New essential oils goodies!

So I've probably made it clear by now that purchasing the starter kit from Young Living was one of the best decisions we've made as a family so far. I like them a lot... and I talk about them a lot (If we're friends in real life, you know this x100) and I feel like everyone needs to make the investment (save $ for a couple months!) because it's SO worth it. It's not just for hippies or weirdos, promise. (Though I am that weirdo that made a pretty video about essential oils)

Anyway, you can read more about how I got into them (and my skepticism) and why I chose the brand I did and yada yada by clicking on the essential oils tag where I keep all the posts but I wanted to pop in and talk about the brand new kit they released that replaced the one I first bought and started out with.

The one I got is awesome and thought it couldn't get much better but it did. They replaced 3 oils with Copaiba, Digize, and RC which are literally 3 of my favorites and are SUPER amazing to have on hand for keeping you and your fams healthy. (They were the 3 I always recommended getting after you got the main ones with the kit). So this is an awesome upgrade! They also improved the packaging and branding and added tiny little bottles so you can take them on the go or share with a friend or something.

And I thought this graphic that some friends put together perfectly showed how diverse the oils in the starter kit are. They do this and even more...



I wish I could sit down with all of you and tell you face to face how much these dang little oils have done and let you smell them and borrow them. But since I can't you could always email me and pick my brain, I have a ton of experience with them now and will openly share just about anything :) So don't hesitate to do that if you're curious about something! [ vanillaandlace@gmail.com ]
 Brand New Premium Starter Kit from YL from Abi Porter on Vimeo.

UP MOVE Update.

I've been using the UP MOVE for about a month and I'm still obsessed with it. As a total type-A, goal oriented person this little guy has been a dream, the app is so straight-forward, organized and accurate and I'm like a little kid checking on it 30 times a day to see where I'm at as far as my daily goal.

It has little encouragements that you can get during the day to tell you you've made it half-way or hit your goal and what-not, it's a fun feature. And if you haven't met your goals, it calculates your average and has you aim to beat those everyday. Like I said, awesome!

I've been playing around with the food feature on the app too. You can input everything you eat and it calculates the total carbs, proteins, sugars, etc and organizes it all so well. It also keeps track of calories in vs. calories out so if you were trying to lose weight that could be a really helpful tool.

Over the course of the last month I've slowly built my average up to 9,000 steps and have even hit my 10,000 goal a few times... woot woot! Progress made! I'm trying to convince some of my friends to get one so we can have competitions for steps, wouldn't that be fun? You can see a screenshot of what my activity looked like on a day we did a hike in this photo. The 'longest idle' function is a kick in the butt to get moving.

Anyway, I totally love this thing and religiously wear it everyday and also every night to track my sleep. If you're in the market for something like this I highly recommend it (you can purchase one here), it's the best one I've tried yet!


This post was created in partnership with Jawbone. As always, all opinions and words are entirely my own and I'm super grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate with companies like this. 

Make: Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

Yet another homemade product, are you sick of me yet? Well, I initially made this out of necessity. We had run out of dishwasher detergent and the dishes in the sink we're piling up and I was desperate. And a friend and I were recently talking about making it ourselves anyway so I looked up a couple recipes and I already had everything so I gave it a go.

Making your own cleaners is hit or miss, they usually get the job done "enough" but for me I need them to work extremely well, not just "its good for a natural product". A semi-clean house is not clean in my nook. So I was skeptical to say the least! But we've been using it in every load of dishes for a week and they are crystal clear and clean. I'm SO impressed. Honestly, this works just as well as the tabs we were using up from costco before we ran out. I know the added essential oils have a lot to do with it, they are super potent and help break down grease. And thieves has anti-bacterial properties so its a super cleaning machine!

I don't feel the NEED to make every single thing that's in our house but if it saves us money, I'm all about it. And I like knowing exactly what's going on our dishes to clean them. Everything in non-toxic in this concoction.

Note: I didn't plan on putting them in ice cube trays to make tabs. I added a tiny bit of water to mix in the oils really good but left it as a powder and it hardened rock solid in the jar after an hour. So I dug it out with a fork and put it in molds this time to save it. Next time I'll just blend up the dry ingredients and mix in the oils by hand and just keep it as a powder. One less step!

Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

Ingredients:

2 cups washing soda
1 cup baking soda
1 cup citric acid
1/2 cup kosher salt
1 teaspoon castile soap
10 drops of thieves essential oil
10 drops of lemon essential oil
*1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar (I skipped this, see note above)

Directions:

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl
mix in castile soap and the thieves and lemon essential oil
Stir until the soap and essential oils are mixed throughout, you may need to do this by hand
Put the mixture in a jar and use a heaping tablespoon in each load. I usually add vinegar to the rinse aid compartment too.

*If you want to make hard tabs to use:
Skip the 1tsp of castile soap. Gradually add vinegar a little bit at a time and mix well (some fizzing will occur and the mixture will start to clump) You may not need the entire amount of vinegar, so add it a little at a time.
pack well into two ice cube trays (take your time doing this and make sure they are well compacted)
set ice cube trays out to dry for at least 24 hours in a sunny spot
take tabs out of trays and store in a tight-lidded container

Lipstick: My top 5 favorites!

