Keeping my family healthy is a priority. Using essential oils is just one of the many things we do.
Essential Oils
Did you know my dream as a teenager was to major in biotechnology? I had visions of trekking through the Amazon finding the elusive plant that would cure some disease. Plants really are amazing! Every medicine you use began with a plant. Modern science has learned to not only isolate the chemicals found in plants (and some animals) but also create it artificially. That’s how you get the medicine you buy on the shelf at the drug store or the pills you purchase from the pharmacist. Essentials oils also come from plants. An oil is “essential” in that it contains the “essence” of a plant’s fragrance.
I know some people scoff at those who use essential oils. I get it. It CAN be taken too far. It’s definitely not a cure all. As with all medications you must be careful and wise in your use. Moderation is key. We use a blend of essential oils to build our immune system when we feel a cold or sore throat coming on. We don’t use it all the time – only when we begin to feel like we are getting sick. I do think they help!
I’ve mentioned before I buy my essential oils from Rocky Mountain Oils. You don’t need a middle man so you are purchasing directly from them. They have free shipping! You can see the quality test results of every bottle of oil you buy. I am really impressed with their customer service too.
For most of our essential oil usage I make our own blends or dilute oils in rollerballs for easy application. You can easily see from the labels which ones are for adults and which ones are for children (age 2 and older).
Essential Oil Blend Recipes
I love, no LOVE, the super simple recipes provided by Rollerball Make and Takes. They are easy to put together. If you are just getting started I would recommend buying the Rollerball Personal Bundle. It comes with recipe sheets and label sheets for each of the following: Babies & Mamas, KIDS, Wellness, and Mood series.
Or if you want to go cheaper just buy the labels and use the recipes provided for free off their website! You could go even cheaper and not use the labels – which I have done before – but these labels are so good. They stick really well whereas the blank labels I used before would fall off. They also tell you where to apply the oil.
The reason I like the recipes is because they are divided into adults, children, and infants. Essential oils are very potent and you have to be really careful that you don’t use too much. These recipes take any guess work out of it especially for beginners.
For kids there are recipes for Happy Ears, Happy Nose, Cool Kiddo, Happy Belly, Soothe and Ease, and more. For adults there is Immune Boost, Breathe Easy, Belly Blend, etc. There are also blends for babies but use those with great caution. Also follow the recipes! You might be tempted to just use the adult recipe and dilute it more for kids but there are some essential oils that are harmful for kids and should only be used for adults.
Where I Get My Supplies
Roller bottles with lids – $9 for a pack of 10 from Majestic Mountain Sage. You can definitely find cheaper ones at Amazon but these are top quality. Never had a problem reusing them or having the rollerballs fall out.
Fractionated Coconut Oil – $10 for 16 oz. from Majestic Mountain Sage (same place I buy my lip balm supplies)
Sweet Almond Oil – $7 for 16 oz. from Majestic Mountain Sage – Almond Oil can be used as a carrier oil like the fractionated coconut oil
Essential Oils Key Tool – $5.99 from Amazon – A must if you plan on reusing your roller bottles! It takes the roller ball and cap off so you can refill your bottle.
Roller Ball Carrier Case – $10 from Amazon and holds 10 bottles. This is what I use because it is compact and easy to carry for trips. It’s also great for gifts, especially if you pre-fill it with essential oil roller bottles already filled and ready to use!
What if you don’t want to go through all the work to make your own roller balls much less try to purchase all the essential oils you need to make them? Rocky Mountain Oils has created a Kids Line already mixed and ready to go in roller bottles, perfect for use in kids two years old and older. You can buy individual roller bottles or buy the whole Kids Line Kit or Mom’s Essential Kit.
Thanks for sharing! I’ve looked into other oils but I’d rather buy direct from a company.
Which blends to you find you use the most?
Oh, that’s a great question! The one we use the most would be the blend for clearing nasal passages so Breathe Easy blend for adults or Happy Nose for Kids. In the spring and summer it really helps those with allergies and, of course, if we have colds it helps. Those are the names of the blends from Rollerball Make and Takes (RMT).
We also use immune strength (Rocky Mountain Oils – RMO) or Immune Boost (RMT) a lot when we start to feel sick. We either end up not getting sick or if we do it cuts down the length of the sickness by half. A typical cold lasts 7-10 days but we’ll be sick only about 3-4 days.
