Winter

• Go room-by-room at night to make sure you have enough illumination, because it gets dark in the winter earlier. You should have a variety of lights for mood as well as reading and working.
• Set aside a place in your home to write letters - not e-mails but the old-fashioned hand-written, send via postal mail type.
• No matter how much you love your home, traveling is always fun, educational and broadening. Keep your favorite travel magazines for future trips, along with pamphlets about places, in a convenient spot for research and planning.
• Place a phone pad and pen or pencil by each phone in the house so all messages are recorded. Consider putting a phone in your living room in a discreet place.

Click through for more tips!

t's like a black hole that occasionally swallows me up, from out of nowhere. I can't work, I can't sleep--and yet I can't stay awake--I can't take care of myself, and all the color and hope drains from the world.

"It" is depression, and for me it's a chronic condition that cost me jobs and relationships before I finally found effective help. For me that help was pharmaceutical, but I use several natural methods as well to keep the black hole at bay.

I'm not alone. Depression affects millions of people worldwide and can range from being fairly mild to completely devastating. It's estimated that a quarter of all American women will suffer from clinical depression at some point in their lives, and that women are twice as likely to suffer from it as men. Only 30 percent of depressed people get any form of treatment at all, which is a big mistake. Without treatment, the frequency and severity of symptoms tend to increase over the years--just like other diseases. Take depression seriously. It can be just as deadly as cancer, especially in the elderly.

f you live in regions where it becomes extremely cool in the winter, you can feel the changes in the air and sense what is about to come. Winter weather is just around the corner and it is time to prepare your home for the cold weather. For a frugal person, the important thing is figuring out how to prepare your home for the cold season and keep the most money in your pocket.

Anyone can turn the thermostat up, but it is the frugally zealous who figure out a way to keep their home as warm as possible without putting a huge dent in the bank. Use these conventional (and unconventional) tips to prepare your home for winter.

y observing the changing of the seasons, Mother Earth shows us how to prepare for winter in much the same manner as all her other residents. From Spring's first signs of life our hopes and dreams grow. As Fall approaches we put away the joyful songs of Summer and begin to regress inward along with our other Earth bound companions.

Lifestyles and diet have a direct impact on our health and that of our future generations. We need to be involved and more aware of the world around us. Take away the sciences and assembly lines and our best teachers are truly the cycles of nature. Big business has you skeptical of natural products because they need you. You on the other hand merely need more education to make better choices. I hope here to give you one more view of the partnership we share with this place we call Earth.

e all dread those telltale symptoms that tell us our body is under attack from unseen invaders. The fever, the coughing and a nose that resembles Niagara Falls in its relentless running, are all signs that you probably have been caught by the flu.

How do you identify the flu? Is there really anything we can do to make us feel better and lessen the time we spend being miserable? Read on.

ou may have gone out and bought a poinsettia plant or two to decorate with for the holiday season. But now that the holiday is over, what can you do with it? Throwing it away seems so profligate, somehow, but how to keep it around?

Fortunately, it's relatively easy and quite rewarding. It also might make a neat science project for an older child. Plus, you can save tens of dollars every year, and have the satisfaction of saying, "Oh, no, that's the same plant again, sure." Friends and family will think you're a gardening genius.

s the current growing season winds down, it's time to start planning next year's garden. Let's look through some books I recommend both for planning and daydreaming through the cold weather doldrums.

s I was cleaning up after dinner a few years ago, my 4-year-old daughter Josie kissed me goodnight and turned to run upstairs so her dad could put her to bed. "Oh, and Mom? Can we have that beautiful porridge again for breakfast tomorrow?" And off she went.

You may be saying to yourself, "Beautiful? Blech!" I would bet that the mush of your youth was some gluey mess that stuck to your spoon as well as your ribs. It doesn't have to be that way. Your family can love a good stirabout as much as mine does, though I can't say that your kids will eat three bowls at a go like Josie does when she's in the middle of a growth spurt.

Beans didn't work out for the giant, but they did Jack a world of good

ithout beans where would Jack be? Though there are no magic beans outside of fairytales, they can seem to magically stretch your food dollars.

"Oh, beans," you may say. "They take too long to cook, and then...well...YOU know. Plus they're boring. How many times can you eat chili?"

Balderdash. Beans take hardly any time to cook if you know a couple of tricks (and if you don't use beans that have sat on your shelf for the last five years). There are hundreds if not thousands of things you can do with them. They're so versatile you can make everything from appetizers to dessert with them--yes, dessert! But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
They're really, really good for you--low in fat, high in protein and fiber, lots of vitamins and minerals. A cheaper protein source cannot be found, easy to store, easy to cook, and popular in just about every cuisine in the world. Seneca Indians believed the bean to be a special gift from the creator. Barbara says, "I tend to agree with them."

he first time I heard of planting pansy seedlings in the fall, to winter over, I thought, "Say what?! How can they possibly withstand the cold?" After all, pansies have such delicate petals. Surely the frost would do them in?

Well, yes, and no. While frost may indeed wither individual blossoms, the amazing thing about pansies is, the hardy plants keep on making buds.