When the holiday season comes around, I find myself pulling out plates with snowmen and little colored lights, as well as variously shaped cookie cutters and a few other choice holiday pieces. I don't usually intend to let the holiday spirit bleed into my regular cookware collection, however. After all, a spatula is a spatula is a spatula - right? Well, that may be true, but the snowman and snowflake spatulas that Williams-Sonoma is offering this year are pretty tempting. They have nylon heads that are heat resistant to 400°F, stainless steel handles and are dishwasher safe - just like my standard spatulas, but with the added bonus of an adorable design on each. A snowman and snowflake seem like seasonal icons that could be enjoyed all winter, as well as for much of fall and spring, without seeming inappropriate, so it might not be a bad idea to tuck these into someone's stocking this year. I know I wouldn't complain if I saw one.

Gingerbread houses are fun to make but because they require very hard, sturdy cookies that will hold up to several weeks of display, they are not necessarily the dough used to make them will probably not produce the tastiest holiday cookies that you'll have. If you bake smaller gingerbread cookies, you can get a better consistency and flavor, but you have to give up on the idea of having a three-dimensional cookie showpiece. Unless you use the holiday storybook cookie cutters from Williams-Sonoma, of course. These cookie cutters give you the chance to play with your food without having to worry about finding a recipe will produce a sturdy enough cookie to support the weight of a whole house. They have notches on the pieces so that after they are baked, the cookies can be fit together to form three-dimensional holiday shapes. The 8-piece set allows you to create a perfectly seasonal scene on a small, managable scale and the cookies can still be stored in an airtight container if you want to keep them fresh.

The fact that you can buy artisan panini breads - good for making any number of sandwiches - seems a bit odd. After all, the image that one usually associated with the hand-crafted and carefully baked artisan breads is of a small, local baker dedicated to high quality and not some online store. In this case, the store in question is Williams-Sonoma and they're offering sandwich panini rolls from New York's Balthazar Bakery. The breads include (3)ciabatta, (3) potato and caramelized onion rolls, (3)multigrain baps and (4)olive rolls, for a total of 13.

Not all single-purpose kitchen gadgets are useless, but slicers are getting out of control. There are slicers for avocados, tomatoes, eggs, butter and mozzarella, just to name a few from Williams-Sonoma. While the avocado slicer has a slightly different look, the other four have the exact same design in slightly different shapes. And you don't need any of them. All of those foods are exceptionally easy to slice through with a sharp knife and the scooping function of the avocado slicer can be replicated with a spoon.

If none of your knives can handle tasks like slicing tomatoes or hard-boiled eggs, you don't need a gadget. You need a new knife. Trust me - you'll get a lot more use out of it.

The way that Williams-Sonoma includes a picture of the finished cake with most of their bakeware is a nice touch, especially for the shaped pans. Seeing a lovely, frosted treat is obviously more appealing than simply looking at a piece of metal. For instance, I was not particularly impressed when I saw this Ice Cream Cone Cupcake Pan, a Williams-Sonoma exclusive, on its own, but once I saw the finished cakes in their catalogue, I was sold. They look fantastic, and are a great twist on a regular cupcake, reminding me of a different kind of cupcake cone without the crunchy shell. I think it's particularly impressive that they were able to proportion the cakes so they can stand on their own. The pan is a summer special, so check them out now, if you're interested.

I've completely given up on the commercial diet ice cream sandwiches because I've come across the cutest way to make ice cream sandwiches at home. Williams-Sonoma has ice cream sandiwch molds in the shape of a star, a pig, and cow, available as a set of three for $14. You use soft cookies, cake, heck, even a chewy brownie to for the bottom and top, and layer ice cream or frozen yogurt in the middle.

So maybe they'll never be homemade "diet" ice cream sandwiches if you use a brownie and deliciously creamy ice cream, but at least they're small. And though the catalog suggests you get your kids to make them, make them for yourself and burn the calories while doing it.

If you read Jeffrey Steingarten's It must have been something I ate, you'll not only know that the best way to make a pizza is in a very, very hot wood-burning (or coal-burning) oven, but that it is likely to be nearly impossible to find one to use, let alone one to use on a regular basis. Jeffrey spent months trying to achieve the perfect pizza, getting grills up to temperatures in excess of 650F - at which point he decided that, with the addition of wood chips and extra coals, he could make a reasonably good pizza.

Instead of going to all that trouble, you can use VillaWare's Grill-Top Pizza Stone. It was created to take advantage of the high heat a gas grill can generate to produce a great crust. The stone itself is set on a rack above the grates of the grill, because it gets better heat exposure there. Personally, I'm a fan of grilled pizza, but this sounds like a fantastic idea. Maybe your grill won't get up as high as Jeffrey's modified one, but this sounds (to put it mildly) significantly safer. I know Mother's Day isn't past us (in the US) yet, but I think I'm getting a good idea of a Father's Day gift already....

I'm not a fan of kitchen "gadgets" beyond a very good knife and maybe a melon baller when necessary (but then, when is a melon baller every necessary?), but this avocado slicer from Williams-Sonoma really piques my interest.

I always just do the old wrenching-out of the pit, making longitudinal slices, then scooping out the flesh with a large spoon, but this might be helpful for those of us who want to make pretty, presentable uniform slices or dices of avocado. The tool also pits the avocado, but I can't tell how it does it from the picture.

It's $15.