Tucking in for the winter?  You’re not the only one pulling in your herbs, drawing in your curtains, locking up your home, burying yourself under blankets, hiding inside leg warmers, cozying up with hot toddies and warm soups and generally retreating.

We all have our own hibernation rituals. And here’s a few more ideas for the hibernators in all of us.

1.  HIDE AT HOME & SHOP ONLINE. Of course you might visit the usual suspects this xmas like ebay.com and overstock.com.  or you might want to try these deal-at-home sites:

> woot.com who bills themselves as cool stuff cheap! (woot gets over 2 million hits according to compete.com)

> biglots.com claiming to be the nation’s largest broadline closeout retailer

> midnights steals. love these guys. they only sell 1 item at a time until it’s sold out and then they start all over again with another item.

> graveyard mall says it’s the place where high prices come to die. No idea about the quality but the prices were shockingly low. wow!

2. PRESERVE YOUR FOOD. can it. freeze it. dry it. Here’s a few sites to get you started: The Canning Pantry and Canning USA which shows some good how-to videos.

Finally…if you are  curious about real hibernators…. Animals that hibernate include bats, some species of ground squirrels and other rodents, mouse lemurs, the European Hedgehog and other insectivores, monotremes and marsupials.  Check out more in wikipedia.

3. WARM YOUR WORLD. You’ll be suprised what you can by that’s heated or heatable:

• a warm mouse, keyboard and mousepad
• A warm buddy you can microwave and cuddle with
• heated Jackets from Brookstone
• heated slippers you can microwave
• heated cat bed. Wow…hope it doesn’t get too hot
• heated snow removal mats. Comes up to 12 feet long
• battery powered heated gloves.