Essential Oils – raffle and coupon! | Alexia Lewis

Simply Earth provided an “Essential Oil Recipe Box” to me free of charge in exchange for a blog review. Yes, this is #sponsored quid pro quo – all opinions in my reviews are mine and I if love it or hate it, I’ll let you know.

I don’t know a lot about essential oils (EO). I think they smell good. I like the cool lavender towel I get at the end of yoga class. I think rose essential oil smells delicious. Some of my colleagues have switched from being hospital dietitians to selling EO. My neighbor also sells them and the bug spray she gave me seemed to keep the mosquitoes away for a short time until the scent wore off.

If you know me, you know I’m a firm believer in science and evidence-based practice and I do my best to educate people on what is and is not upheld by research because there is way too much crap out there and way too many people who are making a buck off people who haven’t had the education or experience – or the time! – to sort it all out. #WooFighter #StandforScience Yep that’s me.

My concern with EO is ingesting the oils. EO are highly concentrated and there is zero regulation as they are non-food products. Some will come with trademarked business phrases designed to make consumers think they are certified and regulated for eating or drinking– but they are not. Just as I don’t recommend unverified supplements (pills), I do not recommend ingesting EO. After learning Simply Earth tests their EO with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to verify that what is on the label is actually in the bottle and that their “recipes” were for yummy-smelling things and not for drinks or foods, I was more than happy to review a recipe box. They also donate 13% of their profits to end human trafficking and the source materials are GMO-free if that’s a concern for you.

When the box arrived, I was excited to see that it is a holiday recipe box and the smell immediately stirred up memories. I was brought back to when my family had a live Christmas tree and my mom would use the fallen pine needles to make pillows. Yes, they could be prickly but with some adjusting they made a deliciously comforting place to lay my head as a little girl. I was reminded of cold walks through parking lots re-purposed as tree sales lots and the fun of being the one to pick out the tree for the family. Did I mention we lived in a loft in NYC with ridiculously high ceilings? We got monster trees back then. These scents brought all these memories back – and this was still while they were in the box!

The box contains:

Essential Oils: frankincense, rosemary, pine, a “happy joy” blend, and a roller called “curb hunger”

Recipes: 5 different recipes for a “Christmas Air Freshener” to be placed in a jar with baking soda to absorb odors and provide a holiday scent, a “Christmas Tree Blend” and a “Christmas Diffuser Blend” to be used with a diffuser, a “Holiday Home Scent Spray,” and a recipe to make “DIY Scented Ornaments.”

Supplies included! The box also holds the mason jar and a permeable paper jar cover for the air freshener, the spray bottle for the spray, and two small bottles for mixing up the recipes along with labels for the bottles and ribbons/twine to use for the ornaments you can make.

As a newbie to EO, this box gives me all the supplies and instruction I need to get started. Simply Earth offers a monthly recipe box program for $39.95 a month which will have the EO, the recipes, and containers. I do recommend this box for those who want to start benefiting from EO. Each box will contain 6-7 different recipes with a new theme each month, 5 full size bottles of essential oils, labels and containers to make your recipes – and they have videos to help you with the recipes!

Raffle!

I wish I could keep this box but I’m raffling off all the supplies for the holiday recipes in the box. One lucky person will win this box at the Surviving the Holidays Workshop on November 14 (Monday) at 6pm! (Must pre-pay to enter the raffle).