The best thing in my humble opinion is a big woodstove. Electricity is important, but there is nothing more satisfying than putting those big tall fir trees into the big black box and enjoying all that warmth!
After one of them fell on our neighbors house I cut down over a dozen 100 foot tall fir trees on our property with a little help from a couple of friends last year. We have two wood stoves and a wood burning fireplace in our house. We burned a lot of branches mostly outside, but all of the logs were cut up into lumber which currently is worth a small fortune and I prefer to just use the natural gas furnace. I got enough exercise cutting down the trees and dragging them up the hill.