Fr Lol I’m Not Judging Though But……wow

how do you do your brows?

Brow mapping string is my go-to method.

I've recently perfected my technique and my brows have never looked better! I'm actually shocked at how nice my brows look and I could have never guessed that such a small change could transform my entire look. I'm afraid plucking stray hairs here and there is not enough for me anymore, I'm never going back and I've learned that eye measurement is an accurate method for shaping brows. I like my brows to frame my face perfectly, I want them to be very symmetrical and I'm a major fan of the clean, defined lines that gives you that freshly done brow look. I use the golden ratio so my brows fit my face just right and I leave no room for mistakes. It's not complicated at all - I just follow the step-by-step tutorial linked above, I'm in love with this video in particular because it's straight to the point and easy to follow. The tutorial is designed as a framework for microblading, but I personally use it to shape my brows. I believe every woman should know how to shape her own brows at home without depending on an aesthetician, and it's a simple enough skill to master.

Hi Elle,

Did you take any etiquette classes, or red any books about etiquette? If so what did you take away from it? In general what is some basic etiquette everyone should know?

Yes, my mother made my sister and me take etiquette classes when we were growing up, where we learned how to make small talk, use cutlery properly, do the fox trot, and all that. It felt like torture at the time, but now that I'm an adult, I'm incredibly grateful for it. There are countless teachings I believe everyone should know, but I'll keep it simple and list the basics:

Socializing:

Greetings and Introductions:

Initiate Greetings: In formal settings, greeting the host and senior individuals first is polite.

Introduce Yourself with Confidence: When introducing yourself, make eye contact, smile, and offer a firm (but gentle) handshake.

Remember Names: Pay attention to names during introductions, and try to use them in conversation to show attentiveness.

Conversation Etiquette:

Avoid Monopolizing Conversations: Engage in a balanced dialogue exchange; avoid dominating the conversation.

Graceful Interruptions: If you must interrupt, do so politely with a soft “Excuse me” or “May I add…?”

Ending Conversations: Close conversations gracefully, e.g., “It was a pleasure speaking with you,” before moving on to another guest.

Small Talk and Topics:

Safe Topics: Stick to light, neutral topics like travel, the arts, or current (non-controversial) events.

Avoid Over-sharing: Keep personal matters private; maintain an air of mystery and sophistication.

Dining:

Seating Etiquette:

Wait to Be Seated: Wait until the host signals to sit, or until you’re guided to your seat.

Seating Order: If you’re hosting, guide guests to their seats based on seniority or guest of honor status.

Table Manners:

Utensil Use: Start with the outermost utensils and work your way in as the courses progress. After you've cut your food, make sure you move your for to your left hand even if it feels counterintuitive,

Bread and Butter: Tear off a small piece of bread, butter it on your plate, and eat it, rather than buttering the entire slice.

Resting Utensils: When pausing, place utensils on the plate in a “resting” position, such as crossed or angled.

Handling Courses:

Soup Etiquette: Spoon soup away from you and sip from the edge of the spoon without slurping.

Pacing: Match your pace to the host or the most senior individual at the table. Don't rush or lag behind.

Events:

RSVP and Invitations:

Timely Response: Respond to invitations promptly and never bring uninvited guests unless explicitly allowed.

Respect Time: Arrive on time, especially for formal events, but not more than 15 minutes early.

Host and Guest Responsibilities:

Host Etiquette: As a host, introduce guests to each other, especially if they don’t know anyone else.

Guest Behavior: Engage with other guests, but don’t cling to one person for the entire event. Mingle politely.

Handling Alcohol:

Moderation: Drink alcohol in moderation. Know your limits and avoid overindulgence.

Toast Etiquette: Stand if a toast is being made in your honor, and wait to drink until after the toast is given.

Dressing:

Dress Code Adherence:

Understand the Code: Whether it’s black tie, cocktail, or casual, always adhere strictly to the dress code specified on the invitation.

Subtle Elegance: Opt for classic, understated pieces that are elegant but not overly flashy.

