Beat the cold season tea

School is back in season, so naturally you know your kids are going to be covered in germs from hundreds of their classmates. So I thought I would tell how I prepare my tea during this time of year. Of course the

Of course the best way to deal with cold season is to take care of your body before you get sick. A healthy diet, good sleep, exercise and keeping your water intake is a good start to keep you body functioning at optimal performance. This will make it easier for you body to fight off illness.

Here is my Tea: I Like to do peppermint and chamomile tea, with lemon juice, local raw honey, and some cinnamon.

Peppermint tea: Is an anti bacterial, and it's soothing quality is effective against both stuffy noses and an upset stomach

Chamomile tea: Is really effective in calming your body and promotes sleep.

Lemon juice: Is packed full of vitamin C and is said to decrease the strength of the common cold.

Local raw honey: Soothes sore throats, and is a great immune booster

Cinnamon: Is both a powerful anti-bacterial and anti-oxidant. 

Crayon Lip Gloss

I made myself some crayon lip gloss.

Just a few broken crayons of your color choice, some beeswax, and coconut oil. Melt and mix and your done.

On stovetop slowly melt together in a small pot

1 Tablespoon of coconut oil

1/2 inch slice off of a 1oz bar of beeswax

add broken crayons till you receive  desired colored

I added 1 drop of Theives essentail oil and 1 drop of sweet orange essential oil after pouring into container. 

Apple cider vinegar rinse

This is the recipe I’m using for my no poo challenge

Ingredients

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 Green tea bag
3 drops of rosemary essential oil
3 drops of lavender essential oil
1 1/2 cups Water

Steep the tea in hot water then and pour all the ingredients into a bottle.

Use: Wet hair then apply rinse to scalp and run fingers down through hair to the tips. Some people prefer using a spay bottle.

ACV has a similar acidic pH balance to hair. Shampoo is alkaline and upsets your natural pH balance wich is why we have to shampoo so often.

Green tea can help reduce shedding, help with dandruff and psoriasis, and increase hair growth.

Rosemary essential oil is good for hair growth as well. For the men rosemary slows down premature hair loss.

Lavender essential oil is great for keeping hair strong and prevention of dandruff.

DIY Body wash

Ingredients

1 cup Castile soap ( I used Dr. Woods)
1 cup water
3 Tbsp coconut oil ( I used Better Body)
1/2 cup olive oil (I used Organic ’ s extra virgin)
5-7 Drops of essential oils ( I used peppermint and lavender from Fabulous Frannie)

Add all the ingredients into your container using a funnel, give it a good shake and your ready to go.

This body wash is thin but lathers really well so you only need a little bit. It rinses clean and leaves skin soft.

Wool Dryer balls

First grab some wool yarn from your craft store. I was able to make 4 dryer balls with just one skein.

To start the ball wrap around three of your fingers 20 times

Then wrap another 20 times around the middle.

This should allow you to pinches the sides together to make a circle.

Keep wrapping yarn around until it's the size of your palm.

Once all your balls are made stuff them down a leg of old nylon stockings. You need to separate the balls I just tied knots in the the stocking between each ball. You can use an acrylic yarn but don't use wool.

Now to felt your balls you need to run them through your washer and dryer at the hottest setting. Once done just remove from the stockings and add a few drops of your favorite essential oil to each ball and leave in your dryer for the next time you do laundry.

Your new dryer balls will save you money by reducing dryer time, but still leave your clothes static
free soft and smelling great!

Circumcision

I have had a really hard time finding the right way to talk about this very important topic, but today I decided to find those words share my opinions.

First off it is probably best to let you know that I did circumcise my son. My husband and I regretted our choice to circumcise almost immediately. It was a hard decision to make and I personally believe it was one we shouldn't have had to make. During my pregnancy I already knew that my hormones and my feelings where running high, and my husband being the sensitive guy he is knew he was more emotional as well. So when it came to making a decision about whether or not we would circumcise our son we set out to only look at the cold hard facts, no moral code or emotions where allowed in this decision. So we set off to find as much scientific facts on circumcision as we could. We saw a lot about how circumcision reduces STDs, UTIs, and promotes cleanliness to reduce infections due to poor hygiene. We decided not to risk those and decided circumcision was the right choice. To be honest the idea that a little boy would be responsible to carefully clean himself to prevent infections terrified me so much, I think that was my breaking point. Circumcision isn't that simple tough.

Your moral code should be considered when making this choice. The moral implication that you have the right to cut part of somebody’s body off of them without their consent and without a life threatening emergency just because you are their parents is unethical. You shouldn't be able to mis-treat your child and your role as their parent because of a slight possibility of health complications. We don’t remove the appendix or tonsils from children as soon as they are born because it isn't okay to remove a part of somebody’s body just because it might become an issue. Luckily it was never routinely done but there was a time when it was okay to circumcise women as well. In 1996 this practice became illegal, but un cut women are far more likely to have an UTI than a uncut man. So why do we do this to our sons?

