First thing about the Oort Cloud is that it really isn't a cloud! It's a large mass of comets with orbits that are around a thousand years and it essentially forms a shell around our Solar System. These comets are icy bodies and there are believed to be about 2 trillion of these that make up the Oort Cloud. These comets are usually made up of ammonia, methane, and water.
The space that the Oort Cloud takes up is anywhere from 5,000 Astronomical Units to 100,000 Astronomical Units. So picture the distance from the Earth to the Sun and multiply that by those numbers. It is a hard distance to grasp conceptually when working with such vast distances.
These icy bodies when they interact with passing stars, molecule clouds, or tidal interactions sometimes have their orbits affected which causes these comets to fall within the inner Solar System as long period comets.
Work Cited
"Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud: Read More." Solar System Exploration. NASA. Web. 3 Apr 2014. <http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong>.
Redd, Noah. "Oort Cloud: The Outer Solar System's Icy Shell." Space.com. N.p., 02 Jul 2012. Web. 1 Apr 2014. <http://www.space.com/16401-oort-cloud-the-outer-solar-system-s-icy-shell.html>.,
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