Valentines Day is coming. Do you know what your sweetheart wants? Chocolates, flowers, dinner out, heartfelt wishes, your head on a plate?

Why do people stick with the old, standard stuff so lacking in impulse, creativity and originality. This Valentines Day really sweep him or her off their feet. Do something they'd never be expecting in a million years.

Get out there and be active. Go swimming at the public pool, go horseback riding at a local stable, go ice skating, go hiking, go and do something together that doesn't involve eating and sitting.

If you think about it, aren't the days (nights) when you are really out there doing something more fun, more romantic and memorable than the days you sat and ate? Anyone can sit down, push food around and then get back in the car to go home. How many people will be dancing, jogging, playing soccer, nature walking, etc. Not enough.

Need ideas? Check your local newspaper. Not the one that comes out daily with all the news from the nearest cosmopolitan area. No, get the local rag, the one you check for occasional garage sales and store flyers. In there you will find local events, pick one, pick two even.

Have fun and Happy Valentines Day.

Getting tired of winter? Then haul out some Spring!

Rake in those seed catalogues. Start your Spring cleaning. Get into craftiness. Find new unique ways to reduce, reuse and recycle and be generally thrifty.

Many companies will send you free seed catalogues. You can look for your favourite flowers, herbs, vegetables online and find someone shipping seeds. You may have to pay for a catalogue but most of the time that's just a way to coax customers to order. If you make an order you get your catalogue money back. Just imagine, you could have sunflowers in your mailbox!

But, why be satisfied with pictures? Here and likely wherever you are, there are tulips, daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, miniature roses, cyclamens and so on available in a grocery store near you. I've already bought one white cyclamen and 2 pale roses. One is cream coloured and the other blushing pink. Very pretty sitting all together on the kitchen table. Usually I would have bought a hyacinth, but the last few years those just seem to look sadder and sadder. The blooms are so low on the stem they hardly have room to bloom at all. So, I've gone to roses instead. They can also be planted outside in the Spring. I have a few from last year. I'm eager to see how they will do in their first Spring as an outdoor plant.

Spring cleaning. Not my favourite thing. But, it does make you feel better to get rid of the clutter. It's so easy to build up piles of stuff over Winter. But, don't sit back and settle with stuff around all around you, packed in every available space and under that table you hardly ever use. Instead, pack it all into boxes, recycle the papers, ship off whatever is usable to GoodWill and toss the rest. Think how much better you will feel to have all that clutter out of your life. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm a huge clutter bug myself. But, I know how much lighter I feel when I do manage to get rid of some excess stuff.

It's a good rule of thumb to look at how often you have used something in the past month. Don't think "I might need that someday..." That's just a way of hanging on to everything. Have you really used it? If not, why give it space? If it's not paying rent, just collecting dust, toss it.

Do you feel Springy already? Well, get working on it! Personally, I feel warmer already. Of course, it could be that the heater is finally kicking in.

Happy Groundhog Day!