101 Free Ways to be Beautiful - #2 Smile

We've all heard it.  

Smile, and the world smiles with you.

It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown.

A smile is just a frown upside down.

There are so many ways smiling makes us beautiful.  I mean, come on, how many times have you heard "Oh, she has such a beautiful scowl".  I know it's difficult at times but if you practice, and give yourself permission to smile more, even if you don't feel like it, you'll be amazed at the changes that will happen in your life.

People like people who smile.

It's that simple.  When you meet someone who smiles at you, it sends a message of friendship and safety.  It's positive, inspiring communication without saying a word!  When you smile at someone, especially in today's society, it could be just the thing that turns their day around.  What's not beautiful about that?

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. ~ Mother Theresa

Smiling brightens your face.

 

Seriously, people seem to have a brighter light to them when they're smiling.  A happy glow.  It works from the inside out. It increases beta endorphines and lowers stress, worry and tension levels. It's good for your health and healthy people are more attractive.

I have never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful. 

~Anonymous

Smiling can make you more successful.

It increases energy, motivation and drive by increasing positive energy and can make you more popular.  Who wants to hang around the grouch with the slouch?  It's also habit forming so over time the little acts of positive energy will multiply and magnify.  Smiling reduces negativity and puts it on hold for a while.  It helps put you in a positive state and in that state you have more power and potential to shine.  There's a reason that almost all advertising photos have people with big smiles.  A smile is the universal language of good things.

Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. 

~Charles Reade

So.  What are you waiting for?  It's free.  It's beautiful. It's contagious.  It can change the world.  And it's one habit that's good for you.  It's the first step to feeling better and better.  When you feel better, you look better.... 

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,

 but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh

DIY - Eye Make-up Remover

Hello Beautiful People!

This week I have another fabulous DIY beauty product for you.  Eye make up removers can be just another expense to add to your beauty arsenal but they don't have to be.  Yes, a commercial product contains a whole bunch of things claiming to be gentle, have amazing, out of this world benefits and blah, blah, blah.

Honestly.  All you need is... oil.

 

Most eye make up products are designed so that water will not wash them away.  An obvious idea because our eyes are likely going to water (yes, I say my eyes leak because apparently "Big girls don't cry" *eye roll*)  So, naturally washing with soap and water isn't too effective.  That means that most eye make up is what we call oil soluble.  Dissolves in oil.  Now, I could have designed a product, as the big companies do, to make money off you but I can't in good conscious bottle plain old oil, jack up the price and sell it to you as something else.   I find it a little bit ridiculous when all you really need is oil.  

Any oil.  But my favorite is jojoba oil.

Okay, you got me.  Jojoba oil is not really an oil.  Its a wax ester that takes a liquid form but for our purposes it acts extremely similar to our own skins sebum.  It's gentle.  It's not overly greasy.  Though I don't recommend putting it in your eyes on purpose, this of course, has happened to me, and it doesn't terribly hurt.  But I digress.  Use what you've got, but I'll mention again, for those of you new to this... baby oil is mineral oil.  Mineral oil is a petroleum product.

K.I.S.S.  (Keep It Simple Sister) 

Humans, and IMHO the cosmetic industry, have a tendency to over complicate things.  Just take the oil, put it on a cotton pad or swab, gently wipe over your eyes and voila.  Cleansing and moisturizing in one go.   As I mentioned, you can use any ol' oil.  Almost all of us have olive oil in the kitchen now.  Sunflower oil is usually my go to body oil.  But I love the jojoba for eyes, face and hair.  You'll likely have to search it out at a health food store.  Although some of the larger super markets may have some in the beauty section (ie: soap, shampoo etc) if they've jumped on the "all natural" band wagon.  You know the section I mean, the one carrying the "natural" products from the really big companies *another eye roll is required here*... but that's another story.

Vegetable oil.   I ask you, what could be simpler?