Sleepy, Sleepy All the Time

Dear Home Ec 101,

I’m pregnant with my second child. If I could I would sleep until noon and nap after lunch, too. I know I need some sort of routine for when the baby arrives. Any advice?

~Yawning in Yemassee

Heathers says:

First of all, take heart, part of your problem is simply being pregnant. If your first child is young (preschool age) then there is another huge culprit. Caring for young children is also exhausting, combine the two and it can be quite an ordeal.

First of all, for any naysayers out there, here are my credentials in the area of surviving young motherhood. I have three children under five, the youngest will soon be four months old. None of my children were bottlefed and the oldest had a wicked case of colic. My husband works rotating shifts that keep him away from home for 14 hours a day. The point? I’m still in the midst of these years, I do know what it is like.

Keep the time you get up as consistent as possible. (The first few weeks after birth are an exception, of course.) Take a nap if you need one, but try to keep it to a reasonable length and before four in the afternoon. Nix all caffeine after four, as well. In the evening, go to bed when you are tired. Yes, even if it is “only 8:30.” Humans are creatures of habit and it won’t be long before you find a pattern of your own.

Yes, I can hear some of you screeching, but I need my alone time! We all do, but that alone time must not be more important than your physical health. I highly recommend setting sleep as your highest priority for a minimum of two weeks. Don’t stay up to watch the eleven o’clock news, I promise whatever happened will be on the morning edition. Remember, we live in an age of DVRs and VCRs. Use them and don’t let television come before sleep.

My personal routine is to wake up well before the older two. I shower, dress, have a cup of coffee, and do as much of my daily writing as possible before they are up. If the baby wakes up, she is fed, changed, and I try to convince her it is not yet time to play. Personally, I am not a strict scheduler with infants, but I have learned through experience that toddlers and preschoolers are much happier with consistency. When we have one of our wild, I could pull my hair out type days, I can usually chalk it up to their routine being out of whack.

I wish you the best of luck. Remember on the hardest of those early days, that this is but a season and all too soon you’ll be losing sleep for other reasons.

Submit your question by sending an email to helpme@home-ec101.com

I Just Don’t Have an Excuse

Heather says:

I was folding laundry the other morning and had a realization. In the course of a month I can typically escape at least once to buy a book or have lunch by myself. Yet, I can never seem to find time or money to buy myself decent underwear. In truth they are just excuses.

The next time I have a child-free hour or two I am going to pick up some new underwear and toss the I-hope-I-don’t -get-in-a-car-accident pairs. It is not being indulgent to have decent underwear. I will hit the library for my reading fix.

I know I’m not the only one. So tell me, in what state are your drawers?

The Great Eyeshadow Tutorial

Dear Home-Ec 101 Goddesses,

Help! I have a fancy party Saturday night, and this is the first time I’ll have been all duded up in years. I bought makeup today. Can you give me a crash course in applying eyeshadow?

Signed,
I Ain’t Girly

Ivy says:

Let me just warn you ahead of time that I have an appointment to get my eyebrows done on Saturday. They look horrible right now. So you’ll just have to imagine my eyebrows don’t look as horrible as they do.

Stuff I used to get this look: (left to right) crease brush, Sephora; angle brush, #263 MAC; eye pencil, Eclipse, Arbonne; smudge brush, Sephora; all over shadow brush, Sephora; Maybelline Great Lash waterproof mascara in Very Black; MAC eyeshadow in Antiqued; MAC eyeshadow in Saddle; Smashbox Jet Set creme eyeliner in Lust. Pictured but not used (because it gets really glittery and I remembered I’m not going anywhere, on top left) MAC pigment color powder in Melon. Used but not pictured, Estee Lauder Pure Color Eyeshadow in Honey Drop.

Start with a clean, dry face. Some people like to do the eye stuff last, I like to do it first. I am horribly clumsy and have ruined the under-eye concealer magic more than once by bumping it with my eyeliner brush or mascara brush. So I always do the eyes first, that way I can easily wash off any stray mascara or eyeliner.

I always start by lining my eyes. Not everyone does it in that order, but because of the aforementioned clumsiness, I do the part I’m most likely to mess up first. I like to use a gel or creme eyeliner. I use an angle brush to apply it. My favorite angle brush is MAC’s #263 angle brush. It’s a little expensive, but if you take care of it, it will last forever.

To line with an angle brush, just hold your eye steady and gently draw a line just above where your lower lashes start. If you have a hard time drawing your line straight, you can use the brush to gently tap the line onto your lashes. That’s how I first started lining my eyes, until I got the hang of drawing the line (fairly) straight.

If you don’t use creme or gel eyeliner, the second easiest method is to use an eye pencil. Actually, I think I’m faster with the eye pencil, but the gel eyeliner looks better. Use an eye pencil that has a very soft “lead”- it works better and is easier to apply. I really like my Arbonne eye pencil, but it’s pretty expensive and you have to deal with Arbonne ladies calling, emailing, and sending you letters. When I run out of the Arbonne pencil, I will go back to the MAC eye kohl in Smolder.

Anyway, draw the line just above your eyelashes. Same as with the brush, only you can’t tap the color on like you can with a brush.

Sometimes I use the smudge brush for my eyeliner, sometimes I don’t. Usually the reason I use the smudge brush is because I haven’t gotten the line as perfect and smooth as I would like. Then I very gently rub the smudge brush over the top of the line, to slightly blur the line.

