Happy Thanksgiving (and a Tip for Too Much Pie)!

Hello, my healthy hippies!

I hope you've had a wonderful Thanksgiving with all of your loved ones. My heart feels so full with love for my family and friends, especially my husband and superhero son, and I hope you've had a great day, too. I've found some great recipes that I wanted to share during the interim between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the classic days for overindulgence (at least for me!) but for today I just wanted to say thank you for your readership and support.

Enjoy the last hours of your Thanksgiving and remember if you overate (like I did), try rubbing a little doTERRA peppermint essential oil on your very full belly. The diet can start tomorrow but for tonight, try the peppermint and enjoy that extra piece of pie you've had your eye on.

Hell yes, I'll have another piece of pie!

Happy Thanksgiving!


Don't have any peppermint oil on hand but want to be prepared for Christmas dinner? Click here to stock up!

Breathe Easy

After needing to spend a year down in the desert, my husband and I were able to move our son back up to the mountains--hooray! We're so excited to be back but unfortunately, my sinuses don't agree. I don't know if it's the change in altitude, the seasonal transition, or if I just caught a minor cold but my nose has been more stuffed than a turkey.

Get it? Because Thanksgiving is this week? HAHAHA.

Sorry. I have a co-sleeping baby and sleep deprivation is kicking my butt.

Anyway, I felt miserable. I didn't want to take any over the counter meds, not because I'm necessarily opposed to them but I'm still breastfeeding and whatever I ingest can end up in my milk supply. I was suffering through the congestion until I remembered that I have an oil for that--the Breathe blend!

Ta da!

This blend is amazing. A couple deep breaths of this and my nose was wide open. There are a few ways I like to use this essential oil:

1. Inhale it.  You can just open up the lid of the bottle or, for a deeper breath, I like to use these neat nasal inhalers from Aroma Tools. Just add 8-10 drops on the cotton insert, reassemble the inhaler, and boom, you're ready to go.

2. Diffuse it. Maybe the blend is a little intense for direct inhalation for you or you just don't want to sit around periodically shoving a nasal inhaler up your nose--I get it. Try using it in a diffuser! doTERRA makes some great ones (I love the lotus) and diffusing it in whatever room you're in is a great way to reap the aromatic benefits of this oil blend. Using it overnight is a great way to keep those nasal passages open so you don't wake up congested and with a sore throat from mouth breathing all night.

3. Foot it. Applying oils to the bottoms of your feet is a great way to absorb the oil because the pores are large and soak up the oils like a sponge. I like to do this in conjunction with inhaling or diffusing it to get the double whammy.

This is also a great oil for people with more chronic sinus issues. My husband has asthma and is prone to sinus infections plus he has a deviated septum which basically means that at any time, he's at least somewhat congested. But when he uses the Breathe blend, his nose clears and he can take a deeper breath which is particularly useful now that we're back to living at 7,000 feet above sea level.

Who doesn't want to breathe a little easier? I know I do! Want to try the Breathe blend for yourself? Click here!

Skunked!

Last night, one of our poor doggies, a beautiful Siberian husky/golden retriever mix named Sadie, had her first encounter with a skunk. Sadie is the first dog I ever owned and at first I panicked, thinking, "Oh no! My poor puppy! What if the skunk bit her, too?! OH NO!"

From ovary exploder to majestic beast.
We're somewhat attached to her.

Once we realized she was unharmed, if very smelly, we noticed that she had been sprayed right between the eyes. That means that my beautiful but far from brilliant dog walked up to a wild animal, ignored all the warning signs, and shoved her face right up next to the skunk's . . . biological warfare.

This made for a smelly dog and a subsequently smelly house as well.

While my poor husband tried to fight back vomit, I quickly consulted a friend whose dogs had also recently fallen victim to a skunk. Here is her three step plan for curing a skunked puppy:

1. Drink heavily.

Check!

2. Apply a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap to your wild beast. I scoured Google and came up with what seems to be a general consensus on a recipe:

*1 bottle (1 quart) of hydrogen peroxide
*1/4 cup of baking soda
*1-2 drops of dish soap (optional)

I also recommend adding a couple drops of essential oil. The Purify blend seems to be the fan favorite but as I shamefully didn't have any on hand, lemon, lavender, and peppermint are all good deodorizers (and available all together in the Beginner's Trio).

Once mixed, use it immediately as you want to scrub your dog while the hydrogen peroxide is reacting with the baking soda.

Science!

3. Continue drinking heavily.


My husband and mother-in-law gave poor Sadie a bath but my husband was hesitant to use the hydrogen peroxide so close to her eyes so we didn't follow the recipe exactly. However, the bath greatly improved the smell of the dog so I'll consider it a success.

Once the dog was taken care of, we were left with another problem: the house. The whole house stunk like a skunk. The hallway leading to the bedrooms wasn't too bad so I took a spray bottle mixed with some water, fractionated coconut oil, and doTERRA peppermint and blasted the hallway. Within about fifteen minutes, the skunk smell was gone and replaced by the fresh scent of peppermint.

It's like living inside a stick of gum.

The kitchen and living room were another matter and required more heavy artillery. I broke out the diffuser and added a mixture of lemon, peppermint, and melaleuca (about three drops of each). Within the hour, the skunk smell was gone!

Because we didn't used the complete recipe for the anti-skunk bath on our dog, her face was still a little pungent. Many doTERRA oils are safe for dogs but you need to be careful--just because you love the smell doesn't mean they will so dilution is important, especially for small dogs. It would also do well for you to be very careful around their eyes, ears, and nose just like you would a human. I thought the lemon, peppermint, or melaleuca might be too harsh on her eyes (especially if she already took a face full of skunk) so instead I took some lavender diluted with coconut oil and rubbed it between my hands. I let her sniff my palms to be sure she didn't hate it and then I gently pet her head, rubbing the oil into her fur. She loved the extra attention after such a traumatic evening and there was a definite decrease in skunk stench.

After such a crazy, smelly night it was so nice to go to bed with the house smelling of essential oils instead of skunk! Have any of you tried essential oils to deal with a skunk blast? Let me know in the comments!