Savvy shopper Christine Mitchell is here to save your procrastinating ass

We're the kind of people you see sprinting frantically around the mall on Christmas Eve, mainlining food-court coffee with sweat streaming down our red faces as we elbow other hapless procrastinators out of our way because WE SAW THAT SCARF FIRST AIGHT? But we're not proud of it.

HOLLY FAIR | Saturday + Sunday, December 11 + 12 | 9am-9pm | 44 and 52 Brattle Street, Cambridge | http://www.ccae.org/hollyfair

For the 57th year in a row, over 70 vendors will transform Harvard Square into holiday craft central. "It's definitely an institution in Cambridge," says Jerome Berkeley. Berkeley, who works for sponsor Cambridge College of Adult Education, gets to helm the vendor selection jury.

More craft fairs, you ask? Yes, we say!

CULTURAL SURVIVAL BAZAAR | http://www.culturalsurvival.org/bazaar

Saturday + Sunday, December 11 + 12 | 10am-6pm | Harvard University Center for Government and International Students, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge

Friday-Sunday, December 17-19 | 10am-9pm Fri-Sat; 11am-6pm Sun | The Shops At Prudential Center, Belvidere Arcade, 800 Boylston St Boston

A LOT of women love to shop, and buy things -- expensive things. But really it's not our fault! It's completely natural I swear. Of course like our bad mood swings, and our thirst for chocolate and cheese (not together), it's all linked to our monthly cycle. And now we can all blame a trip down Newbury Street, maxed credit cards in hand, on our bodies. At least that's what a new study coming out in Britain is saying anyway.