7 Natural Ways to Boost Your Energy
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
How To
How To: Weekend CLEANSE
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
For a Gut and Liver Cleanse
For a daily routine, drink warm water with lemon as soon as you wake up.
Also try wellness shots like freshly squeezed pineapple-ginger, ginger turmeric, honey ginger, or just a ginger shot. Ginger is great for immunity. These are some of our favorites for a quick, potent dose of nutrients. Try having one every day for a week.
Oral Cleanse
It’s more than just brushing your teeth and flossing, which you should! (Btw- have you ever tried a water flosser? It’s a game-changer to flossing. We highly recommend this one.)
Oil pulling has its benefits. It has a detoxifying effect by pulling oil-soluble toxins out of your body. Specifically, it pulls these toxins through the delicate blood vessels in your mouth’s soft tissue. It isn’t studied much, but it has zero side effects, so it’s totally worth trying. It is said by Dr. Sands in a Poosh article, that it’s “effective in reducing gingivitis” which causes staining, irritation, or dry mouth. Dr. Sands even mentions it can prevent your cavities from getting worse, and new ones from forming.
So how do you do it? Swish about a tablespoon or two of coconut oil in your mouth for 15-20 minutes (but spit it in the trash, because it’s not good for plumbing!) It’s recommended you do this first thing after waking up, before brushing or flossing.
Boost in Focus
Start with putting yourself in a routine of journaling and/or a gratitude journal. Although you can spend the weekend journaling in a deeper sense, daily journaling is a very positive habit and is a great stress reliever.
Spill it all out on paper, visualize and brainstorm your week, month, and year’s focus. When it’s on paper, you see it clearly as opposed to jumbled up in your head causing you to be overwhelmed.
For Circulation and Lymphatic Flow
Try these activities – daily morning stretches, yoga or Pilates.
What are the positives of lymphatic flow?
- it protects your body from illnesses
- maintains your body fluid levels
- allows for absorption of digestive tract fats while removing cellular waste – literally what we imagine as detox
Try dry brushing, a face gua sha, or a body roller.
Do These 5 Things To Be More Organized
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
USE DRAWER DIVIDERS TO ORGANIZE YOUR CLOTHES, KITCHEN UTENSILS, TEA, ETC.
For our new home, we are custom making dividers to perfectly fit our knives, spoons, and even tea. But you can get these extendable dividers off Amazon (they’re actually perfect for clothes because of their depth). These would work great for your kitchen drawers.
BE MINDFUL OF WHERE YOU SET THINGS DOWN
It’s easy to leave your keys…anywhere…when you come home, but then think of the time you spend looking for them. And it’s not just keys. Do your best to put things back where they belong. Save yourself time and stress.
SCHEDULE EVERYTHING
Utilize the calendar app on your phone, Google Calendar, or even a physical planner to book out your meetings, outings, calls, activities, and even self-care time.
If your individual day is still looking busy, try planning out each day hour to hour (add in breaks!) to free your headspace from being overwhelmed.
MENTAL NOTES NO MORE. USE THE NOTES APP
Avoid making mental notes and then forgetting them. We have our phones within reach at all time, keep a running notes page to jot down everything throughout the day. Later, take those notes and organize them.
UTILIZE THE BOOKMARKS AT THE TOP OF YOUR BROWSER
If you’re on your laptop, see those bookmarked tabs right underneath the website? What do they say? Mine were the following — indeed.com, apple, icloud, yahoo, bing (??!), Wikipedia and Facebook. Any of them relevant/I click on them ever? Not a single one have I ever clicked up there, but they’re wasting space.
Use them for bookmarking sites you often visit for work/school or any meeting docs you need for the week.
Our Best Cleaning Hacks
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
My fiance and I just recently bought our first home and I’ve been over-the-moon excited to live in a home of my own, decorate, and even clean! Can you believe it? Clean…if you know me, I almost never clean but having my own home has changed me. Leave a comment with any cleaning hacks you want to share with us.
Our Best 17 Cleaning Hacks:
Our recipe for cleaning the microwave — squeeze a lemon into a bowl of water (and drop in both halves in the bowl as well), and heat for 5 minutes. Then let stand in there for another 5 minutes, and wipe off the walls and turn plate with a rag.
Want to refresh and fluff your towels? Do these 2 cycles. First, hot water with vinegar. The second, hot water with baking soda.
Spray your cutting board with hydrogen peroxide. A minute after, clean with dish soap and a rag. The HP alone will kill all the odor-causing bacteria. Quick tip: attach a spray nozzle to the bottle for easier application.
Always keep paper towels or napkins in your car, always!
Place your laundry into the dryer immediately after washing. If you wait overnight, they will have a significantly more amount of wrinkles.
I don’t know about you, but my vacuum gives off this foul smell. Drop in a few drops of essential oils on your vacuum filter or inside the bag for a pleasant smell when vacuuming.
Line paper towels on top of cabinets and change them out every few months.
Fill a cleaning brush with dish soap and vinegar and keep it in your shower. While masking, do some cleaning so you won’t have to after. Plus it’ll be shiner if you use dish soap as opposed to bathroom sprays!
