A growing number of backpackers have become aware of lightweight gear. People are starting to look at ultra light backpacking as appealing especially when weather conditions are favorable. The lightweight backpacking movement now evolves around 5 different systems: sleep, shelter, clothing, packing, cooking systems from thepnw.co.
Sleepers
During summer or moderate weather conditions, the sleeper is a light weight foam pad. During winter or cooler weather, the sleeper of choice can be an inflatable sleeping pad. This adds additional comfort and protection from a frigid ground.

Cooking system
For short (weekend hikes) some prefer a small alcohol stoves because it’s so lightweight and simple to operate. Others prefer the heavier canister stoves for the better (compressed) fuel system,

Shelter
The foremost change in the movement toward lightweight backpacking is in terms of shelter. More and more trekkers seem to be open to tarps over tents. A tarp typically shaves off 2-4 pounds of weigh. Tents themselves lighter and more functional. Minimalist hikers just deal with a poncho tarp which can serve as both rain gear and shelter especially during summer. Winter sheltering is more likely to be a heavier, though small, pyramid tent-type shelter.

Clothing
Clothing is now soft shell for winters. For summers, consider the use of a poncho or a waterproof jacket, 8-oz down or synthetic pull-over shirt with pants. And in the heat of the day, wear a moisture wicking material. Just do not wear cotton-it just soaks in all the sweat.

Depending on your destination, foot gear can range from an all-terrain tennis-type shoe to leather hiking boots. Regardless of your shoe selection, make sure that it’s well worn or broken-in. Avoid new shoes, they can be killer on your feet and cause blisters. And that could ruin your whole trip.

Backpack
Ultra light packs have no pockets no, frames, and now require hikers to have a new mindset. The backpack itself can be hi-tech canvas or sturdy-duty water-proof material. With heavier gear, you’ll just tire out.

So, too, the items that are inside have now changed considerably. Check specifics on necessities to carry online prior to venturing out. For example, instead of lugging a lot of water containers, make more extensive use of water purifiers and tablets (or purchase bottled water onsite where available). And if you’re really going to hike, forget the travel or guide books-they add a lot of unnecessary weight. But it’s okay to take pad and pen to take notes. You may just get the urge to jot down inspirational thought or a noteworthy observation. Do throw in duct tape–no don’t carry a roll, just wrap some around a pen or pencil.

And just as in taking any trip away from home, put the things you are going to need most on top. It can be really tough trying to dig into your bag to a much needed change of clothing.

One last tip before you head off to delve into lightweight backpacking, check out online forums. It’s more important to first network among experienced hikers than to go on a shopping spree. You don’t want to end up buying items you may not need. Happy trekking!

With Spring being all the buzz and Spring cleaning being on the top of everyone’s list, don’t you think a little revamping is in order? I love opening windows and playing around with a room for a whole day. It’s quite rewarding to get a whole new look and feel on the cheap! Here are some tips to get you started.
1.) Empty the room of everything small, and if you can handle it, the furniture too.

Cleaning out a room completely will give you an instant new perspective as what the room could be. When filled with your things, it’s hard to see the potential it’s hiding. It’s also a good chance to scope out if you really love your wall color, fan selection, and window dressing. When you bring the stuff back in your room, play with new layouts. Make sure not to block windows, and the sun really does something special to a room.

2.) Take home paint samples, and play with them!

We all know paint is the cheapest way to transform any room (furniture, floors, wooden dinnerware, and fireplaces for that matter!). I don’t know about you but I get excited when I am at the hardware store in the paint section. I am little a little kid collecting shiny new jewels every time I pass by the paint samples, and it’s served me well. It’s always good to have the samples on hand, but it’s even better when you can envision them up on your wall. It’s free. It’s fun. And it will motivate you to change things up!

3.) Make some art

We are FAR from artists in this house. I am not going to lie, I am a fine arts major switched to marketing because I had a professor tell me I was so bad at it. Dreadful, I know. So then, how do I make “art”? Easy! I don’t need to be Picasso to make something pretty I love. We are big on shadow boxes, found object art, doily lamps, and photography in this house.

4.) Let the light in
Ohhhh. My fave. Sunshine all the time! Can you tell I’m a Florida girl? A sun-filled room is a glorious room as far as I am concerned. If you have small windows or big windows, it doesn’t matter – let the light in.

5.) Go shopping in your other rooms
I love to shop. And I even have fun shopping in my own home. One thing I like to do is pull a bunch of stuff from a variety of rooms that hold a common feel or theme and use those things to decorate a whole room. It cuts the clutter down, and gives new life to already loved objects.

Pretty easy, right? We really do love “shopping” from our other rooms. It’s probably our favorite thing to do when we don’t feel like spending cash. For more home improvement tips and how to’s, come say “hi!” at joeyandlana.com!

