Sometimes it seems like everything leads up to Christmas, but you know what’s just a tiny bit past that? 2013. You feeling ready?

Telford Shopping Centre is just about there: it’s just finalized the images for its 2013 Calendar. It asked shoppers to take their best photos for a photography competition, pulling in over 400 entries. With the help of experts from the Shropshire Star, the center narrowed that down to 24 great shots, which were then put up for vote for shoppers and newspaper readers.

You can take a look at the excellent (and varied) collection of images shoppers had to choose from—everything from closeups of flowers to one very impressive dog.

The calendar goes on sale this month, so shoppers will have plenty of time to pick it up before the turning of the year. All proceeds go to support the Telford Street Pastor’s charity, which offers support to local young people.

Mic Mac Mall and Halifax Shopping Centre teamed up earlier this month for a very good cause: feeding the hungry. In support of Feed Nova Scotia, the centers held Canstruction Nova Scotia, an event that’s part fundraiser, part art exhibition and part team-building exercise.

If you’re not familiar with the idea, the goal is to create sculptures entirely out of canned food. It’s an international program, and the winners of the Nova Scotia event will go on to compete globally. The judges are community leaders and industry professionals, and shoppers also get in on the People’s Choice Award. Other award categories include Best Meal, Structural Integrity and Best Use of Labels.

The results from this year’s even were fantastic—you can check out the gallery online. High school groups, businesses, and universities came together in teams to build fantastic pieces of pint-sized architecture, sci-fi staples like R2D2, and even a large-scale chessboard.

Aside from the artistic experience, it’s vital that Canstruction events actually bring together good food for the hungry. Teams are required to build using aluminum or plastic food cans, with complete, intact labels. Junk food is discouraged, pet food is forbidden and alcohol is straight out. There’s no fee for entry, but participating firms must bring their own cans to build with and then to donate.

Shoppers are currently voting online for the winning Canstruction, but in this competition it’s safe to say everyone wins.

Journalism gigs are hard to find—ask any writer. Having a little help along the way can work wonders, and Southgate Mall hopes to give one talented writer the boost he or she needs need to launch a writing career.

Last month, the center reached out to local high school students and matriculants to find skilled, interested young writers. It wasn’t asking much—just 500-1000 words on any of the following topics: My Pride, Respect and Honor, Celebrating Women, and The Faces of Spring.

There were some great tech prizes up for grabs, like Samsung tablets and BlackBerry smartphones. But the real prize is a huge opportunity: a three month practical training course at Caxton South Newspapers, and three months’ intensive theory training with Caxton Editorial Cadet Training. The program has brought several writers into the local news world, and there is every possibility that the winner of this writing competition could be the next.

“We’re really excited to have the opportunity to partner with Caxton and be able to offer bright young individuals with a love of the written word an opportunity to realise their potential in journalism as a career,” said Thulisile Rahlaga, PR and Marketing coordinator at Southgate Mall. “The competition ensures that their talents are not only recognised, but enhanced through hands-on mentoring at one of the country’s most successful newspaper and media corporations.”

All right: who here secretly geeks out around back-to-school over all the great deals on office gadgets and stationary and pens and books (not to mention cute fall fashions…)? There’s a lot of fun to be had with the classics. Billings Bridge had that sort of fun in the weeks leading up to the start of the school term thanks to its Dorm Days promotion.

The center’s marketing team prepared a few representative “dorm” displays with all those great things: outfits, school supplies, a few key pieces of furniture, and fun blackboard designs. Each were themed around a personality type, from the jock to the girly-girl and beyond.

Then the center asked shoppers to climb right in and check out the displays, and recruit a friend for a photo in the process. Those that took pictures with their favorites and posted them to the center’s Facebook page had a chance to win one of four $1000 gift cards for back-to-school shopping sprees.

The competition was pretty fierce, and the center’s marketers had fun with it, joking (nicely) with shoppers about their entries. In the end only four could win, but it’s a sure thing that everyone had a good time in the meantime. To make sure Dorm Days were happy all around, the center sent out 5 Dorm Dollars to each and every one of its newsletter subscribers. If all else fails, no one can ever feel bad about a freebie.

If there’s one key to a greener future, it’s creativity. Just the thing The Octagon Shopping Centre is looking to fan in car-savvy youngsters this week. As part of the lead-up to its car dealership weekend, the center has asked all young and creative future inventors to design the car of the future. With flying cars looking more and more retro-futurist every day, the center hopes to see some environmental magic: cars that run purely on the power of the sun, cars that are powered by their very own windmills, and, okay, maybe a few flying cars to boot.

Any forward-thinking designers aged 11 and under can enter their original and imaginative ideas by drawing them and dropping them off in the center’s post box this weekend. While they’re in the center, they can take in some cars of the much nearer future: the Volkswagen Up, and new models of the Citreon DS3, the Hyundai I10, the Ford Fiesta Zetec S and the Kia Cee’d.

Once the judges get a good look at the big ideas, the cleverest inventor will win a huge pack of exciting prizes from participants in the car show, including a Citreon coloring book, a Volkswagen campervan moneybooks and a pile of car-themed books to read.

“I cannot wait to see all the ingenious entries from our young shoppers,” said center manager Peter Hardingham. “The design a car for the future competition is going to be a lot of fun for applicants and judges.”