Jingle Hell

Imagine this: You take two weeks off during the holidays, all your work gets done, and you have unlimited time to spend with family and friends. Yeah, right. While other people enjoy paid vacation time to cook that Thanksgiving turkey, you're meeting client deadlines, shipping products, holding conference calls, helping with children's holiday pageants, preparing the house for holiday parties, and (the ever famous) planning how and when to see your family. It's enough to make a homebased entrepreneur feel a little . . . well . . . stressed.

"I tend to get stressed out over the holidays," says Mia Cronan, whose Greensburg, Pennsylvania-based EMC Media publishes the e-zine Main Street Mom

mainstreetmom.com). "I feel tremendous pressure, and I fall short. Before I know it, the holidays are over, I'm wiped out, and things didn't go the way I 'pictured.' "