Young Living Everyday Essential Oils

Anyone ever heard of using therapeutic essential oils in place of traditional over the counter medicine......that hippy stuff?

Well I have seen it posted many times on my facebook feed which lead my curiosity to research it. After at least 6 months or more of reading and finally attending an informational class in my area I finally bought some therapeutic essential oils. Not just any oils either, apparently THE brand to use in order to guarantee quality is Young Living. There is so much information and images out there it's overwhelming. 

I ordered the Pro kit to become a member so that I could get a discount and that came with the Everyday Essential oils and diffuser. It's been a week since I started and I had to create my own cheat sheet for the Everyday Essential Oils in order to help me practice using them instead of going to the medicine cabinet. My cheat sheet is a combination of other images I found on the web. I hope this one helps you along as it has been for me and my family. 

Everyday Essential Oils Kit Cheat Sheet

I'm lucky that my husband doesn't think I'm crazy with all these non-traditional things I keep introducing him to. He's very supportive and willing to help. 

In the short week here is what we've done so far:

• As a family the diffuser with thieves oil has been really nice. This cleans our air and gives a soothing atmosphere.
• Peace & Calming has been used heavily for my 3 year old daughter since she has recently decided she doesn't want to go to bed at night. I put the stuff on her feet with a carrier oil and she does her usual fussing but man once she is asleep, she is OUT like a light. 
• For me, it's the lemon in my water in the morning and Joy for my mood.
• My husband got a ton of bug bites right when we got the oils and they itched so bad that I had him put the purification oil on and he said the itch relief was immediate. He did have to reapply frequently though to keep the itch away. 

A tip that my midwife gave me was, there is no such thing as too much with these oils! 

With that said, unlike traditional medicine that lasts for hours at a time and have a limit to how frequently they can be used in a 24 hour period these oils last for a while then you need to reapply. Since everyone's body is different the amount needed will be different so while I may need to reapply Joy eight times in one day you many only need it two times. I consider this trade off to be worth the peace of mind I have of not overdosing.

Below are two places that I found really helpful:

1. 31 Days of Young Living Essential Oils
2. Google......simple but true lol. Just type in "Young Living essential oils for insert specific issue"

UPDATE: I have done further research on where exactly to get the best oils and that was a can of worms. If you are wondering the same thing here are the resources I used to determine where to purchase my essential oils. No I didn't do my own tests because I don't feel like re-inventing the wheel nor do I have time. The lovely ladies from below blog's have so kindly taken the time to do it for me.

1. Blog post by Whole New Mom
2. Blog post by Nourishing Herbalist

I ended up buying some Native American Nutritional (NAN) oils and they do seem to have a more herbal smell, plus you can't beat the prices. The cheat sheet I made picutred above is still useful as NAN has a cross reference chart with Young Living and doTerra oils.

Gone Country, second edition

Here is what I've discovered so far, I LOVE the open space of our great plains home. I can see the sky so clear, feel free and secluded on these 11.6 acres.

There are so many things needed to be done around the place and with my husband and I both working full time in the city, I'm pooped all the time now. This is a good kind of pooped. We'll be making a list of projects to prioritize, including growing herbs and medicinal plants.

We don't have cable or internet, and our cell phone signal is spotty so we spend more quality time outside. This is not permanent though. With football season starting my husband will get Direct TV for the Sunday Tickets package, we NEED internet so I can keep up with bills, prescriptions, and correspondence. There's just no getting away from technology these days in my opinion. Our property does allow for complete self sufficiency with only one exception and that is electricity.

We have lots of frogs, grasshoppers, and hornets. Our first weekend here I got stung by a hornet while swinging on the bench. I'd never been stung by anything growing up so this was my first time and I whined and cried like a baby running to my husband. My two year old daughter was with me, saw the whole thing and  luckily did not freak out like I did. She  shares the experience with everyone who goes to the bench now lol. As you can imagine I had my husband take care of all the hornets pronto. We have heard some coyotes not too far away but none have come close enough to us that we need to "take care of". This is the country after all. Our house pets (one dog and one cat) are much happier here and have improved attitudes.

With three ponds there is fishing too! I could go on and on about all the things to do but I'll leave you with this for now.....I'm happy we finally made it here!

It was a longish and VERY stressful process getting here which I most definitely plan to post about. Be sure to tune in for it because I think it could help others out there from going through the same awful mess.

Gone Country

After deciding to pursue education for a Dietician Degree and possibly go into NaturoPathic Medicine an opportunity has presented itself that will delayed my pursuit.

Part of the ideals of Naturopathic Medicine is all natural remedies. What better way to obtain those than to grow them. My family is now in the process of selling our house in the city to move outside any city limits (country) with more land. We have found an 11.6 acre property that has 3 ponds with fish and turtles, gardens that produce okra, sweet potatoes, strawberries, blackberries, and more. The house is what I would call basic quality and built by the current owner who is a graying man with a "Good Ole Boy" demeanor that could do anything. We have a contract to buy the property and now need to sell our house.