Those are the two blends we use the most often. The next two would be sleepy time for adults or sweet dreams for kids (RMT) and happy belly or belly blend (RMT) or Tummy Rub (RMO).
Alma 46:40 And there were some who died with fevers, which at some seasons of the year were very frequent in the land—but not so much so with fevers, because of the excellent qualities of the many plants and roots which God had prepared to remove the cause of diseases, to which men were subject by the nature of the climate—
This is a scripture I use if someone poo-poos the idea of essential oils – I agree though, moderation is the key.
So do you feel that essential oils work because of your own experience with them, or have you read any good studies on them or both? I’ve had the hardest time finding any studies showing they work, so I’ve never been interested in trying them. I don’t know that I want to spend the money on trying them and just try to figure out if they work based on my personal experience with them. I don’t know how I’d be able to tell they are working. We rarely get sick anyway, so there’s not much to test them out on. I do like the Rocky Mountain Oil Company because they are a direct sales company! I don’t buy things from multi-level marketing companies if I can help it.
So with the ones you use, you don’t ingest or diffuse anything, you just dilute it and roll it on your skin somewhere? Where do you roll it on? How do you decide where to use it? Everywhere I look there’s such conflicting information about how to use essential oils, what to use them for, etc. It’s like you just have to randomly pick the way you want to use them and go for it. How did you decide what you would use for your family?
I decided to give essential oils (EO) a try based on the experiences of family and friends. I figured it would be trial and error just like any medications are. For example, over the years we’ve learned for most of the people in my family Tylenol doesn’t work very well but Advil does.
Yes, we usually just dilute the EO and roll it on. Usually we roll it on the area that is affected – at the top of the nose between eyes for sinuses, on the belly for stomach aches, chest or back for coughs, etc. For my kids 6 and under I don’t ever rub it on their faces because I don’t want them to accidentally rub it in their eyes. A good universal spot to rub the oils is on the balls of feet as the pores of the skin are larger and absorb it faster and better.
I do diffuse oils occasionally but only at night. I don’t like my house smelling like a medicine cabinet. I’d rather plug in a Scentsy and have it smell like baked cinnamon rolls. 😀
We NEVER ingest the oils. There is only one company I know of that suggests ingesting essential oils and I’ve had bad experiences with the company so don’t trust what they say anyway.
How did I decide what I would use? I started with what sicknesses/ailments we have the most (we hardly ever get sick either) and bought the oils that treat those.
Our very first experience was actually with Gideon who burned his hands picking up a stick from a fire pit. He had blisters and everything. I had received a basic starter kit the day before, called my sister-in-law who introduced me to EO and asked what to do to help him. We soaked his hands in cool water in which I had added a couple of drops each of Frankincense and Lavender. He wanted to soak them for about an hour. Then I gave him Advil for pain before he went to bed. The next morning he had no blisters nor any signs that he had burned his hands. I couldn’t believe it! We have since had to do the same for Jason who touched the manifold of the tractor while trying to climb into the cab. Same results! I was sure wishing we had known about it when Sara burned her hands as a baby steadying herself against the wood burning stove.
That’s really interesting. I like how you have it in the rollers- very easy to apply. And it seems safer so you don’t accidentally get too much. About ingesting them, yeah, that doesn’t seem safe to me, and I’ve watched women at church ingesting them and giving them out to other people to ingest.
I used to use tea tree oil in the wipes mixture I’d use to wipe my kids’ bottoms. It ended up giving them horrible sores on their bottoms, and I didn’t realize for a long time. I thought they were getting regular sore bottoms like kids often do, or they were reacting to their cloth diapers that were hard to get clean or something. Then I learned about tea tree oil possibly being unsafe to use on children because of hormone disruption or something and I gave up on using any essential oils at all after that.
I’m sure there are some that have some helpful effects, at least on some people, but it’s so hard to wade through the variety of information out there that I’ve never felt like it was worth the effort. But it looks like you’ve found a fairly simple way to use them for your family!
Thank you for the recommendation for the case. I ordered 2 and will be putting them to good use. I also shared them with my mom. We love EO at our house. I’ve never heard of this brand, but will be looking at it closer. We use, and love, Butterly Express oils. Happy oiling!