I've developed quite a knack for lipstick these days. I could literally spend an hour of every trip to Target looking up and down the cosmetic aisle for a lipstick that will be my next victim (AKA get worn obsessively). I don't really branch out though, I tend to stick to the coral/orange/red vibe... all in the matte variety and I don't stray from it. Not kidding, I don't have any pinks/nudes/etc or any glossy lipstick. Change is hard.

But since I do only use ones in this color palette I know the shades well and have returned many I didn't like and have thus narrowed down my favorite five! For right now, at least.

Pictured above (from R-L) is
NYX matte in Indie flick - This one is definitely the most orangey but not too much. It wears well, stays on and isn't too drying like mattes can be
Revlon Coralberry - I recently got this to replace the very first lipstick I ever ran out of which was Vegas volt by MAC. I read online that this was an exact dupe and it is! It's corally with gold hints. It was my first true [lipstick] love. It's not a matte lipstick but it definitely isn't glossy either
NYX soft matte lip balm in Antwerp - I love this formula so much! The color doesn't fade, it feels like nothing is on your lips and it smells like cupcakes. I have a few other colors (the orange and red ones) and I love them all.
Revlon color burst in Striking spectaculaire - This was a recent find and I'm totally obsessed with it. It feels AMAZING on your lips (and its minty) and it doesn't get dry or bleed. This is my favorite true red.
Topshop matte in Rio rio - I randomly picked this one up when I was in NY and it instantly shot to the top of my list of favorites. The color is amaaaazing and its buttery but matte. Definitely worth ordering if you're not near Topshop.

There you have it! All of these are drugstore lipsticks with the exception of the topshop one and can be bought for $6-$7... which is right up my alley! And since I'm always looking for new ones, do you have any suggestions for me to try?

And here's a swatch test to get a better idea of the colors
Top to bottom:
Revlon color burst - Striking Spectaculaire
NYX Soft matte lip balm - Antwerp
NYX matte lipstick - Indie Flick
Revlon - Coralberry
Topshop Matte - Rio rio

Olly!

Chances are if you've been in Target at all recently you've spotted the cute new set-up of Olly vitamins. When I first saw it a couple months ago as I passed by I almost bought whatever "it" was just based on looks alone (good branding will do that to you) and when I realized it was vitamins and supplements with cute names I was sold.

They have quite a few to choose from to tailor to each need in the fam. So for us, that meant the women's multi for myself, the men's multi for Josh and the Undeniable beauty for me too (I'll take all the help I can get!)

 In the past I've had a really hard time sticking to taking vitamins because they taste gross or you have to take them with a meal and I'd forget but for the past month Josh and I both have been super on top of it, probably because they are delicious and you can take them whenever you need (empty stomach or not!).  Obviously, vitamins aren't a substitute for healthy eating but I like knowing that I'm filling in the gaps that I'm possibly missing with food every day.
And I'm excited to try the kid's multi + probiotic for Beck when he is 2. What kid doesn't want to eat a gummy vitamin with breakfast??

One of my favorite things about the vitamins is the ingredients are made from natural sources, no dyes and all that yuck. Purple carrots as a dye, yep.. thats how I like it!




Olly is hosting a giveaway right now too! The grand prize for the sweepstakes is a Day Spa package for a lucky winner & a friend, a 6 months supply of Olly Vitamins, and a personal wellness consultation with Olly's resident nutritionist! 100 runner ups will receive an Olly product of their choosing. You can see the details and enter here if you'd like: http://bit.ly/1KtzMf5
You get 20% off your order for entering too!

This post was created in partnership with Olly. As always, all opinions and words are entirely my own and I'm super grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate with companies like this. 

UP MOVE!

Hooray for working towards my health goals! I got this steps/sleep tracker called UP MOVE and I've been using it the past week and it's such a fun way to challenge myself and keep up with progress. First of all, I thought 10,000 steps a day was the average number people aim for but that is SO MUCH. I kept thinking I run after a 1 year old and walk around our neighborhood everyday thats good enough right? Not even close to 10,000 steps... I think I'm averaging 8,000 right now!
I love challenges and meeting goals so its been fun to see where I'm at in the evening and then I'll suggest we go on a long walk if I'm not close (which I never am) so its working!

You can also wear it to bed every night to track your sleep, which is so fascinating! You can see how many hours you were in deep sleep, or light sleep or even got up and it's SO accurate. You can kind of see it in the photo below... the dark blue lines are the deep sleep and the light blue are the light sleep.

The little device connects via bluetooth to your phone and everything is kept track of in the Up app.
You can also keep track of your food intake and weight through the app too. I haven't used that part yet, but it seems easy to do!

I usually wear the UP MOVE on my hip throughout the day and on the wristband at night. I just need to up my steps everyday, I want to make it to a 10,000 average by the end of the month or something! I'll check back in :)

If you've been looking for a tracker like this, you can get one here! It's really affordable and I'm loving it.



This post was created in partnership with Jawbone. As always, all opinions and words are entirely my own and I'm super grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate with companies like this.