It’s December 6. You’re in a rut. You stuffed yourself with turkey two weeks ago and have been counting down the days all year until Christmas.  The spirit of the holidays is buzzing through the air, but you just can’t feel it in your bones. You’re feeling more like the Grinch than a jolly Christmas elf.  Time is running out.  Here are five simple sure-fire ways to get visions of sugarplums dancing in your head in no time.

1. Change your phone wallpaper.

You use your mobile phone all day, so a little holiday reminder every time you unlock it is like transmitting subliminal Christmas messages into your brain.  Use a festive photo or a wallpaper you find online. Better yet, why don’t you Christmasfy yourself and use that. Bonus points for changing your ringtone to “Deck the Halls” or “Jingle Bells.” Super extra bonus points for changing your ringtone to the lesser-known classics, “Mele Kalikimaka” or Love, Actually’s “Christmas is All Around.”

2.  Get a tree. Get a pine candle. Get some tree branches.

Generally speaking, you need *the* scent. Pine, cinnamon, gingerbread, mistletoe; It really doesn’t matter. If you’re being frugal (and who isn’t these days?), go down to the hardware store and pick up some of the scrap branches that tree-cutters leave on the floor and deck your halls with them. Grab some of the sawed-off stumps from the tree lot and throw them in a pot of simmering water on your stove. Glade has a relatively cheap holiday candle collection (forget the expensive Yankee variety) if the thought of bringing nature into your home freaks you out. Nothing says holiday spirit like aromas wafting through the air.

3.  Crank up the Christmas music. All the time.

For the next 19 days, I command you to put all other playlists aside and commit fully to non-stop holiday tunes.  It’s December, for goodness sake, and if you are reading this then you are already desperate.  You better watch out. You better not cry. You better tickle your ears with a little “Holly Jolly Christmas” because Santa Claus is coming to town, ya know. Slacker Radio has 11, yes 11, holiday stations of varying genres to choose from (Is there anything more awesome than a ‘Dysfunctional Holiday’ station? I think not). My tweeps helped compile this playlist of their favorite holiday tunes on Grooveshark which is definitely worth a listen. Or twelve. One for every day of Christmas.

4. Go to the mall.

The perfect solution for those who are too lazy to decorate their own place, a visit to the mall is an instant dose of cheer. Even if you have to fight a 60-year-old lady for a parking spot, navigate through stroller after stroller and argue with the teenage cashier at the Gap to get the extra 20% off from the coupon you found on the floor of the food court, it will be worth it. The mall is where all of the elements come together. Gifts, lights, sounds, smells, music and, of course, Santa Claus himself. You’re in the Big Man’s territory now. He’s got his eye on you.

Aventura Mall (photo courtesy of @Ines)

5. Get out the Christmas DVDs.

This should go without saying.  Instead of going out with friends to the bar in the cold and blowing cash you should be spending on gifts anyway, you need Holiday Movie Night. Every night. Everyone has their favorites.  Whether you prefer the classics like White Christmas or the raunchy contemporaries like Bad Santa, the spirit-enabling capabilities are strong with movies. Here is my list of the lists of the best Christmas movies. Time to load up your Netflix queue!

Chicago Tribune – Top 25 Christmas Movies

Rotten Tomatoes – Guide to the Best Christmas Movies

Moviefone – Best Holiday Movies

KCPNews – Movies to Get You in the Spirit

Huffington Post – Funniest Christmas movies of all time

Two of my personal favorites:

Love, Actually

Bad Santa (NSFW)

For our non-Christmas-celebrating-friends, I hope you can offer suggestions on surviving the Christmas season and getting into the spirit of your own holidays!

Just a quick note to share this article from New Times Broward-Palm Beach about my stomach-testing experience on a pizza crawl with one of my favorite buddies, who also happens to be THE pizza celebrity of South Florida.

I took a mini pizza tour with John Linn, who wrote the article, and Craig Lapp (his alias) of WorstPizza.com.

