The Original is the perfect base for all of Mom’s favorite toppings.

Let’s face it: We’re not all great with remembering special dates. Mother’s Day is quickly approaching (ahem, May 12)! If you want to do something special for Mom but forgot to set a reminder in your smart phone, do not despair. We have a slew of great last-minute ideas that are sure to please. Here are our top five favorites:

1. Pizza and a movie: Somehow Mother’s Day got lumped with brunch, but we think moms should be treated to great meals all day. By now, you should know Mom’s favorite movie and pizza toppings, or at least have a general idea. Hint: If you don’t know, Dad does.
2. Create a video in lieu of a card: For the tech savvy, there are lots of easy ways to pull together a sweet video for Mom. Bonus: She’ll be able to save it and watch it whenever she needs a smile.
3. Cook her favorite meal: If you have the chops, a home-cooked meal is an impressive way to show your gratitude. We’ll handle dessert.
4. Flowers, of course: Flowers from the neighborhood farmers market are always a fun way to say “I love you!” But you can go above and beyond by planting her favorite blooms in the yard.
5. Make some memories: Plan a fun hike, take in a film, go for a bike ride. The point is, spending time with Mom is always welcome, especially if it’s spent doing her favorite thing.

The perfect little cup of gelato can be delivered to your doorstep (along with your favorite Pagliacci pizza). Pagliacci is debuting Gelatiamo’s 4-ounce cups of Bacio Gelato for a sweet deal at $2.50 each. Inspired by the sumptuous Baci confection from Italy, Bacio (Băch-ē-ō) Gelato features a smooth chocolate and hazelnut gelato base dotted with Italy’s Piedmont region hazelnuts enveloped in chocolate. At 4 ounces, it’s the perfect individual size, yet big enough to share with your sweetie on Valentine’s Day. Bacio Gelato will be available February 13-18 or while supplies last.

And, even better, you can get Bacio Gelato and your pizza delivered one hour earlier on Valentine’s Day! Sweet! Delivery service begins at 4pm on Thursday, February 14th.

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving, when all through the house,

Every piece of food was for the next day, I felt bad for my spouse.

We both looked longingly at the spread that was there,

But it was all for tomorrow, and otherwise our poor fridge was bare.

I looked at her with a tear in my eye,

And then my brilliant wife exclaimed with a cry.

“Pagliacci!” She said with a triumphant yell.

“They even opened at 4 today! Quick, give me your cell!”

She punched in the number that we both knew by heart,

And we sat back and waited, both feeling quite smart.

And before long, what did my wondering eyes see?

But a Pagliacci delivery driver, smiling at me!

With a cheery hello and a dazzling grin,

We opened the door and let him right in.

We showed him to the dining room and as soon as he was able,

He showed us our pizza, and set our salad on the table.

We’d mentioned the Frequent Pie-er upgrade when to the CSR my wife spoke,

And the driver produced our half price 6-pack of Coke!

“Always dessert!” was our unofficial motto,

So of course we had ordered some pumpkin gelato.

The driver was courteous, prompt and efficient,

In no way at all was his service deficient.

He gave us a wave as he drove away,

“Happy Thanksgiving to all! We hope you have a great day!”

Just a reminder that all of our locations will be closed Thanksgiving Day but we do start delivery at 4pm Thanksgiving Eve.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Whether it’s billed as a Harvest Festival or Halloween, everyone knows that the last week in October is always about 2 things: costumes and more importantly, CANDY. According to the National Confectioners Association, more than 93% of kids go trick or treating each year.  How much candy they ultimately get is a good question…about 90% of parents admit to sneaking treats from their kids’ trick or treat bags! Because Halloween is in the middle of the week this year, some neighborhoods are choosing to celebrate early. Here are a few places that we’ll be getting our sugar fix this Halloween!

Hilloween  – For kids and adults of all ages, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce brings “Hilloween” to Cal Anderson Park on Sunday the 28^th from noon to 6 pm. Featured performers include Sgt. Rigsby and his Amazing Silhouettes, Recess Monkey and YouTube sensation Jenny and her Ukulele.  There will also be carnival games, spooky stories, a costume parade around the park, and trick or treating. Best of all, there will be a pizza party at our Broadway Pizzeria at 4:00pm. Kids in costume with their parents will get a free slice!

The West Seattle Junction will be closing the streets for their Harvest Festival this Sunday as well! Activities include the West Seattle Farmers Market, Harvest Craft activities, a kid’s costume parade and trick or treating! Yes, our West Seattle Delivery Kitchen will be passing out candy!

On Halloween, Bellevue Square will host a variety of events from 5-7pm. Roving clowns (hopefully not of the scary kind!) will be tying balloons, kids can investigate the science of slime and dry ice at the Mad Science Booth and the hardest workin’ band on Halloween, Recess Monkey, will be putting on a performance at Bellevue Square Center Court. And of course, there will be trick or treating! Our Bellevue Square Pizzeria will have plenty of candy for all the little ghosts, goblins, witches, pirates and princesses that come by!

For you folks up on the North End, if you come into our Kenmore Delivery Kitchen wearing a costume from 11-2pm we’ll “TREAT” you to a free slice!

We’ll be starting delivery at 4pm on Halloween and continuing our annual tradition of scaring away vampires by providing garlic as a topping on any whole pie for free!

