Why do I use essential oils for my family care?

Essential oils are soooo cool!

I started using them when I was pregnant and on bed rest with my 2nd and that led to diffusing to kill bad bacteria, which became learning how to kill my kids viruses.  Thank heavens, cause the doctor just sent us home and told us to wait it out even though it was pretty severe.  Its been an incredible journey of learning and testing, with different oils and theories for care.

Now that I have discovered the proven purity in DoTerra oils I use them for nearly everything.  There are essential oils for cooking, for cleaning, and for nearly all ailments, conditions, and quick emergency situations (which happen consistently with 3 kids).  What is really amazing is that once we started using them for everything we stared saving tons of money.  We didn't need to buy so many specialty products for our hygiene, our hair, our cleaning supplies, our first aid kit, and for our arsenal of cooking spices.

We started feeling healthier, calmer, happier, and empowered.  We didn't need so many expensive doctor visits and were able to easily educate ourselves for how to handle our own needs quickly, safely and effectively.  Not only did I save money by replacing less safe and functional items, but I found out about a rewards program that can get me up to 55% off retail!  That with the monthly sales and free product specials makes the pure essential oils cheaper than the low quality oils, but they work 10x better!

It truly has been a win-win scenario for my family to start using truly pure and potent essential oils daily.  Using these along with good eating and lifestyle choices, I lost 85lbs in 9 months and my little boy doesn't throw his 45 minute tantrums every day anymore.  Life is about finding what works and what we each need to help us progress.  I truly feel like I have found that for my family.  It's amazing!

Kim   :)

Freeze Fresh, No Freezer Burn With Vacuum Sealing

Those of you who know me well know that I am in love with Mason Jars!  I love to vacuum seal our food so that it lasts longer both on our pantry shelf and in the freezer or fridge.  I also love to do crafty projects and decor with them.  Enjoy this video showing how I vacuum sealed to prevent freezer burn.

A Healthy Eggy Breakfast

Today I decided to try something I've seen in quite a few recipe books.  Although I didn't follow any of them, it still turned out great!  These egg and turkey muffins are very yummy!

Making Fruit Leather From Fruit & Veggie Juice Pulp

Seal It to Save It - No Freezer Burn!

I hate freezer burn!  This made me want a better way and I think I found the best way.  Its great!  We put together a vacuum sealer with the jar sealing attachment and I just take out the air before I freeze.  I use this for dry pantry items and refrigerated foods as well, to make them store for 3x as long (or longer).

Review of New Sedona Dehydrator Purchase

This video is our family opening the dehydrator.  We were so excited when we saw the FedEx guy pull up with it.  Kirk ran out to meet him at the truck with the kids and surprised him when he came out of the back with the box.  He said "We have been waiting for you!"  It reminds me of the Mr. Postman song by the Carpenters.  The FedEx man laughed and gave Kirk this monstrous package.  I really had no idea that it was this big.  Its about 2 inches wider than my toaster oven and double the height.  Its bigger than our microwave too and I was expecting smaller because of the videos I've seen.  Because of the size the trays are actually about the size of a typical cookie sheet I use for baking.  That makes it really nice because we can make more with it.  I am now gonna have to pack up my toaster oven though, cause I don't have room for both in my kitchen like I thought I would.  Oh well, this is cooler anyway, right?  :)

Here is the video of me going over the individual parts of the dehydrator and how they work.  I thought it would be useful for anyone thinking about getting the sedona, excalibur or any other food dehydrator on the market for that matter.  Enjoy!

Paper or Plastic? Both! When I get baby food in bulk with my groceries :)

About once a month we buy the baby food for that month in bulk so that I'm not always running back and forth to the grocery store and then I can take advantage of sales as well.  Its a nice system that saves me a headache and produced my personally developed bagging system and storage system for the baby food jars.  When we go to WinCo I bag anyway, cause that's their system, but at other grocery stores I usually get flak for even wanting to put the food in bags.  It was exciting this past trip to Dan's Market because the bagger was so excited to learn my system and wanted me to share it with the world.  Most importantly she wanted me to share it with other mothers who could use it.  You may love it or you may hate it, either way its been very useful and I will keep doing it for as long as I am buying baby food.

I do want to note that most of what I feed my 10 month old baby is actually breastmilk still, and then it is mostly fresh veggies.  She really likes heavily steamed carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower.  I also give her juiced veggies and fruit like beets, celery, carrots, and apple.  She can have nutritional yeast as well, which she loves; and then she likes raw pears and avocado.  Since starting to buy baby food I've found a lot more allergies with bum rashes and upset tummies, and.... lots of tears.  She can't handle banana, grains of any kind, or any of the typical bad food that kids love that I wouldn't give her at this age anyway.  If she has much of those things she not only gets a rash, it turns such a deep red its almost purple and sometimes starts to bleed.  I have a special cream I get from target and buybuybaby.  It's from a company called "Shea Moisture" is made from shea butter and has frankincense and myrrh essential oils in it that works better than any other cream I've ever found, though its hard for anything to help when its due to a negative reaction to food that's in the body still.

The baby foods are super exciting for my 4 and 2 year olds to eat as well.  I like to get a lot of applesauce because it makes a really fun snack for the older kids if I need something to tide them over while I'm preparing lunch, or while we're out running errands.  The jars are awesome to keep and re-use.  There are hundreds of fun things you can do with them, so subscribe to my blog or youtube.com uploads to be able to see a bunch of those as I get them done.

Campout Dinner In Backyard - No Electricity or Gas

Our electricity went out a bit ago and it inspired our Dad of 3 from DadOf3LivingARTly.blogspot.com to practice what preppers typically call "Bugging In".  It was very fun.  To cook we only used found things for starting the fire.  No grill, sun oven, or any other appliance, and it was bricks and wood that was left in the garage from who we purchased our home from.  The food is some from our pantry and some from the freezer and from the fridge, so a good mix of what you'd probably use both in normal conditions and in a power outage or other disaster situation.  It is nice to become more self sufficient and build more experience and skills every chance we get.