Guest Post: 5 essential oil diffuser blends to start the new year strong

5 essential oil diffuser blends to start the new year strong

by Rachel Zupke

Hi there! My name is Rachel and I am excited to be here at The Pierogie Mama sharing a bit about essential oils with you! If you have any questions about oils after reading this, please feel free to contact me or head over to my blog for more info.

The new year ushers in a whole host of different emotions. Depending on how your holidays went, the turning of the calendar is something that most of us use as a motivation to usher in a new, positive habit. You might be breathing a sigh of relief that normal life is resuming again, coming down off a high from having a great time with family and friends, wishing you could go back and do it over again, or somewhere in between…regardless of your circumstance, let’s press the reset button together.

Using essential oils aromatically gives you and your family a natural boost through this second half of winter. The following blends involve 4 to 6 drops total in your diffuser making them an economical way to use essential oils. I also chose to share blends that include more commonly used oils; if you already use essential oils, you’ll most likely be able to make them with what you have on hand or, if you haven’t started using essential oils yet, you can make them if you purchase a collection of oils from various essential oil companies. For diffuser recipes that call for blends, I’ve given the common name*.

Fresh and clean

2 drops Peppermint

2 drops Rosemary

1 drop Melaleuca

Aid respiratory function with peppermint, protect against illness with rosemary, and promote cleansing with melaleuca. This blend is great when you want your environment to feel crisp and airy.

One-two punch

2 drops Protective blend

2 drops Cleansing blend

A little run down? Boost your overall health by diffusing a protective blend to support your immune system and cleanse your environment with a purification blend.

Immune support

2 drops Lemon

2 drops Invigorating blend

1 drop Frankincense

1 drop Oregano

Support your hard working immune system through the harshest months of the year. Lemon helps with environmental threats and promotes a sense of well-being, invigorating blend helps with stress, frankincense supports specific components of immune system function, and oregano aids respiratory function.

Get stuff done

2 drops Invigorating blend

1 drops Lemongrass

1 drops Peppermint

When you have a lot to get done but lack the motivation or focus, try this blend! Reduce stress and support your emotional health with an invigorating blend, promote awareness and enhance focus with lemongrass, and aid memory and mental performance with peppermint.

Relax

3 drops Grounding blend

1 drop Lavender

Harmonize your body systems and promote a sense of balance with this relaxing blend. A grounding blend promotes calmness, peace, and centering while lavender’s calming and sedative properties help lift feelings of anxiety.



I hope these diffuser blends are helpful through the potentially dreary months of late winter. If you’d like to learn more about essential oils and how they work, I’m teaching two *free* online webinars over the next few weeks. I’m a former high school science teacher so teaching webinars (and in person classes) is a way for me to keep doing what I love (learning and teaching) while applying it to my everyday life, and, hopefully, yours! Hop over to my blog, Mason Jar Values, for more information. I’d love to see you there! And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me!



Happy oiling!



~Rachel at Mason Jar Values



*Brands like doTerra, Young Living, and Native American Nutritionals (among others) have similar blends that go by different names but cover the same bases. For example, if you are stressed and need to feel centered and calmed, you’d want to use a grounding blend. DoTerra calls this Balance, Young Living calls theirs Valor, and Native American Nutritionals calls it Aligning.

Guest Post: 3 Natural Cold & Flu Busters

Do you ever wish there was some way to naturally protect your family during cold and flu season? Before you rush out and get a flu shot, I’ve got some great tips to boost your immune system and fight off those pesky little germs!

But before I get into that, let me tell you a little about myself… My name is Erin Disch and I met Bianca through our local MOPs group! I am passionate about Jesus and the world, natural living, healthy cooking and all things artsy! I have been married for 13 years to my wonderful husband, Jimmy. I am a stay-at-home, homeschool mom to our three young boys. They are amazing and crazy and my house is never quiet, yet I wouldn’t change it for the world! I am so blessed!

Nearly 4 years ago, when I found out I was pregnant with our third child, I began seeing a naturopath doctor to help decrease my chances of developing severely high blood pressure that I had suffered from during my first two pregnancies. We had tinkered with several dietary things prior to this, but I would say this truly began our path to developing a natural lifestyle for our family. We switched to a clean eating, mostly organic diet, started exercising regularly (which I need to get back into the habit of doing again – ugh!), began seeking alternative medicine for health concerns, and eliminated chemicals in our home by switching to Norwex for cleaning. Along the way, I’ve learned a few tricks for helping our family to ward off, or at least shorten the length and severity of the cold and flu. Ready for the goods? OK. Here we go!

