Kitchen Help

My favorite thing about blogging is sharing my best styling tips with my silver sisters. I was a hot mess before figuring out how to dress and shop smarter in the second half of my life.

Let’s talk about proportion for a moment. When you wear a long unstructured top, you must pair it with slim-fitting pants. The opposite is also true. If you wear a narrow fitting top, you should wear a loose-fitting bottom to avoid looking two sizes larger than you are. If both pieces are voluminous and you wear flat shoes, you will look frumpy. (I know this from personal experience.) If you can wear both the top and bottom fitted, you must spend a lot of time in the gym every day and have tremendous confidence.

The white shirt/jacket worn in these photos is by Focus via My Fair Lady. It has a slight waffle texture and angled pockets, as well as decorative wooden buttons. I can wear it buttoned with leggings or lightweight, slim-fitting jeans and unbuttoned, as shown here with a white tank top. It is long, so I need to wear shoes with thicker soles to balance my short legs with the top half of my body. The tank is shorter than the shirt to create different lengths in the front. Varying lengths in top layers will flatter the shape much more than one straight line.

The white Focus top was a gift. It is here at My Fair Lady.  The jeans are old by Michael Kors. The microfiber contemporary tank is from Chico’s. The shoes are by Treasure & Bond here.

Great tips for looking and feeling your best often include using things you may already have in your kitchen.

1. Sugar and olive oil make a fantastic body scrub. Just mix some sugar with enough olive oil to make a paste and gently massage your arms, legs, and shoulders with it before your shower.

2. Olive oil has been used as a hair and facial moisturizer for centuries in Greece and Italy. Put a little in your palm and massage it into your hands and then scrunch the ends of your hair. The fragrance fades in a few minutes. Coconut oil is also an excellent moisturizer for hair, hands, and feet.

3. Save caffeinated black tea bags or coffee in tea bags. Steep your cup of hot beverage but save the bags and place them in the refrigerator when you wake up with puffy eyes, put one cold bag on each eye and lie down for a few minutes to reduce the puffiness.

4. Brew a “tea” made from only whole cloves and water. I use about a teaspoon of whole cloves with purified water to make 2 cups of hot tea. Put the cloves in a coffee filter and brew it in the coffee maker as you would a cup of coffee. This particular tea will make parasites in your gut die off and exit. When we travel or eat some foods, we can pick up parasites that will live in our intestines and make life miserable for weeks or months. The symptoms are bloating, cramps, and quick-step visits to the bathroom many times a day. You can expect immediate relief.