[chrispenycate]

Actually, the combination of "each star with it's own planets" and "planets orbiting both of the stars" is quite likely. Take our solar system, and beef up Jupiter till it undergoes fusion. Whoomph; all of Jupiter's satelites become planets, quite possibly habitable. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are planets of Sol, our present sun. And Saturn and the outer planets all orbit the centre of gravity of the system, somewhere between Sol and Jupiter (closer to Sol, since we didn't add enough mass to Jupiter to rival it, but probably not within Sol)
The Earth gets extra energy when it's between the two stars, so we get a suplementary summer winter cycle going periodically into and out of phase with our present one (so very hot sumers and cold winters in one hemisphere when in phase, and the other when out, and mild everything between) and this would be even more marked on Mars.
The outer planets would get a considerable boost when they were in conjunction with Jupiter.
Using Jupiter as an example this "super seasonal" cycle would be about twelve years.