Holiday Gift Guide: Under $25

Hey y'all! 

Earlier this week when I posted my Christmas wish list, I promised a post with gift ideas for under $25! So here we go! 

1. This print is $17 for an 8 x 10. Throw it in a cute frame and you've got an awesome gift for any Razorback fan. There are a TON of other adorable prints (some that would be great wedding gifts too!) on Kristin's etsy site!

2. This bracelet is so cute! I love infinity symbols and think this bracelet is so cute! At $20, it would make a great stocking stuffer! 

 

3. This monogrammed clutch from SunbirdWay on etsy. These are super cute and can fit everything you need for a night out or, if you're like me, everyday use that will fit easily in your backpack if needed! They come in ten different colors and you can have the monogram be any color you want too! These are $22 and there are a few of these under our tree for gifts this year! :)

4. Almost anything from jane.com. It's like groupon for etsy and you can get so many good deals! Each deal normally lasts a few days, but if it's a popular item, they can sell out fast! You definitely need to check this site out! You can get quite a few things for under $25 in total!

5. Christmas spirit essential oil is made up of orange, cinnamon bark and spruce oils and seriously just smells like Christmas happiness. I especially love this because we have artificial Christmas trees, so this gives a little bit of the Christmas tree smell without the runny nose side effects. If you don't have an account and want a bottle, I can order one for you! With my discount, they are $10.25!

Want to check out a few more items for under $25? Check out my good friend Brianna's blog HERE! Hope y'all are having a great day! 

Until next time,

Christmas Present Ideas - Favorite Things I Already Have

Hey y'all! 

With the holidays fast approaching, I thought I would share with you five things that I already own, but that I would put on my Christmas list in a heartbeat!

1. Erin Condren Life Planner - I'm on my SIXTH Life Planner! No matter how awesome technology is with syncing my phone and email calendars up, I really enjoy writing things down. This planner has a month-at-a-glance and each day is broken down into morning, day, and night. I love that because it makes it easier to look at what I have going on in my personal life and work life easily. It also comes with a ton of stickers and you can add personalized stickers as well. So that year we had 14 weddings to attend? Yeah, I could make 14 wedding stickers and however many shower stickers I wanted. If you click HERE you can get a $10 off coupon on your first order! Also, they send you awesome coupons after certain intervals of orders. After my 10th order from the site, they sent me a $50 coupon! It paid for my planner this year, isn't that awesome?!

2. Young Living Essential Oils Premium Starter Kit - If you haven't been following me about my journey with essential oils, you will have to check it out all of the posts HERE. Honestly, at first I just wanted a couple of oils to try, but I'm SO incredibly glad that I went for the starter kit. I literally don't go a week without using every single oil that came in the kit. Check out the picture below to see what all comes in the kit. Now is definitely the time to be buying a kit for Christmas :) I'll leave a comment below this post on how to sign up if you're interested. Feel free to ask me as many questions as you can come up with!

3. Brooks Running Shoes - If you're into running, I seriously have to recommend these shoes. I got mine at Fleet Feet Tulsa. They do a running/walking test to see what type of shoe your foot needs. I apparently have been wearing the wrong running shoe size for YEARS. (That was why my feet would fall asleep during a run!). The style I like the best is the Adrenaline. They are supportive, lightweight, and SUPER comfortable.

4. Lululemon Cool Racerback Tank Tops (or really, anything lululemon!) - As a tall person, I often wear tank tops to help elongate shirts that I wear. These tanks are long and ridiculously comfortable and soft. I wear them to workout by themselves, but I also wear them under shirts for work or on the weekends. They are fabulous for layering. I want one in every single color! You can pick yours up HERE.

5. Ray Ban Wayfayers - I wear these everywhere I go. They are great at protecting my eyes, but they look good and don't give me a headache after wearing them all day or get stuck in my hair when I push them on top of my head (where they often end up staying for the entire day). They have a TON of colors, but I personally like the classic black that you can find HERE.

I hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving week! It is going to be crazy busy for us, but I am SO looking forward to it. Tomorrow, we are taking Christmas card pictures (we definitely need a family pic with Cash!), I have a test Tuesday, and get to spend time with family and friends the rest of the week. My family is running in the Turkey Trot 5k on Thursday morning! If you're in Tulsa, you should join! There is also a one mile fun run that the whole family could participate in. My thought process is that if I get up and go run a 5k, I get to eat more turkey....what do you think?

Until next time,

It's Fall Y'all!!

Hey y'all!

Happy October!! The last couple of weeks have been crazy and the next few are about to be even crazier (hence my lack of posts last week and the fewer number of posts to come this month)! I'm taking quite a few CPA exams in the next couples of months and have been studying like crazy! This is also paired with being busy at work. When you're super busy at work, do you ever just wonder where the days and weeks go?? Any positive thoughts and prayers are always appreciated.

