As I mentioned in my February Love List update, I started making my own toothpaste. The first attempt wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. I've since made another batch and I think I'm ready to share the very simple recipe.

4 tablespoons baking soda 2 tbsp vegetable glycerin 5 drops of organic essential oil in peppermint

Simply mix all the ingredients together in a small container. I use the small stainless bowls I got from Lee Valley Tools for Christmas a few years ago. Thankfully my family understands that I like to get useful items as gifts!

I buy my baking soda in bulk at Domino Foods at the St. Lawrence Market. They never make a fuss about meat me using my own reuseable bags, and they're super friendly!

4 tbsp baking soda

I purchased my vegetable glycerine and peppermint essential oils from New Directions Aromatics. While it`s not completely waste free, since the glycerine came in a plastic bottle and the essential oil in a tiny glass one, it`s still less waste per tube of toothpaste than going to the store to buy a tube.

2 tbsp vegetable glycerine

approx 5 drops peppermint essential oil

In the first batch I used too much glycerine. It wasn't runny, but it separated over the time I was using it. This time I used more baking soda and less glycerine, so I'm hoping the consistency stays about the same.

Mix

I put my toothpaste in an extra GoToob that I had from my travels to store my toothpaste. I used a whole bunch of Toobs when I was in Peru, but my recent foray into zero waste means I use significantly fewer bottled products and don't need all of the Toobs I have anymore. You can bet I'm happy that I've found another use for one of them! They're wonderful for traveling with because they don't leak, are super easy to fill (unless you're trying to fill and take a picture which results in a totally blurry photo as evidenced below), and you can mark what's in the bottle by spinning the top around. Unfortunately "toothpaste" isn't one of the options yet.

Put in a reuseable container.

GoToob filled and ready to go

While this toothpaste takes a little bit of getting used to, I especially like it in the morning. I've never been much of a morning tooth brusher (sorry if you find that gross), but this toothpaste's flavour fades quickly, which means that it doesn't interfere with the taste of my breakfast. R will be happy! :)

You can find other homemade toothpaste recipes at Zero Waste Home and Say No to Trash.

Let me start out by giving a huge shout out to my race buddies, Ali and Jamie. What an awesome weekend of scheming and running!

For those who don't know, Around the Bay is the oldest road race in North America, and has been held every year in Hamilton since 1894. The full race is 30 km, but we each ran 1/3. I ran the 2nd (and shortest) leg, from the 10km mark to the 19.5km mark.

On Saturday evening, we all met in Burlington for some Thai food and for some pre-race scheming that continued on at my Grandma's house! You see, the typical relay runners have to meet at the start at 9:15 and take buses to their respective starting points where they just wait... How boring!



Instead, the Spatula Runners went to the starting line for a photo shoot. We also got to test my shoe pack to see if the chip registered while it was in there.

Go Spatula Runners! Photo courtesy of Running with Spatulas

We left Jamie in the throng of runners then walked to a spot on the route closest to Colin's parked car and waited for Jamie to run by. While we were there we saw the elite runners, who seemed to be sprinting, and Elvis!

I couldn't get over how fast they were running!

We found her! Photo courtesy of From Couch to Iron Woman

We then tried to drive to the relay exchange point, which proved to be a little bit difficult. Colin, Ali's hubby, did some amazing driving, but we still managed to get caught behind those crazy elite runners for a little bit. We got there with enough time for me to stand in the GIANT line-up for the port-o-potty's.

Jamie and I nearly missed each other at the exchange. We thought that there would be two sets of mats to record the relay times, so she was looking for one, and I was in the back of the pack stretching...

We got the chip and spatulas exchanged and I was on my way!


I started a bit too fast, as is typical for me in races. The first 3 km felt like they were dragging on and on and on. There were lots of nice people cheering, and some amazing people running and walking including:

...a helicopter

...3 people from Canadian Armed Forces and their packs

Seeing those things made me forget about carrying the spatulas!

The last 2/3 of my race went by much quicker. I had a few people ask me why I was carrying spatulas, so I told them about Ali's blog, and how we were there to 'spread the love'. One guy asked if they were in case anyone cut me off!

I was nervous I was going to drop my spatulas along the Burlington Lift Bridge. If I'd dropped them anywhere else they would have been easy to pick up. The Lift Bridge has an open deck, which means if I'd dropped them, they would have been in the bay... Good thing I held on tight!

Image courtesy of Running with Spatulas

That last hill got to me a little bit. All of my training has been in Toronto by the lake, which means very little elevation change. I walked a little bit, especially after my right knee started to hurt. It's normally my left knee that bothers me, I'm not quite sure what happened.   Thankfully this was at my 9 km mark, so I knew I only had 500m to go. Time to push through!

