A chance to give back a little

This  past weekend geocachers all around the world joined forces with other community groups to do a spring cleaning. For us it is called CITO and stands for Cache In Trash Out. It is an ideal that we are supposed to follow where we go into the woods looking for geocaches and bring out any garbage that we find to help clean up the areas where we play and leave our surroundings better than we found them.

Icon given to geocachers who participate in a CITO

CITO events are held the weekend after Earth Day and are organized by any geocacher who is interested in hosting an event to clean their area. These events make a huge difference in the areas where they are held. Geocachers who participate in a CITO event earn an icon on their gocaching page to show that they have attended an event that year.




We were lucky to have three events close to us this year and we headed Saturday morning bright and early and attended a highway cleanup in St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia with about 30 other cachers. We collected about 60 large garbage bags full of trash from the side of the highway through a mostly residential area. A real highlight was when one homeowner came out yelling her thanks and telling us that we were making her neighborhood look much better.

One load of trash picked up in Tantallon

Cachers and their cleaned area

One of the most unusual finds

Saturday afternoon most of the same people headed to Tantallon, Nova Scotia and there we teamed up with the local ATV association to clean a section of trail that was recently purchased by teh provincial government and opened for use by all Nova Scotians. The ATV members ferried the geocachers along the trail and picked up the full garbage bags to transport to the trailhead area. It was a great learning experience for all attendees as we learned how the ATV association maintains and polices the trails and they learned what geocaching is all about.
I don't think any of us had an inkling of how much trash was hidden along the trail. At the end of 3 hours a total of 7 1/2 truckloads of garbage of all description was found and bagged and taken to the collection facility. There was now a total of about 5 km of clean trail for all to use and enjoy in a beautiful area.

Trash collected in Bridgewater

Sunday we headed out in the afternoon on a day that promised rain and delivered on the promise. About 15 hearty souls from across the province braved the elements to clean a local carpool parking lot near Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. Teh area was cleaned fairly quickly and about a dozen bags of garbage were cleared from the area leaving a much better impression of the highway.

Before the cleanup

After the cleanup

As we were traveling to and from our events we saw the same thing being repeated by school and community groups everywhere we looked. It was great to see so many out from all walks of life giving back to their communities. There were no complaints about the work or the temperature, everyone seemed to be enjoying the camaraderie and feeling of doing something good.

This is something that doesn't need to happen once a year. If people would stop littering, the problemn would go away. Unfortunately I fear that won't happen. I think it is a better chance that we try to educate people to do just a little bit each day, if you pick up one piece of trash on your walk, the world will be a better place for you having been there. If more people see this type of behavior they may start to do the same thing, then think how beautiful the world could become.

How it could look if we all did our part

We enjoyed our outing and love the feeling that we got from Giving Back A Little. Try it you'll like it.

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Good Morning Sunrise

I think that our favorite time of the day since we have retired is Sunrise. When I was working, it was a chore to get out of bed in the morning, the alarm demanding my attention and lunches to be packed for the day ahead. It was faced with a sense of not quite dread, but not with anticipation. There was no time to stop and appreciate the morning in the mad rush of preparation for the days labors. That all changed the day that I officially became retired.

Since we have retired, we have not had to rely on the alarm to get up in the morning, unless we are off on very early morning trip. Mornings are met with anticipation of the days promise. We have no plans and very few demands on our time. A day is allowed to unfold like a flower blooming and reaching its full potential. Some days are slow to awaken, their grey covering wrapped around them like a security blanket, protection from the weather to come. Other days arrive with a bright yellow glow to announce that they are here and all is right with the world.
The best mornings are the ones that start off with a burst of color painting the sky in bright vibrant hues as if to make up for a forecast of later day storms. It seems to be true what the old timers said, "Red Sky At Morning, Sailors Take Warning". The most vibrant sunrises are nearly always followed by a storm later in the day. Maybe this is nature's way of apologizing in advance for the day to come.
A perfect morning is one spent on the deck, having breakfast and enjoying a steaming cup of freshly brewed coffee as the sun rises out of the earth. Each day brings a sunrise from a slightly different perspective as the sunrises march back and forth across our view with the march of the seasons, lighting our lives from a slightly different angle and shining light into different corners of our lives.
A beautiful sunrise is a fleeting event, here one minute and gone the next. Most of the color being displayed just before the sun crests the horizon. A beautiful sunrise is more about promise and anticipation than about the actual rising of the sun. It is a great metaphor for the day ahead, carrying all the promise of what is to come. We look forward to the scene that will greet us each morning as prepare breakfast and take the time to marvel in the spectacle that is presented each day for a fleeting moment.


I think it is fair to say that an early morning has become the favorite part of our day. It gives us the chance to relax and prepare for the day without the hustle and bustle that were for so long a part of our lives. Having a relaxing start to the day goes a long way toward making the whole day relaxing.






So sit back and relax and enjoy the show that is the world around us.

Smells like....whatever you choose.

It has been a while since I have taken the time to write on this blog. You would think that being retired would mean you have all the time in the world, it just doesn't seem to work out that way. I think part of the reason is that we take on more projects to do ourselves that we might have hired out when we were working. I also like to think that we are taking the time to learn new skills to help us in our retirement.   
  We love learning to do new things that help to save a few dollars or to make a healthier product for us to use. In the past we have talked about the cooking that we have tried, and that is a great way to have a good healthy meal at a lower cost and I like to think that cooking together has brought us closer at a time in our lives where too many people seem to find that they have nothing in common anymore.
  We like to make some of our own household products. One of the first that we tried was making our own deodorant. We looked at the cost and then after all the reading about the nasty chemicals that are absorbed by our bodies, this project seemed like a no brainer. And to top it off it was so easy. We were a bit skeptical about it at first, but we bit the bullet and gave it a try. With a little trial and error we have come up with a product that we both like and that works for us. We are able to get most of the ingredients at our local bulk store. The initial set-up costs a bit, but most of the ingredients have multiple uses.

  Homemade deodorant

2 Tbsp Coconut oil
5 Tbsp Arrowroot Powder
5 Tbsp Baking Soda
a few drops of essential oil( we like Lavender or a Lemon/Rosemary mix





Once all the ingredients are in the bowl, mix with your hands until you get a pretty solid ball. The heat from your hands will melt the coconut oil and allow everything to come together.







We saved some old stick deodorant tubes and just pack the mixture into them after winding the mechanism down to the bottom. 








When using this deodorant, you only dab it on your underarms, it takes very little to do the job. If you notice some redness it might be the chemicals from your old deodorant coming our of your pores or it could be a reaction to an essential oil. This recipe will make enough for both of us to last about a month. I wouldn't recommend increasing the recipe as there are no preservatives in it and if it last longer it could cause problems since you are using organic products that will break down over time.

The original recipe called for 1/4 cup each of baking powder and corn starch. We found that the extra baking powder made the recipe a bit abrasive and could cause chafing. We switched to arrowroot powder as it is less likely to cause a yeast infection, it is more naturally resistant to fungus and bacteria.

One of the things that most retirees agree on is that you have to live on a fixed budget, it is not easy to make up any shortfall if your budget doesn't balance. This is just one of the ways that we have found to cut costs and have a bit of fun doing it. We also make our own laundry soap, which sounds like a topic for another blog. We do most of own repairs and building projects. We recently laid our own hardwood floor in the kitchen at less than 1/3 the cost of having it done by someone else. These are all skills that we develop that save us a few dollars and also give us a great deal of satisfaction as we use utilize the items we have built. 
If you have anything that you do to save a few pennies or you want information about any of our other ideas, please feel free to leave a comment.