1.     Consume Plenty of Probiotics

Did you know that 70-80% of your immune system is housed in your intestines where a vast collection of bacteria live? Bacteria line your intestines and help your body to digest food. Eating too much sugar or processed foods and not enough fiber and vegetables, as well as taking antibiotics can cause your gut flora to get out of whack. It’s important to keep the good bacteria in your gut at a healthy level to improve your immune system. There are a few ways that you can incorporate probiotics into your diet to get and maintain a healthy gut. Choose any or all of these to help boost your body’s germ fighting ability!

·      Taking store bought probiotic supplements.

·      Eating cultured dairy products like yogurt, buttermilk, kefir, and raw milk.

·      Adding in fermented foods such as sauerkraut, pickles or other pickled vegetables.

·      Drinking kombucha, a fermented tea – my personal favorite! You can buy it for $3-$4 a bottle or make your own for much less moolah. I follow this method. My favorite is to flavor it with fresh lemon chunks and raspberries when I bottle it for the second ferment. It becomes fizzy and is a super healthy substitute for soda. My whole family enjoys a glass every day! My 3 year old even threw a temper tantrum a couple weeks ago at 9:30 at night (2 hours after he was in bed) because he “needed a little cup of kombuchaaaa!” Oh boy. That child... At least it’s a healthy request, right?

2.     Boost Your Immune System with Elderberry

Elderberries have been used for centuries as a folk remedy. They are packed with Vitamins A, D and C, antioxidants and bioflavonoids which can boost your immune system and protect your cells from being infected by cold and flu viruses!

Elderberry is usually taken as a tea or syrup. You can purchase elderberry syrup or make your own for far less money. I prefer to buy dried elderberries and make my own syrup. It’s as easy as simmering some dried elderberries in filtered water, straining them, and adding some raw honey once it cools a bit. Easy peasy.

This recipe is a powerhouse of immune boosting goodness! It includes fresh ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Ginger on its own can calm nausea, help inhibit the growth of bad bacteria and fight off rhinovirus, which can cause the common cold. Cinnamon is also great at fighting off various kinds of infections and has tons of antioxidants and polyphenols. Likewise, cloves have powerful antibacterial properties and can also help boost your immune system! Wahoo!

When I make mine, I prefer to simmer a couple of broken up cinnamon sticks and 5 whole cloves with the elderberries instead of ground spices so it doesn’t have the gritty texture of the ground spices in it. If you love ginger, the finer you mince it, the spicier it is. I keep mine in a mason jar in the fridge and we all take it daily during cold and flu season.

3.     Take Advantage of Essential Oils

If you haven’t jumped on the essential oil train yet, here’s the skinny… Essential oils are concentrated, volatile, aromatic liquids that are obtained from plants. These oils have been used for their aromatic and healing benefits for hundreds of years.

There are quite a few companies out there that sell essential oils. This is a great article comparing the top 10  essential oils and is a great resource when choosing which brand to purchase.  I personally use Plant Therapy oils, as I particularly like that they are high quality, fit my budget, and they have a whole line of “Kid Safe” synergies that, as the name suggests, are safe for use on children of all ages. Many people may not be aware that there are several oils that are not safe for children under 10, so please be careful which oils you choose to use.  I encourage you to do some research and determine what you feel is best for your family.

Once you have your essential oils, there are several methods by which you can incorporate essential oils into your medicinal arsenal.

·      Apply them topically being sure to dilute to a safe amount, as it is almost never safe to apply them undiluted. These single oils are great for fighting off germs, but there are also blends available from many oil companies. Again, please be safe with which oils you use on kids! I like to make roller bottles with fractionated coconut oil and Plant Therapy’s Germ Destroyer blend for our kids and the Germ Fighter blend (their version of Thieves) for my husband and I. We apply it to the bottoms of our feet, our chest and back when we are feeling under the weather.

·      Inhaling oils by putting a couple drops on your pillow, tissue or aromatherapy necklace, using an aromatherapy inhaler, putting a few drops in a bowl of steaming water and deep breathing in the vapors, or by diffusing them. Diffusers work by creating a fine mist of the essential oils and dispersing them in the air making them more easily absorbed by your lungs. I have this diffuser and really like it for in our bedroom or smaller living spaces. 

·      Ingesting them. Although many people do ingest oils, our family does not. According to Robert Tisserand, a leading expert in aromatherapy and essential oil safety, there can be long term risks associated with ingesting oils if you don’t “absolutely and totally know what you are doing.” Since I’m not a certified aromatherapist, I’ll stick to the other methods described above, just to be safe. But again, please look into this yourself and choose what you feel is safe for you!