On the 4th of July we hold it to be self evident that people don’t eat pizza. So we give our staff and our pizza ovens the day off in order to picnic, play and eat lots (and LOTS) of tasty grillables at our annual employee picnic. Chicken, burgers, brats, hot dogs, veggie burgers, sausages…just about anything except pizza! After people had a chance to eat and let things settle, we held our annual Pizzalympics.

Our pizzathletes train rigorously year round following a grueling schedule of tossing pizza dough, folding boxes while blindfolded, and strategizing about how they can score a ringer for the ultimate event at the Pizzalympics, that supreme arbiter of store superiority, the event which the winning store lords over everyone else until the next picnic…The Tug of War.

This year’s parade of pizza prowess was no different. Queen Anne’s Mark Bell became a blur of hands as he took the prize for fastest box folding.  Hugo Uitzel-Tun from Bridle Trails, who placed second in our 2012 March Madness Cook competition, easily took the prize for fastest toss.  Queen Anne’s ribbon count increased to two when Warren Murphy showed that size does indeed matter as he threw out a massive dough for the biggest dough contest. Not all of the challenges were individual events, however.  The punishing test of wits, reflexes and true grit known as the Pizzalympics Relay Race takes a toll every year. Teams work to fold boxes while blindfolded, toss out a dough with 2 people (each using one hand) and deliver it to the finish line after spinning around a baseball bat 10 times. University Pizzeria prevailed. Then one event remained. Would the Queen Anne Pizzeria be a three-ribbon winner? The crowd held its breath as they struggled to find glory. In the end, Kenmore Delivery Kitchen pulled their way to victory. Congratulations to the winners. You can bet that the competition will be just as fierce next year!

Click for bigger images.

The holiday season always brings special joy to movie fans. They eagerly await the slew of new films that are released every December. It seems that this year will be especially good for fans of books made into movies.  The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1, based on the bestselling novel by Stephenie Meyer was released in mid November and had a lock on the #1 spot at the box office until last week.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens on December 21^st.  Directed by David Fincher, this is actually the second time TGWTDT has been made into a movie. The original Millennium series was released in Swedish in 2009.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, based on John Le Carre’s classic Cold War spy novel, opened in limited release last week.  Along with Gary Oldman and Colin Firth, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch, who has to have one of the most fantastic names ever.  He starred in the BBC’s update of Sherlock Holmes last year and is slated to have a role in the upcoming movies based on The Hobbit. TTSS will open in Seattle on December 23rd.

Stephen Spielberg has been a busy man, with 2 movies coming out within a week of each other this month. The Adventures of Tintin is his interpretation of Herges beloved comic about the intrepid reporter and his faithful companion Snowy. War Horse is his adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel of the same name about a boy searching for his horse during the First World War. War Horse will be released on Christmas Day, along with Tom Hank’s newest movie, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, from the novel of the same name by Jonathon Safran Foer.

Besides skiing, I am hard pressed to think of a more old school winter sport than ice-skating.  A study from the University of Oxford theorizes that an early form of ice-skating developed in southern Finland around 4000 years ago. Skates as we know them were invented in the Netherlands in the 13^th or 14^th century. Ice skating rinks are a classic setting for many winter movies and stories. We are lucky to have a few nearby to enjoy during the holiday season. Cal Anderson Park is inaugurating an annual ice rink that will operate from December 6^th through the 24^th.  Seattle Center’s annual Winterfest Ice Rink at the Fisher Pavilion opened November 25^th and will run through January 1^st. Bellevue hosts a tented ice arena as part of their Magic Season winter celebration. There are also indoor rinks in Renton, Shoreline, Lynnwood, and Everett where people may enjoy skating year round. While the image of an idyllic outdoor rink may seem more East Coast than West Coast, we do have a couple of options that are relatively close by. Suncadia Resort has an outdoor rink complete with a communal fire pit and hot chocolate and Grouse Mountain in Vancouver B.C. boasts a massive 8,000-foot outdoor pond and also offers sleigh rides!   See you at the rink!

Hollywood zombies have come a long way from the slow, shambling monsters that were under the control of a voodoo priest in Haiti, where the film portrayals of them were usually set. Notable films of this first era of zombie movies were 1932’s White Zombie and 1943’s I Walked With A Zombie. It wasn’t until George Romero’s seminal film, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead that the “modern” zombie came into being. (Interestingly, the word “zombie” was not even used in the film. He called them “ghouls”.) No longer under the thumb of a voodoo master, this new breed of zombie seemingly came out of nowhere. Romero’s film opened the door to not only a slew of sequels (and imitators) but created a whole new genre of literature ranging from how-to manuals, such as The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, to humor, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, and to literary fiction, such as Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Zone One.

It can’t be denied, that Michael Jackson’s video for Thriller played a large part in bringing zombies to popular culture. Bezombied participants have taken part in “Thriller Dances” in Pioneer Square, Fremont, Westlake Center, and even at weddings!

Although Atlanta boasts of being the setting for the television series The Walking Dead, Seattle is a hot spot for undead activity. ZomBcon is an annual event for zombie enthusiasts every October. In 2009 Seattle set the record for the world’s largest Zombie Walk, with 3,894 participants. This year’s walk in July was estimated at 4,522 “walkers”. Sadly, officials from Guinness were not on hand to certify it as a record.

One last thing…Modern Hollywood zombies are FAST. Like, running at full speed all the time fast. Which, coincidentally, is how fast our pizza makers will be working on Halloween. Contrary to popular belief, Halloween, not the Super Bowl, is our busiest night of the year! If you visit any of our pizzerias on Halloween, you may even see a zombie making your pizza! Happy Halloween!