Here I am! 

With a short little blog about my (very new) journey into essential oils and why I took the plunge to become a distributor.

I have to just start by saying I am ridiculously excited about this. 
I've been pondering for a few days about how to put this post together, what information to give, what information to leave out, etc. I've decided to give you guys a quick summary of the oils, why I'm doing this and a little bit of information if you'd like to eventually order.

First things, first... 

Laaaaaavvvvvveeeeeender!!! 

This is the reason I started looking into essential oils. We have numerous lavender plants around our house now (3 thanks to the previous owners and 2 thanks to my future mother-in-law) and I absolutely LOVE them. I had been hearing about benefits of lavender for a while and decided to start researching... which spiraled into a full on fascination with essential oils. 

So what are essential oils?

Simple question. Simple answer. BIG benefits. 

An essential oil is a distilled liquid from the leaves, stems, flowers, bark, roots or other elements of a plant.  

These awesome oils can be used in a million ways. The oils and oil blends basically can take your body through a sensory change (that's what makes most sense in my head) and can instantly soothe, enlighten or balance your body and mind. They can even be used for personal care and household cleaning!

Why Young Living?

I chose to get into Young Living's oil vs. other brands for a few reasons. To start, they are safe on children and have amazing recommendations from some amazing people. Not to mention, they last forever! Click here to read a quick little article I came across explaining why someone would choice Young Living. 

I plan to update on different oils, covering uses/experiences and provide some everyday tips on how to easily incorporate the use essential oils in your home.

If you guys want to jump right in and order I'll provide that information below! 

Thank you so much for reading!

-Kayla

To enroll with my group click here and make sure the number 2893566 appears in the "Enroller ID" and "Sponsor ID" fields. 

You can either sign up as a retail customer or as a distributor (wholesale member). If you'd like more information about becoming a distributor you can message me here on my Facebook to chat! I wanted to keep this first entry short and sweet, so I can always put another one out about becoming a part of the team. 

I cannot cannot believe Summer is around the corner! We've had a busy past few months (and busy months coming up) and I've been feeling like I can't fully catch up... but things have been good, even if I don't always have clean pants!

Last week my cousin had another baby! Another niece for me (our babies call each other Auntie and she's really more like my sister than a cousin).

Here's Liam meeting baby Claire! He was SO so cute and curious and very excited. 

She is such a sweet little babe and taking her newborn pictures was so much fun! I'll post some after her birth announcement gets out. 

Lately it's been a lot of running around for me, juggling everything (photos, work, the house, etc.) but I'm also just so glad it's finally warming up outside. We have been outside as much as we can lately and I'm loving this "dig in the dirt" version of Liam. 

I've been planting a lot, getting a little crazy in my addiction to buying plants/flowers/garden goodies, etc. Our gardens in the front are starting to look okay... but I haven't even touched the side or back of our yard yet! Having almost 2 acres of gardens, mulch, trees and stubborn grass can be so much work. 

Here's a few pictures from hanging outside today with a little boy who hates baths, but doesn't mind getting sprayed in the face with ice cold hose water... toddlers.

Too funny! 

I do just love being outside. I feel better, I'm more productive... I'm just all in all happier with that good ol' Vitamin D. I've got a lot of fun things coming up these next fews months and lots of stressfulness going on. I'm making some positive changes for my own personal health that I'm so excited to update on and share once I get really rolling with it. But seriously... thank you sunshine, I feel like a new woman. 

 

-Kayla

Okay so... long time no see! Lots has been happening since I last posted. We went to Florida, had some (finally) amazing weather here in CT and Jake and I got engaged... no big deal. Haha, actually huge deal but I will find the time to write an entry about that soon. In short, it was awesome!

Anyways, I love Mondays. Seriously. I really do.

Mondays are my "day off" where I pretend I'm a cute stay-at-home mom, which is the best kind of pretend. This Monday we ended up going to a family yoga class with my friend Audrey and her son Isaac. It was so cute and I'm actually a little sore today from stretching. It's been so long since I did some yoga and it was awesome to bring Liam along and not worry about a sitter or planning.

And like... how cute is this!?

After yoga we grabbed lunch, Liam snoozed in the car (mommy win) and we headed to The Dinosaur Place in Oakdale. It's actually 10 minutes down the road from us and I've been dying to go for a while. They had a free event with Mystic where they brought touch tanks for the kids. It was really hard to get any pictures of that because I had to hold Liam since the tables weren't toddler size.

Super cool blue lobster man taken with one hand and no focus control... not too shabby.













The rest of The Dinosaur Place was really cool. We bought a handful of rocks, too!

There was a volcano that goes off every hour... kind of a let down that it really just roared and sprayed water but I guess it needs to be okay for little kids too... even though I wanted to see some lava!

After The Dinosaur Place we went home, got a little sunburned, cleaned out the garage and played with Brody. I felt 10,000 times better than I have in a long time. 

A little sunshine goes along way... 

-Kayla

I'm still here!

My goal was to start blogging weekly, but uh, like most pro-active goals... they can be unrealistic. We've had an annoying amount of sickness going around in our house, more snow days and the general chaos that goes on while trying to juggle jobs, boyfriends (okay, boyfriend, singular) and a toddler. I've been really trying to put myself more towards the top of my hypothetical to-do lists, find some time for myself and actually use that time wisely.

