In an effort to cheer myself through the long hard months of winter monotony, I find my self singing from the ‘Sound of Music’ – ‘These are a few of my favorite things.’

As a woman, I tend to have a different style, different interests and different motivations than the typical Wall Street investor.  These personality differences – caution, seeking to understand the business and asking questions – are particularly great strengths when investing for the long term at least in my opinion.

With that, here are a few of my favorite stocks and why they are my favorites.

Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW)

I usually do not pick stocks that have anything to do with technology, as they are far too volatile.  If Wall Street really likes them, they shoot up in price quickly but when they fall from favor they also drop far too rapidly.  Fortunately, Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) is a bit off the beaten track for Wall Street.  For those of you who do not cook, they make glassware.  I remember my mother coveting a nice all-purpose glass bowl from Corning to cook with, but now they make TV screens, laptop screens and touch screens for mobile devices.  They also have four other divisions, which have products in optical communication, life sciences and more.

The current problem with Corning is that television and laptop sales have dropped and other sales have not compensated for this deficiency.  I believe this is a short-term problem that will resolve itself through Corning’s new products (like Gorilla Glass) and continuing research and product improvement.

The current price is a nice $12.31 – and that combined with a P/E of 9.7 - makes it easy to stock up.  The net margin is an attractive 35% with very little debt on their balance sheet.  The stock also has a dividend of almost 3%.

GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (NYSE:GSK)

I have previously been a pharmacist, so I guess I will always have a soft spot in my heart for healthcare stocks.  Demographics also make healthcare an attractive investment over the next 20 years or so.  The baby boomers are aging and living longer than any other generation.  This means lots of age related illness and obesity related illness.  Diabetes and cardiovascular disease are hot topics at any medical conference and Glaxosmithkline is working feverishly to develop its pipeline of products to answer this unmet need.  They also have biopharmaceuticals and vaccines in the works, which are less susceptible to generic replacement after a patent expires and are increasingly, diversified worldwide.

The stock price is $44.75 with a reasonable P/E of 14.  I am not as comfortable with the debt level as I am with that of Corning, but they have accumulated it by settling lawsuits and restructuring which Glaxo defends by saying they have taken measures to avoid these situations in the future..  The net margin is also a healthy 18% with a tasty dividend of 5%.