Set Up an Online Family Holiday Headquarters

Keeping all your extended family and friends up to date on holiday details -- party arrangements, gift lists, travel plans, menus, your child's needs and your level of stress -- can seem like a full-time job. If constant phone calls and e-mails and IMs and visits are taking too much of your time and attention, consider setting up an electronic base on the Web to gather all that information in a place where everyone can get to it, add to it, comment on it, and leave you in peace. One way to do this is to set up a weblog through a free service like Blogger, which offers easy set-up, entries that can be typed in without special coding, the ability to let others post to the blog or make comments on the entries, and a way to keep it out of public listings. You can post photos, links to gift ideas or recipes, long descriptions of events or short details for discussion. Send the link to anybody who'll have interest in your goings-on, update the blog whenever you have a moment (in the middle of the night, if that's your only free time), and enjoy using technology to save you time, energy, and phone time with talkative relatives.