The anti RIC (routine infant circumcision) community gets under my skin even though I agree with them. Why? They go for very aggressive terms trying to guilt people or shock them into not doing circumcision. Terms like genital mutilation, torture, and sexual violence. I understand that they are just trying to make their message clear and shocking enough to help you understand how big this issue is.  The problem is that it scares people away from listening to you. It also makes people feel like anyone who does circumcise is a monster but in most cases they are just misinformed, or not informed enough. I personally think these terms imply that intent of these parents were to harm their children. The majority of the United States is honestly convinced that circumcision is healthiest for their child. If you want to people to listen to you, you need to have a kind heart.

Like I said before this decision shouldn't be in the hands of parents. The average parent is not a medical expert, they don’t have all the information regarding circumcision and there is only a few short emotional  months to figure it out.  We need to ban this barbaric custom, medically there is no reason for RIC and the risk to the infant can be deadly. The fact the hospitals have been doing this unnecessary procedure for decades without any need makes me sick. We are suppose to be able to trust them with our health not fight them to keep our sons healthy and intact. I know some people would like to argue for those that do it for religious reason. I don’t think parents have the right to force religion on a child especially in such a permanent way. If an adult man wants to be circumcised, he can make that choice for himself nobody has the right to make that choice for him. You do not have the right to claim somebody else’s body.

DIY face toner

Ingredients
Green tea
Lavender essential oil
Tea Tree essential oil

Brew some green tea and let it steep till cool. Add 10 drops of tea tree oil, and 10 drops of lavender oil.

To use you can either put some on a cotton pad or in the palm of your hands and pat on face. Follow up with using a moisturizer.

If you have oily skin you can add some apple cider vinegar and/or use lemon juice/essential oil. If you use lemon it is suggested you don’t use it every day. Lemon can mess with your natural ph balance and lighten your skin.

Green tea contains a number of healthy benefits for skin such as it can increase the skin’s elasticity, cleanse the skin and reduce the size of pores and give your skin a youthful glow. Lavender evens out your skin tone and has a revitalizing effect on your skin. Tea Tree oil has natural antiseptic qualities, and anti-inflammatory properties that can be beneficial for acne prone skin.

Child Consent

Teaching children consent in today’s modern world is not only important it is crucial. We have separated ourselves from children so much that often times we don’t even consider them to be people, but rather property or a partial somebody. Property doesn't need to know about consent, when you hand someone one of your possessions you are giving consent to that person to touch your property. Our kids on the other hand are not our property and if we want them to be strong independent adults who respect others we need to teach them about consent as children.

I have seen it more times than I can count, a family gathering is coming to an end and a mom calls out “Sally, it’s time to leave go give grandpa a hug and kiss goodbye”. Sally cries “I don’t want to. I am scared!” The mom picks up Sally and says something along the lines of “You’re fine, grandpa is not scary” and/or “Go give him a hug right now.” We are convinced that we should disregard the child’s sense of safety or control over their own lives in the name of “being  polite. Family members who often want to be a part of our offspring’s lives will fit us with a social standard/obligation we pass on to our children because we feel close to this family member. However the child might not have the same sense of kindred spirit towards them or they might not be as comfortable expressing themselves with physical contact as others. Whatever their reasons we should always respect a child’s (or anybody’s) personal boundaries.

 

No means no. It is that simple when it comes to teaching a child to respect your boundaries or showing a child you respect theirs. Try asking your child if you can have a hug, share their food, or cut their hair. If your child says no, respect them same way you would want to be respected if you had told them no to the same things. When a child is poking your ear and you don’t like it you tell them “no means no” and explain that they need to respect you and your space. When tickling a child, the moment when their giggles turn to them saying no and asking you to stop, stop. Just because it seems silly to you that at one moment it was fun and the next they wanted it to stop doesn't mean you can disregard their feelings. We all have had something that made us genuinely upset and nobody else really understood, our feelings are not diminished by this.

Teaching our children about how consent applies to their own lives will let them feel safe and feel free to explore the world at their own pace. The world is a lot less scary if you know you have the power to say no. This is particularly important to teach our daughters.  I try and avoid gender stereotypes as much as possible, but let’s face it, we live in a rape culture that attacks women significantly more then men. Encouraging communication, setting boundaries and respect of those boundaries has the potential to revolutionize the human race for the better. Teaching this sort of thing to an adult that has had the ability to give consent stripped away from them repeatedly as a child is an extremely difficult thing to do and would be a lot easier if we started treating children like people and teaching these important lessons early.

Coconut oil body scrub.

