I just spent $2,200 in the blink of an eye...easiest money I ever spent. Check out our BlogHers Act/Global Giving fundraising widget:

Like nearly every holiday in the United States, Mother's Day seems to be as much about getting people to indulge in commercialism (Buy Mom this! Buy Mom that!) as it is about honoring your mother. While I am very happy to give my mom and mother-in-law cards telling them how awesome they are and give them a small token of my appreciation, I also like to celebrate all the mothers who have birthed social progress and given me the gift of more human rights. Make no mistake about it: many of the bravest, loudest, pushiest social reformers were moms. They thought about their lives and their children's futures, and they knew that to give their kids the best chances for success, barriers had to be broken.

Today many American Moms will be lavished with homemade noodle art, fingerpaintings and clay-pots with a plant we hope not to kill before the 4th of July. Some are served breakfast in bed, which may or may not actually resemble food. There are some Moms who will choose to sleep in and spend the day pampering themselves on this, the Day that Celebrates Mothers. Others will choose- or be chosen to- spend the day with their children doing whatever activities her children have chosen for the day. There is no right or wrong way to celebrate Mother's Day. To every woman out there who is blissfully celebrating Motherhood, I raise my morning coffee cup (made by my son) to you and salute you. You have one of the hardest jobs in the world. And without monetary compensation. (But if you could get paid, what would you earn? Here is a fun Mom's Salary Wizard that will help you figure it out right down to what you would earn locally. It was fun. But I still don't see anyone cutting me a check.)

My beat here at BlogHer usually covers two very different topics: Reality TV and BlogHer Conferences. So imagine my writer's block when I was asked if I would post my perspectives on Mother's Day...as a woman who is childless by choice. Let's just say I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, you know? But I was pushed into thinking about it a couple of weeks ago, and that's the story I will tell.

After reading Denise's BlogHer post last week that the gift of maternal health is the perfect Mother's Day gift, I thought "this really is perfect!" I blogged it and suggested that not only is it a great cause, but it is also a great consumerism/stuff-free gift, something that I feel, in our consumerism-driven society, is so important, but so ofte

Okay, so Moms are the real stars on Mother's Day but a close second? That would be the coffee cakes that take center stage on the tables of spring celebrations, whether a brunch, a family dinner, a late-day barbecue. I've collected some stellar coffee cake recipes from my fellow food bloggers. As good as these coffee cake recipes all look, well, look out, Mom, you've got some competition.