Photo courtesy of From Couch to Iron Woman

I saw Mike at the exchange point first - he was the lookout. He yelled at me to run to the right, so I immediately went left... Thankfully I managed to find the rest, get Ali the chip and spatulas, then she was on her way!

Photo courtesy of Running with Spatulas

 According to my watch, I'd run 9.5km in 1:05. Translated to a 10km race, my time would have been 1:08, still a personal best by 5 minutes! Makes me want to do a 'proper' 10k to get that made official!

I grabbed my food kit and water from the back of a van. Thankfully they had these vans rather than making us all wait until the end to get our race food. We walked to the car to drive back to Copps Colosseum. We managed to get into the same parking lot where we had started!

Jamie and I waited by the runner's entrance to Copps Colosseum, where we saw a disturbing number of people trip on the curb on the way in. Jamie spotted Ali first, so I sent a quick text to Colin and Mike to let them know she was on her way!

As a team, we finished in 3:12:41. Not too shabby!

Photo courtesy of Running with Spatulas

Please be sure to read Ali and Jamie's recaps as well. They also have much better pictures, taken with actual cameras. I only had my crappy blackberry camera with me.

My sister and her boyfriend had Leafs tickets, so I was puppy sitting my sister's dog, Bamf. What a great time!

First, we went for a run/walk to cherry beach, where he ran straight into the water! He stopped suddenly and slowly backed out of the water, and didn't go near it again. We played a little bit in the off-leash area of the beach and then ran/walked back home.



My roommate's dog, Kali, my other running trainer, and Bamf got along really well. I love how much they're both smiling in this photo.


They played the entire time he was here. She's a jack russell, and he's a boxer puppy, so the energy level in the house about quadrupled while they were together!



Then, for fun, my roommate and I went to the dog park where Kali and Bamf chased each other around, and played with the other dogs that were there too.

My sister said he fell aseep pretty much immediately after getting into the car.

Back in December, I came across the Kanelstrand blog Simple Living Challenge. The idea of living simply, sustainably, and consciously really spoke to me. So I took the pledge, which ran from February 1st to 22nd.

Little did I know how much was going to keep me from it during the actual challenge. R, my love, came to visit from February 10th to 21st, and as I alluded to in my last post, work has been absolutely insane since January, and will remain so for at least the next month. As tough as the work is, I feel like I'm actually accomplishing things with it and adding value for my clients. It also means I can bank time and therefore spend more time with R!

So with no further ado, let's get started! I'm not pledging to do one of these a day (it's taken me a week to sit down and write about just one!), but I pledge to do them fully.


The Steps of the challenges are:
Step 1: Embrace Your Imperfections
Step 2: Simple Living as Men's Trait
Step 3: The Rules of Simple Home Organization
Step 4: Simple Crafting for Happy People 
Step 5: Simple Scheduling and Planning Routines
Step 6: Spend More Time With the People You Love 
Step 7: Spend More Time Alone 
Step 8: Connect to Your Inner Self 
Step 9: How to De-Stress 
Step 10: Learn to Live With Less and Enjoy it
Step 11: Start a Debt-Free Life
Step 12: How to Overcome Consumerism
Step 13: Declutter Your Life 
Step 14: Get Rid of Toxic Cosmetics and Reclaim Your Natural Self 
Step 15: Wean Off Plastic 
Step 16: Celebrate Your Story  
The Final Step: Gratitude

February was really busy. At work my projects tripled. R visited for 11 glorious days. Which meant no blogging for me. No one wants to read a month worth of entries that say "I went to work, came home and went to bed."

But now it's March, there is a new addition to our team starting on Monday, and I am determined to get back to it!
Grow a garden on our porch
Our garden is still frozen solid, so this won't be happening for at least another month or two.

Read more novels
In February I read The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy), Water for Elephants, and the Pelee Project.
Learn (and practice) to cook well

Learn to speak Dutch
No real updates since my January update. I decided to sign up for a class, but the only one I could find is at the U of T and doesn't start until September. So I'm still researching.

Get rid of the junk in my bedroom and the garageI sent all of my remaining shoes and bags to the goodwill, and have started another pile to take soon.

Simplify my wardrobeAs I noted above, I've started another collection of clothes to take to goodwill or to sew into new things. I've got a lot of things that I noted this month that I rarely wear, which means more downsizing!

Finally get my Professional Engineer designationWork has been far to busy to do anything about this. As important as it is, billable work takes precedence!

Pay off my debtThe last two are pretty big fails for me this month. With R here, I spent more money than I usually do. We had a beautiful trip to Ottawa, and I feel like it was worth it. but now I'm back on a strict spending diet!

Track the waste that I produce each week/month
I don't know what happened with this. I was really good in January, and then I just stopped! I'm going to work at getting back into this again, because if I don't measure how much waste I produce, how am I ever going to reduce/eliminate it.  I did make my first homemade toothpaste today. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll post about it as soon as I know it's not terrible!