With a million products that promise to erase bags under the eyes or zap a zit, the average medicine cabinet can get a little crowded. Instead of stocking up on every “promise in a jar,” here are the core ingredients that are actually necessary for the ten most common skin conditions (for example, you should know that there are better solutions than lip balm for those cold-weather chapped lips).

1. Occasional breakouts
Look for a spot treatment with a minimum of 10% sulfur to dry up a pimple in a pinch, advises Jamie Yee, Director of Education at Kate Somerville, a skincare hotspot that tends to the complexions of celebs like Demi Moore and Kate Hudson. Pair this with derma roller amazon and you’re good to go.

2. Dark circles under the eyes
Skincare guru, Liz Earle, notes that dark circles are rarely caused by lack of sleep. Instead, blame fluid retention and nasal congestion, which causes the veins that usually drain from the eyes to your nose to become diluted and darker. To combat, drink plenty of water to fight dehydration and discourage fluid retention. Topically, witch hazel’s astringent properties can help to shrink the capillaries.

3. Chapped lips
Exfoliate with gentle scrubs (jojoba or man-made spherical beads) then follow with hydrating ingredients like shea butter, allantoin, beeswax, candelilla wax, or try overnight treatments like straight olive oil or argan oil, advises Yee. Honey can also provide an instant lip repair.

4. Dry, flaky skin
Look for hard-working botanical ingredients like shea butter, which is very nourishing, advises Earle. Other ingredients that calm extra-dry skin include borage oil and St. John’s Wort, which heals and sooths the skin.

5. Brown sunspots
Try ingredients like Alpha-Arbutin, licorice root and kojic acid, as well as 2 percent hydroquinone for more stubborn spots, says Yee. Small sunspots can also be treated with a nightly application of rosehip oil mixed with a vitamin E capsule, according to Earle. Kate Somerville uses more aggressive treatment, lasers like Cutera’s IPL or LimeLight to target challenging areas of pigmentation.

6. Fine Lines
Look for makeup and creams that include peptides to stimulate collagen, and light-diffusing pigments. Products that reflect light will minimize the appearance of fine lines, says Yee.

7. Puffy eyes
Products with cucumber extract are the most helpful, along with the application of a cold spoon or cool tea bags (black teas work best because of the caffeine, according to Yee). Earle also advises refrigerating eye cream for 5 minutes before applying to reduce puffiness.

8. Acne
For full-fledged acne, Somerville recommends products that combine AHA and BHA acids, time-release Benzoyl Peroxides, and oil-balancing ingredients like marine extracts. If the acne is severe, the ingredients to reconsider may be in your food. Try ditching refined sugars, yeast, gluten products and dairy. Instead, load up on water, fruits, veggies and non-processed foods. If there are still no results, LED treatments such as Omni-Lux use blue and red light technology to target breakouts, bacteria and oil production.

9. Large pores
Exfoliate with gentle jojoba scrubs then follow with lightweight, non-clogging moisturizer. Look for water-based algae extracts because they aren’t heavy and won’t settle into pores.

10. White spots/reverse pigmentation
Some treatments can lighten the skin to “blend” it so that it will be as light as the white spot but be careful as those treatments are risky thanks to the high percentage of skin-bleaching ingredients. A laser treatment known as Fraxel can also help with some loss of pigmentation caused by acne.

Step 1:

Choose a free website service. There’s lots of obtainable, and they usually have similar characteristics. Most are designed to be simple for beginners to make use of. When setting out to build a professional net site free, try to choose a service that won’t place an advertisement or logo on your pages. In addition, think about the kinds of templates (page designs) obtainable.

Step 2:

Sign up for an account. The most important consideration here is selecting your username. often the URL of your free net site will include your username. In order to build a successful professional website, it is vital to have a URL that is memorable, or at the least professional sounding. Skip your usual online tag and go for the name of your business, or possibly your actual name.

Step 3:

Choose a template. Most free website services have a variety of predesigned page styles to choose from. When you build a professional website, your best bet is to go for a simple, neat template. Keep in mind that it is simplest for most people to read black text on a light background.

Step 4:

Generate a page featuring the basic facts about your business. It doesn’t must be long, in fact, short and to-the-point informative pages may be most appealing to customers. Hire experts on web hosting but first you need to read  web hosting Canada reviews.

Step 5:

Add images. This is not strictly necessary, but online page with any type of mixed media is usually much more successful.

Step 6:

Add other pages to the main page if necessary. Try to stick to subject per page. For example, a restaurant might add a page with a sample menu. Usually your website creation service will let you do this basically.

Step 7:

Check and double-check all the content on your website by going to your actual URL. When you have gone to the trouble of building a professional website, it is worth the additional hard work and time to eliminate any typos, grammatical errors or technical issues.

Fort Green Council, Inc. on Fulton Street may be known for being a senior center, but it also provides valuable low cost and free childcare for the community.
The Universal pre-kindergarten program offers free to low cost childcare for children between the ages of 2 to 4 years old. The day care center serves three meals and a snack according to the Fort Green Council website. An after school program, Out of School Time Program (OST), is available for children in first to sixth grade at Teddy Kids Kinderdagverblijf.