UPDATE:
Just within the first 24 hours of listing our house on the market we got a request to show it and got positive feeback. Within 3 weeks we got an offer. We are set to close on both properties July 31st. I am brimming with excitement this new adventure will bring. All in all I may have unrealistic expectations and romantized ideas but I know it's going to be great. Remember, I don't know anything about living in the country being born and raised in the city. Oh boy, let the packing begin!

I'll let you know what I discover.

Purposful Life

This post is not from the view point of someone who knows their purpose and wants to share how you can find yours too. I'm lost like the rest of you and as a last attempt to console my soul I'm writing about it.

I consider myself to be self aware of who I am and why I am the way I am but that doesn't mean I know what to do with that information. This point in my life I am happy in my personal life but discontent in my professional working life even though I love the place I work. I'd rather they were one and the same instead of leading two lives but society almost forces two incomes on families. Almost being the key word, some of it is lifestyle choices. I've researched many different interesting things in the hopes that they would lead to a career choice but after learning all I feel I need to, it no longer interests me and I move on to something else.

You might have noticed that I strive for financial freedom like the financial guru Dave Ramsey teaches.For this reason I am unable to go back to school to pursue what I think I have finally found to be a purposeful life intended for me to lead. It started with the goal to lose my pregnancy weight before my daughters first birthday. Next month she will be two and I accomplished my goal but have continued to stay informed about food and health. I've maintained a passionate interest in the subject (for over a year) long enough to feel confident that this could be a career choice. It's transformed into a desire to pursue a Bachelor's Degree in Nutrition and then pursue a graduate degree in Naturopathic Medicine.

With a full time job, a full time working husband, and an almost two year old daughter life is already busy. Not to mention I'm going to be 29 this year with 8+ years of education before even practicing. All this makes for a strong case of fear and doubt. Sure one class at a time is possible do-able.

I can at least do my part by sharing links to great resources that provide valuable health information for you to take control of your health. For honesty's sake, I have joined the affiliate's group of Food Matters so if you use my link to visit their website and end up purchasing one of their products I do get a small percentage. Please know that I chose to associate myself with the Food Matters documentary because I truly believe in the message and not for the purpose of making money.

I will be focusing more of my blogging to this topic in addition to my regularly random life experiences. I hope to become a source of accurate and valuable health information like those that I trust as I attempt to pursue my dream.

Resources: Food Matters
                The Raw Food Life
                 Association of Accredited Naturopathic Medical Colleges

Road to Health

I thought I would share my journey to losing my pregnancy weight, learning to eat healthy, and maintaining that accomplishment while trying to reduce our grocery bill.

Part One: Weight Loss
My daughter's first birthday was coming up in April and I wanted to lose all the pregnancy weight before she turned one. I'd been trying to use Weight Watchers for four months losing one pound a week most weeks but sometimes nothing at all to a total of 10 pounds. I was losing motivation due to the slow progress so my very supportive husband told me about a program called Take Shape for Life that he heard about on the radio to see if that would work better. I went to the website and it seemed worth a try so I signed up in February. The first week I lost 11 pounds (some of it was water weight) but the best part was I continued to lose weight. The program promises that the typical results a person can expect to lose is between 2 to 5 pounds per week. I always lost at least 2 pounds if not more each week which made it easy to keep motivated and stay on track. I started at 145 lbs and in 11 weeks I reached my goal weight of 120 lbs. That's a total loss of 25 lbs!

I began the maintenance phase of the program where I gradually re-introduced normal food to my meals replacing the Medifast food. I found this stage to be a bit of a struggle using the guidance of the program. It didn't make sense to me. I decided to quit that program since I accomplished the goal of weight loss. Actually found a more simplistic program that's not really a diet, more of a community for education on food. The Beyond Diet Program is a one time fee of $47 to gain lifetime access to the e-books and community website. It has a lot of the same values as the other programs but explains how to implement it into your life much better (in my opinion). Basically eat as much organic as possible, eliminate processed foods and ingredients. That sounds simple but educating yourself on what foods are bad can be overwhelming with all the contradicting information available. This program lays it out for you including what ingredients to look out for on nutrition labels. Once you read the information you realize it's common sense that you might have already known but I think it's worth a one time fee to always have the latest news on it for supporting your healthy lifestyle.

Not all programs that claim to be safe and healthy actually are so be careful. All safe and healthy programs work but you have to follow the guidelines in order to succeed. It's a matter of will power! Everyone is different and that means not every one's needs and priorities will work on the same program. One size does not fill all! Considering that I never did dieting until this point in my life I'm pretty happy that it only took me three tries to find the program that fit me and my family.


Part Two: The Grocery Bill
During this phase of finding the right program the grocery bill was getting bigger to the tune of $700 for a family of three. Once I settled into the Beyond Diet Program I was able to use that shopping list to purge my kitchen of all bad foods/ingredients and buy only the staple items that would always be an option in any recipe. This is where we are right now so it is still a work in progress. First month we were able to reduce the bill by $100. My dream goal is to get it down to $400 if that's even possible but I'll be happy if it gets down to $500.

