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. 

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. 

Being cliche and wanting to be healthier

I know you're supposed to talk about getting healthy, and working out and eating less sugar and all that jazz around new years but I don't follow those rules so here's my blog post about it in May.

I've been wanting to jump back in to eating A LOT better and working harder on being healthier in general so I'm declaring June as my kick-off. We don't eat terrible or sit on our tush all day but there could definitely be some room for improvement.

Some goals of mine (and I'm hoping to rope Josh into it too), and obviously they are super cliché, don't judge.

Eat less sugar
I am a sweets girl to my core so this is obviously a hard one. I seriously ate ice cream almost daily the first year of Beck's life (thank you breastfeeding). I usually do pretty well on the no sweets at all except one day a week thing. It's the perfect balance for me so I'm going back to it!

Incorporate more vegetables 
I told you this was cliche... but seriously, I need to find ways to incorporate more vegetables. I love almost all vegetables but my laziness gets the best of me when it comes to preparing them for lunches and dinners. Meal planning and prepping, green smoothies, juicing and lots of baby carrots for snacks are in my future.

Buy athletic shoes and actually work out more
My excuse for not working out as much is that I don't have any athletic shoes and it's actually a pretty legitimate excuse so I'm planning on getting these tomorrow! I usually walk at least 2 miles a day (thank you stroller with a odometer) but my goal is to up that and take Beck on longer walks since it's nicer outside. I'll be setting daily steps/mileage goals and working to reach them everyday. I also have a month long abs/arms/legs workout I'll be doing to tone up my non-existent muscles. It only takes 10 minutes a day and it's killer.

Take better care of my emotional health
It's so easy to forget this one (especially as a mom) but I want to make it a priority. The plan is to not overcommit and put too much onto my plate (ie. say no to more things), take more baths (they are life-giving for me),  unplug from social media more often, and take real days off from working every week. Stress be gone!

I think thats all my goals for now. Any tips??? It's not going to be a huge change from what I'm doing now but I'm hoping the little improvements here and there will make a world of difference.

vitamin D changed my life

That title sounds a little bit dramatic but seriously...

For the past couple months i've been so tired all day.. like falling asleep at the computer tired even after getting 8 hours of sleep at night. Fatigue all day, everyday... it felt like a truck hit me. (I was sometimes napping twice in one day!) Not to mention, i was getting a headache like clockwork around 3 or 4pm.
I went to my doctor a couple weeks ago to get some blood work done to make sure i wasn't dying of cancer or something, and it turns out I was extremely deficient in vitamin D (which is pretty common in portland)

I bought a little bottle of the vitamins at whole foods and guess what... i haven't felt tired since. I've seriously had more energy than i've had in a long time and my mind feels crystal clear. I don't know how this is possible but i'm just glad it is. This tiny little vitamin is a life saver.

Thank you vitamin D!

p.s. seriously, if you have some of these symptoms it's worth a shot. Start with a lower dosage or get your blood levels checked to know exactly what to take. I take 5,000 IUs but its more common that people only need 250. i'm not a doctor so maybe you should talk to yours first... but a small amount probably wouldn't hurt.

23 goals // add a mile each month

At the beginning of the year I jotted down some goals for 2013. They range from "Make cheese at least once" to "go to NYC" to "get a new tattoo". I'll share about them here as I accomplish them... something to keep me accountable.
One on-going one that'll run throughout the year is "Add a mile each month". So I started with running one mile 5-6 days a week in January, upped it to 2 in february, and come friday it'll be 3. These are the easy months, talk to me in july or august... yikes! I think this will be a really good plan for me. I've been a runner since I was a teenager but mostly just 3-5 miles a day so i'm looking forward to getting a little more accomplished in my running.

To be honest, I haven't been working out super consistently since this time last year.. i was running and doing workout dvds here and there but over the summer and through fall and winter i was having some health issues (extremely nauseous 24/7, super fatigue, bad stomach pain) and working out worsened it so i just gave it up completely until i got things sorted out. It's mostly gone now except for the occasional nauseous days but overall, i'm feeling a MILLION times better.

Running again has been great, i'm pretty out of shape as far as my lungs are concerned but 7 months off will do that to you. I've also been doing ballet beautiful 3 times a week (which is AMAZING by the way) and stretching 20 minutes a day (trying to get my flexibility back but my ballet days... we'll see how that goes!).

Hooray for getting to be active again! Does anyone else want to do this "add a mile each month" with me??

Homemade deodorant

Does antiperspirant deodorant weird you out?? Yeah, me too. There is plenty of debate over the topic, so why not play it safe and make your own.

I've meaning to do this for ages, and now that I've done it I keep wondering why I put this off for so long. I had everything in my pantry to make it, and it took like two minutes!

But does it work?? Yes, and quite well. I've been using it for about two weeks now and it can hold its own through long runs and sweaty workouts. I love the stuff!

1/4 cup baking soda
1/4 cup arrowroot powder*
4 tablespoons coconut oil
10 drops/shakes essential oil* (I used tea tree)
A tin or jar with lid

In a bowl, stir together dry ingredients, then add oils gradually until you like the consistency, mixing with a fork. Store in a closed container at room temp. (If the mixture seems too soft, try refrigerating it for a bit to firm it up.)

To apply, scoop up a bit with your finger, hold it against your skin for a couple seconds so it melts a little, then rub around.

*You could try cornstarch in place of the arrowroot powder. However, cornstarch may lead to yeast infection so I strongly recommend arrowroot powder.
*You could leave out the essential oil but essential oils have antibacterial properties and bacteria is what causes odor. All would not be lost if you left it out though, the baking soda absorbs odor as well.