modelman, first of all congrats to your PPL
The obvious answer is - fly as much as you can. Now, I (and most here) know it ain't that easy, especially in winter. What I do (after a few hundred hours in various a/c) is to fly X-Plane if I haven't flown in, say, one month. Before going up again, I fly 5-10 patterns, a x-country, an instrument approach, a holding pattern, a SID, you name it. Get's the juices going again. No substitute for the real thing, but you do maintain the 'feeling' of looking at an instrument panel, interpreting what you see, and controlling an a/c.