So there you have it folks! I hope your family can benefit from incorporating one or more of these tricks into your home! Have a happy and healthy winter!

Currently (vol 1)

Thinking about// My parents will be moving to Europe in less than a week and will be gone for 2 years. On one hand I am really happy for them and am totally hoping for a family trip there in the future, but on the other hand I am thinking about how their absence will affect my daughters. Penny is very close with my mom and I know she will miss her terribly. What is almost worse is that Ruby really won't know what she's missing out on, and I wonder how this two year assignment will affect her relationship with them when they return.

Reading// Dark Hope: Book One of the Archangel Prophecies. This is the first book that I've read since finishing the Hunger Games series last summer and I have been really hungry (wow, no pun intended) for a good book. The first 100 pages were slow, but in the span of 2 pages I knew that I'd be hooked for the rest of the series!

Thankful for// my backyard. On super hot days, I'll cook dinner and we take it outside. We don't have a picnic table yet, so most evenings dinner is served on a blanket in the grass. A cool breeze, the scent of my peach tree wafting over, the curious clucks of the chickens and laying while eating dinner (a la Ancient Roman style).

Photographing// who else? These cuties!

Loving// experimenting with my lavender and lemon oil essential oils. I recently started using essential oils for wellness, and have really started to love the intense flavors that these two oils bring to my cooking and baking. I've used lemon oil in several recipes that normally call for lemon juice (try Blueberry Yogurt Popsicles) and I also tried lavender lemonade!

One last Lake House Dinner + Lavender Lemonaid Recipe (with Essential Oils)

“I participated in an Influencer Activation Program on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for the Beef Checkoff. I received products to facilitate this review and a promotional item to thank me for participating.”

7 days.

That's all the time that my parents have until they take off for a fabulous two year assignment to Germany.

Between the mixed emotions of their departure, we knew one thing was for sure - we had to take one last family trip to Mount Rainier and we had to have a one last hurrah dinner on the deck of their lake house. The house that hosted our wedding, the house where we lived for the first nine months of my daughter's life. There's a ton of memories tied up here, and farewell dinner was a little bit of closure for this life changing event for them.

What did we serve?

Filet mignon wrapped in bacon, seasoned with Williams & Sonoma Butcher's Rub
Baked Potatoes
Sourdough bread
grill roasted corn on the cob
and my new favorite.. Lavender Lemonaid.

You'll need:
1 large, juicy lemon
1/2 cup raw honey
1/2 cup water + 6 cups water
6 drops of doTERRA Lemon Essential Oil
3 drops of doTERRA Lavender Essential Oil
ice

You'll do:
1. Juice the lemon into your pitcher
2. Gently heat the 1/2 cup of raw honey with 1/2 cup of water in a small sauce pan. Heat just until the water and honey combine well, you don't want to boil it. Remove from heat.
3. Add your drops of lemon essential oil and lavender essential oil to the honey mixture.
4. Pour the honey mixture into the pitcher with the lemon juice. Mix well.
5. Add the 6 cups of cold water.
6. Fill your pitcher with ice.
Now let that cool down and garnish with a sprig of lavender from your garden and you've got an absolutely delicious spa-like drink!

This was an excellent, hearty meal after our day trip to Mount Rainier. After an unexpected 4 mile hike from Narada Falls down to Longmire, it's an understatement to say that we were tired and hungry!

The Beef Checkoff was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. It's a national marketing and research program funded by America's cattle farmers and ranchers. Cattle farmers, ranchers and importers direct the national checkoff program, which uses funds toward research and promotion efforts designed to increase domestic and/or international demand for beef. The Cattlemen's Beef Board and USDA oversee the collection and spending of these beef checkoff funds. You might be familiar with "Beef. It's What's For Dinner."

Bluberry Yogurt Popsciles with doTERRA Lemon Essential Oil

Do you use essential oils therapeutically or in your cooking? I recently purchased my first set of doTERRA oils through That Mama Gretchen (Breathe, OnGuard and Lemon Essential Oil) and I've been having a blast experimenting with the lemon in my cooking.

Check out my recipe for Blueberry Yogurt + doTERRA Lemon Essential Oil popsicles on her blog!

__________

Did you see my recipe for raspberry creamsicle popsicles on the blog earlier? I made them using my Zoku Duo popsicle mold, but you can really use any mold you like. Check out that post to see the recipe & enter my giveaway for the adorable Zoku Fish Pops 

(which are sure to make your kiddies giggle).