To clean out handbags, use a sticky lint roller to clean out all the junk inside.
Clean mirrors with water and a rag, dry with a clean one immediately.
Hot water and powdered tide cleans everything, like floors and walls!
Our recipe to get rid of fruit flies — a few pumps of Dawn dish soap, a splash of apple cider vinegar, and water in a bowl.
Put a rag over a butter knife to clean the crack between your stovetop and countertop.
Our recipe to get stuck-on food off a baking dish — baking soda and boiling hot water, let still if stains are tough!
Stinky shoes? Drop in 10-15 drops of essential oils onto cotton balls and place them in the shoes overnight.
Do you have blinds? Grab rubbing alcohol and an old sock, and stink your hand in. Spray the blinds one section at a time and use your gloved hand to wipe clean.
Clean a blender by rinsing off your smoothie first. Then squirt in some dish soap and fill with water and blend for 30-40 seconds. The motion alone will clean the mess and any stains, and get all the hard corners without you sticking your hand into knives. Then just rinse all the pieces and place them on a towel to dry before assembling back.
Hostess Gift Ideas
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It’s polite to bring a gift to the hostess of a dinner party or any event, especially if it’s hosted at their home. Here are some ideas you can’t go wrong with (and my recent favorites).
Our (SIMPLE) Guide to Manifesting
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
Our Guide to Manifesting Your Dreams into Reality
Manifesting has become too popular recently with people on our right and left dreaming. And that’s all they do—dream. People forget the real, applied work that needs to be put in. Let’s take the spiritual out of manifesting and look at the clear step-by-step guide to fulfilling our desires.
So what does it take to live out your desires, to get to where you are, to go on your dream vacation, to find your dream hubby? Let us guide you through it. All it takes is for YOU to do it (and we will simplify it by writing out the steps to get there). It’s not always easy, but at least we can take this overwhelming, out-of-reach desire and help you get there.
Create for yourself the table we did to write out our dreams.
What do you want to do? Whether that’s to start a business, travel, pay off your debt, etc. Find your end goal first.
Visualize yourself having to have reached that goal. Since spending my honeymoon in Italy is mine, I included a photo in Amalfi Coast of the beauty Leonie Hanne. I visualize myself there in a few months’ time.
Speak your dream into existence: to my fiancé, I’ll say “I can’t wait to spend 2 weeks in Italy with you!” or to my friends, I’ll tell them “I’m so excited to go to Italy for our honeymoon!” Speak your end goal into existence. Speak as if your flight is already booked.
Now, the work. What will I do to actively be putting in the work to get to Italy? $$$ is the pivotal role to travel. So I will put away $200 each week for flights, hotel, food, etc. Each week I will show up and do whatever is written in that blank.
Finally, goal planning: a step-by-step to your end goal, separate from (back to my example) putting away $200 each week. Start from the bottom and work your way up to the end goal. The more specific you are at each step, the less overwhelming it will look overall.
Referring back to the example, my first step was to decide which part of Italy we wanted to visit, and then how much we needed to save up to go. The next step up was to save up the money, but how?—shop less, cook at home, etc. This step helps me save $200 each week. Then, I have to book the flight and hotel, create an itinerary for each day, pack, and then go!
(Something we left out was when to go—but we knew our honeymoon was right after the wedding day and for 2 weeks time).
Marianna Hewitt first posted of this guide on her stories after a Q&A, credit to her.
How To Spend New Year’s Eve
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
The classic: attend a party!
Put on your best dress, and join a party to ring in the new year! A sparkly dress, drinks and food, games and lots of entertainment. What better way to ring in the exciting new year than a lively party.
OR.. host your own!
This can be more intimate and a chill vibe. Still, dress to impress, grab all the dinner, drinks and snacks, and entertain your heart out. Don’t forget to dim the lights and play that NYE playlist.
Since you’re hosting and it’s an intimate party, make a toast. Whether it’s a moment of reflection among family or close friends, take time to say thank you and count your blessings. Cheers!
If you want to be creative, you can make up your own New Year’s themed games for your party guests. Another tip- if you don’t want to do all the cooking, host a potluck dinner. Everyone will bring a dish or two and it will relieve you of the burden of cooking. This way you can fully immerse yourself in entertaining.
Attend a midnight church service
There are dozens of local churches who hold a midnight service on New Year’s Eve. These often include food, singing, a message from the church leadership and a prayer into the new year.
Roadtrip to a winter cabin
This is for those who will spend New Year’s with a handful of close family or friends. Super intimate. Airbnb in the mountains, stay cozy and watch movies, eat good food and you can watch the ball drop on tv. This way you can write your resolutions, wake up in the morning and have brunch, and spend the day exploring the local area.
If you head to a town in the mountains with a ski resort, usually there’s plenty to do. Ice skating, warm winter snacks, small shops and skiing of course.
Happy New Year’s!