Ingredients

2 cups of coconut
2 TBS of olive oil (You can use other oils too. This is to keep the coconut oil soft)
2 TBS of Epsom salt
5-10 drops of essential oils

Whip together the coconut and olive oil. ( it was suggested to me to use a stand mixer, seeing how I don’t have one I ended up using a whisk extension on my hand mixer. ) Add epsom salt and essential oil.

Use: rub on your body and let sit for a couple minutes. Rinse off in either a shower or bath.

Essential oil ideas.
Sweet orange for a pick me up
Peppermint for muscle pain (kinda feels like icy hot)
Lavender for those nice relaxing baths

    

Relaxing bath.

I recently tore a ligament or two in my ankle causing it to swell and bruise, it was quite painful. I was told by a friend to soak it after the first day. Wanting a speedy recovery I decided to spice up my bath.

1 handful of oats. This is to soothe and soften your skin, and after having my ankle wrapped up it was drying out.(If your concerned about clogging you pipes you can toss it into a coffee filter and tie it of with a rubber band)
5 drops of lavender oil for aromatherapy to soothe your nerves.
5 drops of rosemary oil to relax muscle pain and aches.

This is the concoction, and I must say I very much enjoyed it.

DIY carpet powder

DIY carpet powder

What you will need.
-Mason jar
-Essential oil
-Baking soda
-Paper

Start off by tracing and cutting out the shape of the mason jar lid. 

Make small little holes in the lid(I used a thumb tact), you will probably want larger hole then I made mine.

 Fill jar with baking soda, add 10 drops of essential oils and shake it up with the original lid. I used Lavender in mine, but you can use whatever you like in yours. Replace original lid with your paper lid. 

Fighting the parenting controversy

Parents love to tell other parents what they should or should not being doing with their kids. This can weigh very heavy on new parents who lack confidence in their choices, especially if the topic at hand is controversial. This push to always be politically correct in our society makes it extremely difficult to parent the most comfortable way, even if scientific studies are on their side. What is one to do when faced with the option to either raise their kids the best way they see fit or to avoid upsetting another parent?

My parenting journey has been an eye opening experience for me. I had my first of 2 kids 9 years ago and my second is  o what everyone told me about parenting. Being a first time parent I figured my opinions didn't matter, because I had no experience in raising kids. I did things with my daughter that went against ever fiber of my being. Things like: Induced and drugged labor, breastfeeding on a schedule, Cry it Out, yelling, spanking, not picking her up when she cried, forcing her play independently. These where all things I was told I needed to do for my daughter, these where also all of the things that also made me feel horrible afterwards.

With my son I mostly listened to myself. If a parenting choice made me feel bad, then I didn't do it. It has been the difference between night and day for me. I feel so much more comfortable with my choices and I don't need some book to tell me whether I am doing the right thing or not (however there are many books and science backing most of my choices). The reason why I know my choices are the best for me and my family is because I am happy and so is my family. I don't feel bad when I discipline my kids without punishment, I don't feel bad when I wake up in the morning to see my son sleeping next to me in my bed, I don't feel bad hugging my daughter because it made her sad when she broke my necklace, and I don't feel bad that to keep my 18 month old son comfortable I nurse him in public without a cover.

Now the hard the thing for me is to take these positive things in my life and be willing to share them. This comes back to being politically correct. People assume that if you take these controversial parenting ideals and show them to the world that you could only be doing this for one reason: to "force your opinions on others". This can be a really hard thing to overcome especially when people close to you constantly take offense, but I think it is worth the fight. I won't act like it is an easy fight. I have cried many times because people are offended my choices, in fact sometimes it feel likes someone is telling me that my happiness is offensive. 

  

When I decided to drown out all the negative comments about my parenting and push forward with sharing all the good things in my life a very strange thing shifted in my life. I became a inspiration to others. People started sharing their lives with me asking me for help, or telling me to keep doing what I was doing. Even some who weren't parents yet are planning on using me as a resource when they do have kids. Mom's want to have play dates with me so they can finally have someone to talk to. I think that is something worth fighting my own insecurities for. I am not going to hide my life just to avoid conflict with my family and friends, when I know I can empower someone else enough to be the kind of parent they want to be.

Headache Balm

My grandmother has chronic headaches that have gotten really bad in the last year. She has had her doctor run scans to try and diagnose, but they have no idea what is causing it. The headaches are so severe that she is unable to speak during them. Her doctor has given her a strong pain killer she is only allowed to take once a day, which only gives her small relief. So I decided to make her an essential oil headache balm, after having good personal experience with peppermint essential oils for my headaches. Today she called me to say she didn’t need take her pain killer yesterday because the balm was doing the trick!

In a small container mix:

5 tbls coconut oil (might want to work in some bee wax to help keep it solid)
4 drops lavender essential oils
4 drops rosemary essential oils
8 drops peppermint essential oils

Use: inhale for aromatherapy, or rub on forehead, temples, and/or back of the neck.