Parents have to contact the day care center and find out how to apply. A list of the day care centers can be found here. Each center has licensed teachers and is funded by the NYC Administration for Children’s Services.

This not-for-profit organization is funded by the NYC Department for the Aging and also provides home delivered meals for seniors. Another well known program provided by the Fort Green Council, Inc. is Jazz 966, a Friday night Jazz and Blues concerts for the community.

Sources
http://www.fortgreenecouncil.org
http://www.fortgreenecouncil.org/web/fgcweb2.nsf/vwoc/ChildCarePrgs

After you have signed up for a free account at http://www.lightcms.com, the first thing you will want to do is login to your new site. When you sign up, you choose the name of your site, and will start off being somethinglikethis.publishpath.com. You can always decide to use a custom domain name whenever you are ready. To login, simply type “/login” at the end of your URL, and enter your user name/password credentials. The user name will be the email address you inserted upon sign up. When it’s time to add another website, don’t create a new account, but add the site through your account settings. This way you can manage all your sites with one login.
Now, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the graphical user interface and the administrative toolbar options. In this article, the goal is to fast-track your learning curve, but for a more in depth understanding of what LightCMS (asp .net cms) has to offer, you will want to set up your free 3 page website. They will provide you with online support sites, and a forum for more advanced users to congregate and share knowledge of the system.

You can always return to your home page administrative view by clicking on “My Website.” Just to the right of this, you will see the “My Account, Help, and Log-out” options. Below that, you will find the buttons “Content, Designs, Users, Settings, Pages, Stats, and Billing.” One more level below those, you will see “Page settings, Preview page, and Add a new page.” These tools are invaluable to you as you focus on the design of your website.

Take a moment to locate the Design Gallery where LightCMS offers over 75 template designs that you can customize and make changes to at no additional cost. This is a remarkable feature because in just a few short minutes, you can literally add new content to your live site right away, or even change the overall design in seconds.

First, click on the “Designs” button. On the next page, click on “Design Gallery” tab and take a look at all the web design templates LightCMS has to offer. Click on any template and from within the pop-up window, you should select “Add to My Designs.” Click “Ok” to continue.

Welcome to the “My Designs” area! This is the section where you will administer changes to the .html and CSS template files, add Google Analytics, or add LightCMS tokens. I’ll mention more about tokens in a moment. Click on a template and select “Apply” to load the design to your site. To enter the Design Manager where you have all the control over the code and style sheets, just click the “Edit” link after selecting a template within your “My Designs” section. All your files will be on the right, and the text editor will be on the left.

If you would rather take some time to design each page before the site is officially published, you will need to access the “Page Settings” of that page, click on the “Advanced” tab, and mark it as “hidden.” This feature allows you to focus on the look and feel of our page prior to it showing up on the main navigation bar. You can easily publish hidden pages by un-checking the hidden option.

To set your default template for the site, click on “Settings” and select a template file from the drop-down menu beneath, “Which template should this website use?” You can also choose this at the “Page Settings” level, but will need to find the “Advanced” tab and select either the “home” or “inside” template. You can always add more template files to choose from by using FTP access to upload your additional template files or custom design templates.

Don’t worry about making any mistakes in the Design Manager area because with LightCMS you can always “select a previous version to load.” Every saved version of your template files are archived, and these save states can be called to revert your template back to a prior state. You can also re-apply the template from the design gallery, or re-upload the custom design if necessary.

Tokens are system specific code blocks that perform special operations within the system. LightCMS.com defines them in the following way.

“Tokens are the key to integrating dynamic content management functionality with your custom website designs. Tokens are small bits of code that our servers replace with dynamic content and functionality when the site is run on our system. The content that each token outputs can often be styled through your CSS files to meet your design objectives.”

Tokens allow for the creation of navigation items, editable content regions, search functionality, breadcrumb trails, login status, page titles, and more. These tokens will be highlighted yellow within the Design Manager Text Editor to help you locate them easily.

LightCMS makes it easy to upload a business logo, and this is likely one of the first steps you will take when you begin branding your website. Click on the “My Account” button on the middle toolbar, and then go to the “Account Settings,” and upload an image of your logo.

Adding a logo to any site is just as easy. Click “Settings,” go to the “Advanced” tab and upload a website logo in seconds.

There are many more features that I just don’t have the time to go into them all. Here are some further links to help you get started with LightCMS. I highly recommend giving this product a test drive. Having the opportunity to help others create and develop web pages has been a great joy for me, but best of all, I’ve been able to bring a deeper understanding of LightCMS to users who need a little guidance. We don’t hold your hand, but rather, we point you to the resources that will make you independently proficient with the product.

Article #1
www.lightcms.com
www.twitter.com/lightcms
www.facebook.com/lightcms