Simple Ways to SAVE MONEY #AdultingHacks
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
Cancel your gym membership and workout at home
I don’t know about you, but my gym membership costs $129 a month. Yes, it includes a steamroom and a pool, but how often do I use that? Not enough. There’s great workout videos to follow like this one or this one. Workouts at home can be with a simple mat and a video.
Try going through a day spending $0.00
There’s so many ways to do this. You don’t have to be sitting at home either. Try a day at the beach with your girlfriends, or tea with your grandmother, movie night, and the list goes on.
Use cashback apps on groceries
Save your receipts and scan them into cashback apps. Ibotta has a large variety of grocery stores that we often shop at. You can get anywhere from $0.10 to $2.00 on the items you normally purchase.
Plan out your meals for the week and buy the groceries
By planning out your meals, you’ll shop for the groceries you need without an excuse to not make them. Yes, we know eating out is easier and faster, but if the ingredients are sitting in the fridge, you’ll be more inclined to use them.
Check through your subscriptions
You may not know it, but you could be paying for subscribed apps you forgot about months ago. If you have an iPhone, this is super easy. Go to Settings > click your name at the very top to get into your Apple ID info > then Subscriptions.
Shop during sales
This isn’t possible for everything, but we all have big items on our wishlist, like a tv or the Anthropologie mirror. If they can wait, buy them when a big deal is happening.
#WeHaveNailsAtHome and #WeHaveCoffeeAtHome
Do your mani/pedis yourself and save up to $100 every month. It may take a few tries to perfect your skills, but you got this girl!
Jeanne aka @thegreylayers from Instagram, started this hashtag over 2 years ago, encouraging her followers to make their coffees at home to save hundreds of dollars each. Tiktok has some pages you should follow for the best at-home coffee recipes. Follow @1cupofcoffee @ktcoffeegal @starbsmorgs
How To: 7 Clever Ways To Respect Mother Nature
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
Living an eco-friendly lifestyle, each of us make a difference no matter how small—
- Turn off the water while you brush your teeth and cleanse your face.
- Reduce junk mail by downloading the app PaperKarma and unsubscribe in the app (not all companies are linked with the app but many are to start!)
- Keep extra reusable shopping totes in your car instead of getting paper or plastic bags every trip.
- Grow herbs like dill, cilantro, and mint at home—even fruit and veggies if you have space!
- Try composting in your yard—great for your garden too.
- Instead of ordering from Amazon almost daily—yes, we’ve done this too—save items to your cart and order at the end of the week
- Replace paper towels with dish clothes
7 Beauty Habits To Adopt As Soon As You Get Engaged
How To: An instructional series to instruct our readers with routines, guides, and recipes.
Engaged?
Here are a few beauty habits you need to adopt as soon as you get engaged…not start on a month (or days) before your big day.
1. Quit it: biting your nails.
You need pretty hands as a bride. Everyone will be looking at your hands (show off that ring!) and they will be photographed, so they need to be in top shape.
Try Bite It— tastes terrible but really will stop you from biting your nails. Then make it a habit to get a weekly manicure. In the short term this will make your nails look better, but over time proper nail grooming will make nail beds look longer and will control problems such as hangnails and dry cuticles.
If your nails are brittle, take a daily multivitamin such as Centrum regularly. It will make your nails stronger.
2. A fitness routine.
Exercise is the best beauty treatment around, we all swear by it. As a bride, you’ll need to fit into that dress and look good in photos.
Also, getting blood circulating will give you a natural glow, and if you’re working out outside like running, you’ll get a little color without going sun-bed tanning.
3. Problem skin? Go see the derm.
Even if you have the worst acne ever, modern medicine can make it go away before you walk down the aisle. Your dermatologist’s got you. If you have decent skin but breakout due to stress (very likely before the big day!), a dermatologist can give you prescription creams for that as well.
You can also experiment with botox or fills, if you’re inclined to. But be sure to try it all long before the wedding, in case you don’t love the results(!!).
4. Get your eyebrows into shape.
Ask a recent bride for a good recommendation on this one. Eyebrows frame your entire face so go see a pro, not the backroom at the nail salon. If they’re too straight or too arched, they can look fake or drawn on, so work with someone who only does eyebrows(!!).
5. Let’s talk about your hair.
The rule of thumb is not to do anything drastic right before your wedding, but a few months in advance is a good time to consider your options.
Find a stylist you can stick with and talk about your wedding look. A good stylist knows how to pace changes, or make sure things go to plan. Do you want to lighten your hair or chop it short?
6. See the dentist.
Like your hands, everyone will notice your smile. It will be a day full of smiles so go in for a proper dental cleaning as soon as you’re engaged and talk to your dentist about any necessary upkeep.
Take care of any fillings or root canals, because you don’t want to have to deal with dental work right before your wedding. This is also a good time to get your teeth whitened, or try aligners if you want to straighten your grin.
7. Facials.
Facials deeply cleanse the skin, boost circulation and hydrate it. For best results, facials should be done every four to six weeks.
Start getting regular facials done at least six months before your wedding. Do not have your last facial too close to the big day(!!)—two weeks before is ideal. Ask your esthetician about microdermabrasion as well, if you really want your skin to glow.