I am SO excited that it's fall. I love the weather, the trees changing colors, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. I'm further north than normal this week for training for work and the weather is definitely "fall." Hoping that Tulsa feels more like this when I get home! I also love ALL fall smells. Thought I would share my three favorite things right now! 

First - cinnamon vanilla sugar scrub. I LOVE that this scrub is technically edible. I know EXACTLY what is going into it and am excited to add this to my shower regime. I will definitely be making this sometime this month!

I've already been using this soap like crazy in my house. As in, half a bottle in two weeks. I might just wash my hands 100 times because I like the smell...

Andddd my favorite - Starbucks caramel apple spice ! I don't drink caffeine and have never liked the taste of coffee, so the Pumpkin Spice Latte really isn't my cup of tea. I seriously look forward to the caramel apple spices coming back all year long!

Oh, and how can I forget FOOTBALL?! It's football season which means that games are on at our house more than anything else. Let's be honest, I watch my favorites, but Ryan watches them all (thank you fantasy football). With that, I must say WOO PIG SOOIE! Go Hogs, Go!

What are your favorite things about fall?

Until next time,

A little bit of happiness on this rainy day

Hey y'all!

I don't know about you, but rainy days make me sleepy and feeling very blah sometimes. I just don't have time for that dreariness to take over my day (and I'm sure y'all don't either!). So, I grabbed my oils put on some En-R-Gee, Lemon and a drop of Joy. If I didn't know it was raining, I would think that it's a sunny, perfect day outside! One of my coworkers basically told me I was kind of hyper too (which I am rarely "hyper" at work). I'm having an insanely energetic and productive day and thought I might share a little bit of the love with y'all!

I'm giving away a 5ml bottle of Joy (a $17 value!) to bring a little happiness to one of your days! Leave a comment telling me something that makes you happy and brings joy to your life and you will be entered to win! I will draw a winner tomorrow morning. I can't wait to read your comments!

Until next time,

Our First Week with Essential Oils

Hey y'all! 

So I have to admit that when I heard about essential oils, I was a tad suspicious. How can these little bottles help with so many things?! I am COMPLETELY glad that I decided to take the jump to try them out. We got our kit last Saturday, so a week and a day ago. And within the first couple of days I saw a couple of amazing things (I talked about them in my blog post HERE). But now we are a week out, and the results are literally dumbfounding. I thought I would share what the Bradley's have thought in our first week about Young Living Essential Oils! 

• Headaches - The seasons are beginning to change, which means I have had a TON of headaches. One drop of peppermint on my thumb pressed to the roof of my mouth and/or a drop rubbed on my temples got rid of those suckers fast! No joke, a headache that could have ruined my day, ended up gone within 15 minutes. That has NEVER EVER happened.  
  
  
   
  
  
• Allergies - As I said above, the seasons are changing, which means I really need allergy meds every single day. Ugh! I tried the allergy trio of three drops of each peppermint, lemon and lavender behind my ears and on the back of my neck and a deep breath of the remaining oil on my hands and almost instantly felt better. It lasted most of the day too. I had to reapply this evening, but I was out and about running errands so I was exposed to a lot of different stuff during the day. I can't wait to make a roller of this! 

•  Scars and cuts - We have a twelve week old puppy, who happens to have insanely log toe nails (don't worry, they're getting trimmed tomorrow). Cash and I play a LOT, so needless to say, I look like I have had a fight with a rose bush! I'm one of those people that when I have a cut, it's going to take AGES to heal. I've been rubbing frankincense on them twice a day, and the redness is gone on most of them and they are healing way faster than normal (and not leaving scars behind!).

• Bedtime - Ryan has trouble sleeping, and I often get up throughout the night. We have been diffusing the "sleepy trio" by our bed, and we both have been sleeping until Cash wakes us up in the morning. Valor, lavender, and peace & calming help us sleep through the night! I can't wait to make this in a cream form! 

• Cash the Puppy! - I'm not going to leave too many details here because I have a post coming up on The Happy Oils Blog in the next couple of weeks and I don't want to ruin that! But until then, let's just say that the oils have definitely kept this puppy mom from going nutso! 

• Stress - The stress away roller works. Period. I honestly don't know how else to explain it. I go from a 9 on the stress scale (1 to 10) to a 2 pretty quickly.

 

• Pain - Ryan hurt his back last weekend. Big time BOO over here. I mixed up a pain cream of panaway, lavender, and peppermint, and he says it helped. I will share the recipe for the very soon! 
  

• My happy oils - My favorite thing to diffuse right now is lemon, joy and purification. It makes my house smell so clean and happy! (Yes, happy does have a smell). It really is uplifting and energizing! I know technically this is not the answer to a problem, but I just had to share!

