broadening access to sustainable energy is essential to solving many of the world's challenges, including food production, security, and poverty.  "With so many hungry and poor in the world, addressing these issues is critical," says Danielle Nierenberg, director of Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet project.  "Fortunately, the solutions to these problems can come from simple innovations and practices."

Hunger, poverty, and climate change are issues that we can all help address. Here are 12 simple steps to go green in 2012:

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