I’d go into more detail but Linn summed it up better than I ever could:

Mallory’s Hawaiian was completely off-base, with huge chunks of pineapple and undercooked, cheap-tasting ham. (The later surprised me because I had previously enjoyed La Fontana’s salumi, including speck, a smoked, cured Italian ham.)  …read the rest

Had a blast, stuffed myself silly, got to eat a pizza that isn’t on the restaurant’s menu and only made for Lapp and got a mention in the article. What can I say. It’s pays to be pizza expert!

After a long and patient wait spent folding clothes at Banana Republic, ladies and gentlemen, I have landed a job. Actually, I’ve been at said job for about a month now and every week gets more and more exciting and challenging. You know all the stories and photos and videos that are posted on your favorite newspaper’s Web site? Well there isn’t some robot there posting all that content.  Computers aren’t doing it either. Producers who monitor, edit and select content make sure things on those Web sites are fresh and newsworthy. Luckily, in the state of this economy and the state of the industry of journalism as a whole I can be proud, thankful and relieved to call myself an online producer at the Miami Herald. Gotta give mad props to my classmate and good buddy Adrian Ruhi who also works there who recruited me for the spot.

I’ve learned a ton so far working with the McClatchy content management system and tweaking my news judgement, which is what I’m trying my best to work hardest on. My boss, Shelley Acoca, has been coaching me to put myself in people’s shoes. “What are people thinking and talking about today?” That has been helpful so far. I even polled some peeps on Twitter to see if they thought news judgement was learned or innate. Got some confidence-boosting answers that mine could improve over time if I work at it.  I think I just need to find my niche. Having control over something so public and wide-read is a little jarring at first, but networking with other online producers on Twitter and getting to know everyone in the newsroom is making me more comfortable.

So that’s the 4-1-1. It’s likely that if you’re reading this you found it via Twitter, but if you didn’t, you’re much more likely to keep track of my happenings there (@malcolli).

We’re also working to tweet more from our Miami Herald twitter account (@miamiherald) so follow us to stay on top of your South Florida local news.

I had a few proud motherly moments during my trip to New York City this weekend.  Not that I’m in any way as cool as Mary’s own mom, but that we’d grown so close that it felt like my own little chickadee was spreading her wings, and that made me happy.

Mary is one of my closest friends and my roommate in college.  We were randomly assigned to the same dorm room for our freshman fall semester at UF and I couldn’t have been luckier to get such an awesome roommate. We lived together for three years in college and now she has thrown caution to the wind and moved to New York City to live out her big-city dreams, and her friends get to come spend a wistful weekend in the city with a free place to stay.

We ate some delectable food. In the East Village we had greasy but authentic savory Venezuelan arepas at Caracas, which tasted even better with a brown-bagged Corona to wash it down.  The place sat about six people total so we munched our dinner in the park.  The next day and right around the corner Colonel Sanders was put to shame by the fried chicken I had at The Pink Tea Cup. Soul food at its finest. What I was most looking forward to as far as pleasing my palate was concerned were the famous cupcakes of Magnolia Bakery.  They were good but a little dense and crumbly for my liking.  It’s hard to knock a bakery that cranks out fresh cupcakes until 12:30 at night.

Other than that we mostly just moseyed around, shopped and people-watched. The feelings of independence I gathered from living out Mary’s life in the city with her, even if it was only for three days, was just the motivation I needed and wanted to get out of my short trip.

It’s been a busy day in the Colliflower/Ortiz family today.  Aside from being a fairly political family and being anxious about the long-anticipated presidential election today, we were awoken around 6 a.m. this morning by my sister Courtney dropping off my nephew Owen so that her and her husband could head to the hospital.  Stella Noelle wanted in on all of the political excitement, and she showed herself to the world at 11:13 a.m. with a swift and easy delivery.  She’s a gorgeous little election day baby.  Needless to say the day has been rather hectic, only to continue with non-stop news watching for the remainder of the evening.

I’ve been debating about the “obligatory election post” and whether or not to jump on the band wagon, but I have still not yet decided.  I think I’ll be more swayed to write if this election goes a particular way. Here’s to HOPE.