Blogging fits in nicely with that description! And doesn't cost me any money in the process, which is a plus. And while a completely necessary purchase for my day to day life and my photography, I got a new iMac... which is awesome!

So I'm sitting here from my new screen, ice water in hand, baby in bed, Pandora on, enjoying some "me" time. 

One of my favorite things (sometimes) about having a toddler is making new, fun things for him to eat. Today I came across some awesome rainbow colored noodles on someone's Facebook and we just had to...

I had to let go of my "food dye" fear, feed the kid a little evil red dye 40 and live it up.

I mean, this is worth it, right!? I was definitely more excited than Liam, but whatever.

And in case anyone is wondering, the tutorial someone posted called for plastic bags to sort the pasta and dye it. I ended up just cooking a box of pasta and taking portions of it, putting it in a container with a little water and however much food dye I thought felt right (measuring can suck it) shaking it up, rinsing, and wah-lah. 

Despite all the sicknesses, Liam had a great time at his cousin's 4th birthday party and at his Grandma's 

60th birthday party this weekend. 

Jamming on the drums with sweet Juliet at her Valentine's Day birthday party! 

And of course, Liam made his Grandma such a cute little painting for her birthday. 

- Kayla

Here I go... my first post about parenting styles, raising a tiny human and trying to keep your own sanity, kind of.

I've been getting little ideas and thoughts about writing a post about parenting styles for the past week. I truly feel like this could be a complete blog topic, rather than one post, but there's a few things that have really been irking me as a mom and as a person.

It starts with my complete distain for parenting labels. Although I've only been a mom for a short time I've had my fair share of labels.

From being called a "crunchy mama" to a "helicopter parent"  to an "attachment parenting hippie"... I'm not quite sure my official title. 

And while trending topics like attachment parenting and gentle parenting are totally necessary to understand aspects and styles of parenting they should not be taken to mold us as parents or label us as specific kinds of parents. I really could go on and on about how ridiculous I think classifying yourself as a parent to fit a certain kind of mold is but that's besides my real point here.

I guess really my main point, without going off on a tangent for the rest of my life, is to really just be the best parent you can be, period.

Stop labeling yourself, stop comparing yourself to the mother next door or the mom on social media with an outrageous following. Stop freaking out about what brand of cereal you're feeding your kids and stop letting the judgments of others turn into an added pressure on yourself as a parent and as a person.

Be present with your children and stop endlessly trying to fix them. 

I think the added labeling of parents pin balls against a constant need to diagnose our children. I'm constantly seeing gadgets, methods or ways to turn that bad sleeper into a "good" one or ways to keep your children more quieter, less cranky and frankly less of a pain in the ass.

If we can stop labeling ourselves as parents, we might be able to stop labeling our children, stop trying to change them or "fix" them and sincerely let them be little. 

This past year I have truly learned the meaning of watching your child grow before the blink of an eye. And I may be a little late in my New Year's resolution but this year I'm going to stop trying to be that parent I want to be and just be the best parent I can be. I'm going to not fixate on how artistic or awesome I want my child to be, and let him be him. I'm going to let him be little and I'm going to officially unlabel myself as a parent.

And when we have days like tonight, when we throw every last morsel of a delicious well balanced meal that I cook and insist on having frozen eggos for dinner because we're teething and because well, we're one... I'm going to say, it's cool. Tomorrow's another day. And tomorrow my babe will be another day older. And tomorrow I will have one less precious day ahead of me raising him.

- Kayla

Every snow day requires making cookies, hot chocolate, movies and (attempting) to play in the snow, right?

No cabin fever here... yet!

Swift, Liam, you're real swift.

This was also a BIG day for Brody. He came from South Carolina when we adopted him so our smaller snow storm a few months a go was the first he saw snow. I'm going to say we've got about 2 1/2 feet in some spots right now so this was crazy to the pup.

This doesn't look okay.

We really had an awesome day at home. I even got to clean out our spare bedroom that still had my Christmas present wrapping explosion lingering... here's my newish work space.

            We're still not sure about the burnt orange walls but it works, for now. 

And what snow day doesn't have a little wine?

- Kayla

What else should I be doing on a Saturday night, huh?

Seriously, I do love painting with Liam. I've always loved to paint but I sincerely haven't been able to muster up the organization to really dig myself into my own paintings while being a mother, working and attempting to keep my house from becoming a hazard zone. We tend to "collab" paint.

Here's tonight's painting... which was pretty short lived because we decided to taste the paint after 5 minutes and became utterly disgusted when it wasn't as tasty as we'd like.

I usually start with a flat canvas and put an array of colors on the actual canvas for him. This is my clever way of semi arranging colors.

A little progress shot of some pretty nasty finger painting skills.

After I let him spread out the colors we took paper towels and "blotted" the canvas. This gave it a really cool texture!

After that I sprinkled some sea salt on top of it to add even more texture, cleaned up the edges and hello new fireplace mantle piece.

The ar'teest himself, settling down with some books before bed.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

- Pablo Picasso

I truly do hope Liam remains creative as he grows. We each have so much creative potential that unfortunately seems to be overseen as we grow older. Keep on creating, little man!

- Kayla