Until then I'd love to hear of other's success stories!

Update: Well our grocery bill has improved. We now have Sprouts Farmers Market in our area and I subscribed to their weekly sales add so that I can make our list for double ad Wednesday shopping. This has saved us about $40 dollars a week which adds up to $160 savings per month and $540 total groceries for a family of three. That is significant enough to make me happy.

Country Dreaming

I often feel like the direction that mankind has taken is unnatural. Let me explain, money is what controls government and society, we work our whole lives at jobs that take time away from our families in order to get money. Most of us struggle to find a job that will make us happy and full fill our purpose in life. Jobs that usually benefit society in some way and that's not a bad thing, there are so many different ways of fulfilling that purpose. What about the simple responsibility that God gave us to take care of this land and the creatures in it? Our populations have grown so much that we've encroached on nature. So many times I go through the urge to leave everything behind and move to the country to learn how to live off the land, become self sufficient and all that comes with that. This coming from a born and raised city girl! Sure this can't be easy or anything like the romantic image I have but I really believe the rewards would more than make up for it. The feeling of living the way I feel God intended and having a daily reminder of him surrounding me. It would be great to share it with others as well. Every time this urge comes I have to squelch it due to the fear of change to the unknown and of course the how. I'm not saying this is the only way, just what I think is one of many great ways. I've learned the term is "Homesteading". Probably finding a location between the city and the middle of nowhere country would be a happy and more realistic goal for me. I also like the idea of growing my own food, canning to stock up. I guess I should learn how to cook : /, can't leave it all up to my husband who is a wonderful cook (thank goodness).

Part of this could be the fact that I've never really figured out just what I should be doing, I just know it feels unnatural to be away from my family working. I work in education and I certainly think that is most definitely a worthy field no matter the role (teacher or support staff). After all our children are our future and we need to educate them. It would be nice if some of that education was more hands on with practical topics if all else failed like electricity, technology, etc. Maybe have it as part of the core mandatory subjects. Just a thought!

Hair Everywhere Weekend

How much body hair is normal for a woman? I don't think there is a straight answer since every one's DNA is different. Even cultures view this differently. Here in the US the common view is the less body hair the better. For me, I probably have more body hair than what would be considered normal. Maybe I should clarify....not just how much hair but also where the hair is on my body. Is that too much information?

With the popularity of Groupon I have been able to take advantage of some wonderful deals for Hair Laser Reduction. My pale, pasty skin and thick dark hair makes me the perfect candidate! For two years now I have gotten a Groupon for Christmas for Hair Laser Reduction and that has covered my side burns, chin, upper/lower legs including feet, upper/lower arms including hands. I have seen great results! This year I hope to get one more to cover my underarms and bikini areas then I will be done. Now I don't want you to think that I was a hairy beast (only more hairy than some) based on the areas I've gotten done so far, that was just part of the package and why not get it all.

There is always this thought in the back of my mind though about possible side effects that may crop up years later as with anything you get done. I've noticed that some of my freckles seam to get darker and more raised so I'm going to see a dermatologist to map all my freckles head to toe. Even without being exposed to the laser for hair reduction I'm highly likely to get skin cancer because of my family history already having had it. My appointment is early August so I'll add an update to this post with the results of that visit.

What about head hair? If you've been pregnant then you know your hair gets thicker during pregnancy and then after the baby arrives you lose some of it as your body's hormones return to normal, after your body is back to normal so is your hair. My daughter is 15 months old now and I did find that to be true but lately I have been loosing a ton of hair again. I'm talking about enough to build a birds nest (maybe two) from the drain and floor hair after a week. I'm not dramatic and will not get concerned unless some of the changes I make don't work. First, instead of taking my multi-vitamin I'm going to go back on the prenatal vitamin since I've heard it promotes healthy hair. Second, I'm changing my Pantene shampoo/conditioner all in one to Garnier Fructis' new Fall Fight Shampoo & Conditioner. That is suppose to help your hair from breaking but if I need something that deals with thinning hair then I'll try the Aveda brand Invati Exfoliating Shampoo & Invati Thickening Conditioner next. I'm positive I'm not going bald since I still have hair all over, only getting thinner.

Wish me luck!

Update: 8/29/2012

After my dermatologist visit I have been reassured that right now all of my freckles are fine but I do have to go back every six months due to my skin type and freckle/mole types being most common for turning into skin cancer.....lucky me. It's common for a laser to alter the appearance of freckles so that should not be a concern for you or me.

I've been taking my gummy vitamin (I don't like pills) and using the Garnier Fructis product for about three or four weeks now and so far I can definitely see less hair in the shower. I haven't been "cured" but it is a drastic enough change to make me feel better and keep doing those steps to prevent more hair on the ground.