  

That's EIGHT different ways that we have used oils in the last WEEK! I have literally used every single oil except for thieves out of my starter kit! Do any of you have any "problems" that you wonder if you oils could help you with? Leave me a comment or shoot me a message, I'd love to help ya out! 

Hope y'all have an awesome week!

Until next time,

A blue dryer or headache will not ruin my day!

Hey y'all! 

I hope you had a great Labor Day Weekend! We just got home from our first road trip with Cash to Arkansas and he did great!  He might have slept in bed with mom and dad though...I could get used to those puppy cuddles! He may not want to go to sleep tonight in his crate. (I think the larger concern is mom not wanting to go to sleep without her warm, snugly puppy) Oops?

So Saturday late afternoon, I somehow missed a blue ink pen in one of Ryan's shirts prior to starting a load of laundry, so multiple items of clothing were ruined (and of course they weren't just inexpensive t-shirts) and my dryer now appears to be tie dyed blue and white. Um, no offense to anyone who wants one, but I don't really want a smurf themed dryer. In addition to that, I was super stressed out because Cash's crate, Ryan's golf clubs and all of our stuff were just not fitting in my car (please note, I CAN FIT IN CASH'S CRATE with the puppy, and his blankets, and all of his toys, and maybe a pillow for me too, so this thing is in no way small).

The doorbell rings 30 minutes before we are supposed to leave and I think, "who the heck is that? I don't have time for this, I have a BLUE DRYER!". So glad I opened the door! It was the delivery man with my Young Living Starter Kit!!!! AHHHH!!!!

Immediately I ripped that box open and rolled on some stress away on. First, I love that smell. I can't really explain it, but I love it. Literally within five minutes, my panic was much, much calmer. No joke. I am really good at thinking that things that aren't big deals are HUGE deals, and the lovely smell made me mentally remember that both of these issues could be resolved without freaking out. I'm pretty sure that Ryan appreciated my much calmer demeanor as we hopped in the car for a leisurely 3 hours. :)

Sunday morning, I woke up with a headache. Ugh, never the best way to start a day (unfortunately this happens pretty often for me). I drank a huge glass of water thinking that must be the issue. Sadly, it was not. I started to reach for my trustee Aleve and remembered, AHA!, I brought my oils with me! So I grabbed the peppermint bottle and put a drop on my thumb and pressed it on the roof of my mouth. No joke, a headache that could have ruined my day, ended up gone within 15 minutes. That has NEVER EVER happened. Normally I have to deal with it for AT LEAST a couple of hours and even then, I'm having to take additional aleve throughout the day. 

This stuff saved me two ways in two days. I can't wait to see what I can come up with to use this for next! On another note, Cash is getting way too big, way too fast! I mean, look at this guy! He's like 25 pounds now.

He got playtime with my dad and Ryan's parents this weekend, so he is currently passed out from all of the extra lovin' that he received!

Until next time,

This Crazy Oil Thing

Hey y'all!

So Ryan and I have quite a few ailments that we are constantly taking medicine for. The biggest issue is that Ryan has a lot of trouble falling asleep, so NyQuil is too much a part of our lives. I get headaches often (we're talking migraine, sinus, and tension headaches people) and am constantly taking medication for this. We both have seasonal allergies and take allergy pills often (i.e. almost daily). THAT TERRIFIES ME! 

Not only are we putting non-natural medications in our bodies, we are spending SO MUCH MONEY on them. A few people I follow on Facebook and in the blogosphere have been posting a lot about Young Living Essential Oils. At first, I was like "yeah, this is another fad that will go away in a couple of months."

But then I read about a mom who got all three of her very young children to sleep through the night with a sleepy cream made with essential oils. Hmm.... if it works on kids, would it work on my husband?

Then I read another story about a woman with migraines and peppermint took away her pain. Hmmm....if it will make a migraine go away, this stuff must be pure gold. If I get a full fledged migraine, I'm in a cold, dark room sleeping for hours on end. Could this stuff really put a stop to that?

And THEN I read about a family who has a daughter with severe asthma and allergy problems. A roller with an allergy trio has taken this little girl off of all of her medications. Could I stop relying on that little pink pill to get me through a day without being in a fog?

So I decide to give this thing a shot. If even one of these things can help Ryan and me, I will be beyond thrilled. Based on the many stories I have read though, I'm really counting on all three! If you're at all interested in hearing what essential oils are all about - shoot me a message here, by e-mail or on Facebook, send me a text, or call me. I can point to you tons of blogs and facts that might be able to help your family out! 

If you're on the edge (like I was) and want to try a sample of something, let me know that too. Sometimes, you have to see it to believe it and I'm more than happy to give a "show and tell." If you decide to make that plunge to purchase a kit, or even want to just purchase a couple of oils for a particular purpose, let me know!

Can't wait to share what I think when I get my kit this week!

Until next time,