Using an all-over eyeshadow brush, start with the darker color of eyeshadow, putting it in the lower, outer corner of your eye to about halfway in the middle of your lid. The picture looks like I have some eyeshadow on the top of my eye, but I don’t, it’s a shadow. (My husband took the pictures and he’s not a great photographer.)

Dust off your brush and apply the next lighter color on the middle third of your eye. Go on top of the darker color. Don’t worry, we will blend this all in very soon.

Here’s what it looks like pre-blending. Just a big mess of color on your eye. Don’t worry, we’ll fix that, I promise.

Take your lightest color and put it on the inside corner of your eye. Brush it up and over your eyelid, into the crease. You can go a bit higher than your crease if you want.

Now it’s time to blend. Use your all-over eyeshadow brush to blend the colors together. I like to use small, circular motions to blend, but you may like sweeping motions. Use what works best for you.

Use the crease brush to push the color back into your crease. (This step may or may not be necessary. I always do it because my mother taught me to always do it. But I’ve forgotten it before and didn’t look weird, so there ya go.)

All blended, it should look something like this. No, that’s not eyeshadow extending toward my nose. That’s another shadow. Again, bad photography, haha. But please excuse the truly horrid looking eyebrows. That’s not bad photography, that’s lazy eyebrow waxing.

Finally, just apply mascara. Two coats, top and bottom is what I do.

Here’s what it should look like all finished. Nifty neato!

A word about brands and brushes, etc: I use fairly expensive makeup. I don’t consider that a necessity. I have expensive makeup largely because nobody in my family ever knows what to give me for present-giving holidays so I finally started asking for makeup. You can use the drugstore brands with good results, I promise. As a matter of fact, I have used many different expensive and drugstore brands of mascara and good ol’ Maybelline Great Lash is my favorite.

As far as brushes are concerned, you don’t need as many fancy brushes as I have to get a good look. The brushes I would highly recommend having are the angle brush for applying eyeliner and the all-over eyeshadow brush. And if I could only get one brush, it would be the eyshadow brush. You can’t do the greatest job of putting your eyeshadow on if you have to do it with one of those spongy things that comes with eyeshadow.

My way is definitely not the only way, but I think it’s the best way to get good results without taking a ton of time.

All the calcium, none of the dairy

Ivy says:

 It is extremely important to get enough calcium in your diet. Unless, of course, you like the “Hunchback of Notre Dame” look. In that case, skip the calcium altogether. Calcium is more readily absorbed when it is eaten in a food, but some foods are more readily absorbed than others. For example, kale is more readily absorbed than milk.

It is also important to be getting enough vitamin D, which aids in dairy absorption. The easiest source of vitamin D is right outside your front door- the sun. (Unless, of course, it’s overcast or nighttime.) Sunblock also blocks the vitamin D, so make sure you spend at least a little bit of time in the sun unprotected. Half an hour a day is enough.

I have read that a diet that is overly high in protein also keeps calcium from being readily absorbed into your system, so watch your protein intake. Same with high phosphorous foods like soda.

But what if you are lactose intolerant or a vegan, or just plain don’t like to eat dairy items? Fortunately there are plenty of non-dairy, high calcium foods. Here are several:

Kale
Carrot juice
Seame butter/tahini
Soy of all sorts, including tofu
Turnip greens
Bok Choy
Kale
Parsley
Seaweed
Navy beans
Pinto beans
Tapioca
Calcium fortified orange juice
Raw oysters
Shrimp
Salmon
Sardines
Calcium fortified cereals
Molasses
Spinach

Of course, if none of these options appeal to you, there’s always calcium supplements. Viactiv makes a particularly tasty supplement!

5 Things To Make You Appear Slimmer

Ivy says:

Lately people have been remarking on how great I look since I’ve lost weight. I really have lost some weight, but I also have found some tricks to make you look like you’ve lost more weight than you actually have lost. And now, I share them with you, dear readers.

1. Get a good bra. This has probably been my best trick ever. Before I even started losing weight I got some great bras to wear and  people started asking me if I had lost weight. It seems that if you can make your breasts appear bigger, it draws the eye away from your stomach and hips. Especially if that eye is male, ha.

2. Lengthen your legs. Of course, you can’t actually lengthen your legs, but there are many ways to make your legs appear longer.  One of the best ways I have found is to wear slacks that come just below my ankles with high heels. Another way is to wear the shortest skirt/shorts you feel comfortable with. Obviously, we’re not all comfy with Daisy Dukes, but the more leg that is showing, the longer it will appear

3. Back in black. Black is  fabulous. One time I showed up to a lunch date wearing a black t-shirt and black shorts. My friend asked me why I dressed up, and she was serious. Black not only makes you look dressier, it also camoflouges a myriad of body issues.

4. Wear stuff that fits. When I first gained a lot of weight, I  tried to hide it with clothing that was larger than the actual size I wore. It was a big mistake, because all the extra fabric only made me look larger. On the opposite side of the coin, wearing clothing that was too tight also made me look heavier than I am. Wearing clothing that is form-fitting but not excessively tight seems to be the way to go.

5. Work it with confidence. I noticed when I feel better about myself, people tend to think I look better.  How do you get to feeling better about yourself? Tell yourself how beautiful and fab you look. It really does work!

Tell me about your secrets for looking thinner!

« Previous Page — Next Page »