Saving heirloom seeds

The beauty of heirloom seeds is that you can save them yourself and have the same crop that you know and love the following year. With hybrid seeds that is not the case. Some of the seeds won't even sprout because they have been genetically modified not to, and some will but you have no guarantee that you will get the same plant you had last year. Saving your own seeds also saves you money. Seeds are getting more and more expensive. I remember getting seeds for a quarter, then a dollar and now if you do a search for organic heirloom seeds you will pay upwards of 4 dollars for a packet of 25 seeds!
Now there are a few rules to saving seeds. More information can be found at my favorite seed saving site: www.seedsavers.org. I also highly recommend the book "Seed to Seed" by Suzanne Ashworth to help get you started.
Following a few rules such as not planting two kinds of plants that will cross-pollinate and letting the plant reach full maturity for the best seeds are to me two of the hardest things to do but in general saving seeds is easy. A bowl to collect seeds, a bag to put them in, and a dark, cool place to store them is all you need. Here are a few seeds that I have collected from my garden so far this fall:

Red leaf lettuce. The seeds are just underneath the fluffy ball.

slyvetta arugula. The tiny seeds are found in the slender brown pod.

Jolly Jester Marigolds. Let the flower die and dry out and the seeds are inside.
I have also saved okra, pumpkin, tomato, purple tomatillo, pepper and zinna seeds.