Happy New Year! We're looking forward to a new and prosperous year. The greatest treasure we can have is peace in our heart. Many are feeling the stress of the sluggish economy. As I pray and read the scriptures, I am continually reminded that if we work on our relationship with God and our families, this will be the most miraculous and joyous time of our lives.

I want to thank all of you who took the time to post your creative provident living ideas on the Website. The readers who come to the website will benefit from your great ideas.

With the snow on the ground, are you thinking about planting your garden? Now is the time to start thinking about what seeds you want to plant.

For those of you who live in colder climates we'll be showing you how to grow your onions, tomatoes, and peppers from seed. You'll need to start them inside. Plant your onion seeds at the end of January and your tomatoes and green peppers in February. This month we'll be writing some pages on starting your vegetable seedlings indoors.

Your carrots and onions are cold hardy and can be planted early in the spring, so get your seeds ordered. You'll also want to check out the benefits of onions. They have many healing properties.

I know it hardly seems like canning season and thoughts of canning are far from most of our minds. Look over the canning pages. What do you want to learn to can? How much? Then plan your garden accordingly. I like to try a couple new things each year.

If you don't already have the basic canning equipment and supplies, make room in your budget to get a few essential supplies this year. I'll be adding more pages to the home canning section this winter so that it's ready for you next summer. I didn't have time to get all the writing done while I was in the middle of canning season. The how to make grape juice, preserving green tomatoes, and growing and storing onions pages are done.

We're having a special this month on The Right C. This high quality vitamin C will help you stay healthy by protecting the cell walls in your body. By using a combination of all the natural remedies our family has been blessed to stay very healthy this winter - so far so good. Keeping your body strong is a lot easier than recovering from an illness.

As part of maintaining good health, it is important to have a balance of the 78 trace minerals that our bodies need to function properly. We've written a page telling you all about these 100% organic minerals.

Melonie has written the Solar Cooking page and will soon have some solar cooking recipes for you to try. You can pasteurize your water, cook, and refrigerate your food all in the same solar cookit.

Melonie has also written the alternative refrigeration page. It is kind of fun learning how to create a refrigeration unit that doesn't require electricity.

For those of you interested in saving a little money on cleaning supplies and laundry detergent, make sure you check out our homemade laundry detergent and homemade cleaning supplies. You can also store some simple supplies so that you can stay clean even during a crisis.

I saw the funniest YouTube video on the overstretching hand of the government - "The Government Can". I watched the video about 20 times and laughed and smiled. Tim Hawkins comically portrays a very true and awful situation in which we find ourselves. I asked Tim if we could put the video on our Benefits of Capitalism page. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Provident Living Today will be participating in a preparedness seminar this month in the Salt Lake City area. It will be the third weekend of January. Check the website in another week or two for details on location and time. Hope to see you there.

Let your friends and family know about Provident-Living-Today.com and help encourage them to live providently today and prepare for future.

Until Next Month,

Jennifer

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