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Minute Healthy habits Want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight? Practicing portion control will ensure you don’t super-size your servings and help you control the amount of food you eat. — Columbus Regional Hospital
Recommended reading “Indiana Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities and Other Offbeat Stuff,” by Dick Wolfsie. $15.95. 321 pages. Laugh your way through the Hoosier state with this compendium of Indiana’s strangest sights and people. Visit the shoe tree in Milltown and spend Halloween in Ellettsville as Jim Bristoe launches pumpkins more than a mile and shoots frozen ones through car doors. Go to Brownsburg and see Paul Stender’s jetpropelled outhouse roar by at 72 mph; visit
Indiana’s highest point in Bethel, a whopping 1,257 feet above sea level; go to Pinch, Indiana’s smallest town with a population of 3; see the basketball court in West College Corner that is half in Indiana and half in Ohio. You get the idea; throw this book in your glove compartment and take a road trip to an Indiana seldom seen. — Viewpoint Books
Landscape logic Many shrubs can benefit from occasional or even routine pruning to remove damaged stems, keep the plant in size and rejuvenate for greater flower production or to maintain a formal shape. But there are a few species that should routinely be cut to the ground, at least in our Midwestern climate.
Some shrubs will actually die back to the ground most winters and then send up new twigs the following spring, effectively performing as if they were herbaceous perennials. With other species, the stems may not actually die back completely, but their wood becomes weak and spindly if it does survive. — Extension educator Mike Ferree
Beauty bits Want to look hot for those holiday parties? Two looks are classic and popular right now: the smoky, shimmery eye paired with light lips and the deep red lips balanced with a light eye. Shimmer is in this year, as it was last year, and it’s the perfect festive look as long as you Page 48
don’t overload. If you go for bold lips, pick a color that fits your skin tone and go neutral and natural with the rest of your makeup to avoid looking like a clown. — beauty.about.com
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