Grooming and Accessories:

Impeccable Grooming: Make sure your hair, nails, and makeup are neatly done and appropriate for the occasion.

Minimalist Accessories: Choose simple, elegant accessories that complement but do not overpower your outfit.

Learning new skills that will make it easier to accomplish your goals >

Hi! Any advice on how to bring up iron levels?

Iron deficiency is quite common among women; it’s best to seek your doctor’s guidance to create a tailored plan that suits your needs.

For best results, consume your iron supplements with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice or citrus varieties, and consider taking vitamin C supplements to enhance absorption.

Consistency is key - To ensure effectiveness, it’s crucial to take your iron supplements regularly and on an empty stomach. (provided you have no gastric concerns)

Start using cast iron cookware for all your meals; it naturally leaches trace amounts of iron into your food, which offers a beneficial boost for those with iron deficiency, and can help boost iron levels.

Evaluate the factors that inhibit iron absorption to maximize the impact of your diet; steer clear of calcium (such as dairy), phytates in grains and beans, and beverages like coffee and tea, as they can obstruct absorption.

Our bodies are most efficient at absorbing heme iron, with red meat, chicken, beef liver, and certain fish serving as prime sources. We can absorb non-heme iron, albeit with lower efficiency, found in foods such as spinach, tofu, beans, and leafy greens.

Vitamin C enhances the absorption of non-heme iron; consider incorporating more tomatoes, citrus fruits, and red, yellow, and orange peppers into your diet.

Begin incorporating iron-rich juices into your diet, with beet juice being the optimal choice; and aim for daily consumption over a two-week period to boost your iron levels.

Begin your day by drinking blackstrap molasses on an empty stomach every morning. Molasses is an excellent source of iron, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin B6; I personally enjoy taking two tablespoons straight, but it can also be diluted in water.

How I got my life together.

Getting your life together, and I mean really getting it together, should be a priority of yours. You can’t miss out on your life by staying in a pattern of losing it all, pulling it together as quickly and as carelessly as you can, and then losing it all again because you weren’t ready enough or devoted the first time. I made a choice to pull my life together when I was 18, and I’ve stayed improving myself ever since; I bettered my mental health, fixed my body, changed my mindset, found an aesthetic and style that worked for me and that I loved, and have done my part to keep steadily improving my life and my mindset. If you are devoted to yourself and your life, you will do well and find that the path towards your future will become much clearer as time goes on.

Exercising.

You need to be exercising, bettering your body, and taking the time to nourish yourself and your health. This means eating whole meals and taking the time to cook and prepare them, considering removing heavily processed foods and alcohol from your day-to-day diet, and taking the time to do at home or in gym workouts. I do Move with Nicole videos in the morning, finish up with a quick yoga session, go to the gym in the evenings, and make sure that my body is being fueled by real foods and being properly hydrated throughout the day. You will live in the same body for the rest of your life; you need to make sure that you’re caring for it and nourishing it in ways that will let it support you for the rest of your life. You won’t regret a health journey, and you should actively be on one. 

Socializing.

Isolation will kill you, and if you already have anxiety, it will worsen it. You should be meeting people, getting to know them, leaving your comfort zone, and trying new things. Your late teens and early twenties are all about taking the time to know people, making and losing friends, and figuring out the sorts of people you want to have in your life forever. You have to socialize, go to social events, join clubs and different activities, and get out of the house. I’m a person who believes in spending time around and loving other people, and that has saved my life. If you aren’t sure how to socialize, don’t have friends, or aren’t sure of what you like, now’s the time to learn how. You don’t become good at meeting people in one day; it takes time and failure, but the more you do to leave your comfort zone, the easier it will become as time moves along.

Studying.

I believe that life is meant for learning. It’s important to always be learning, to always be bettering yourself, and to always be keeping your mind busy. While I strongly believe that every woman should have a university education and a degree, I understand that it’s not always feasible. If it’s not possible for you to get a degree, you have to learn a trade, a skill, a language, or find something to occupy your mind so that it’s not idle. It’s important to always be doing something, and it’s important that you’re pursuing a passion; life isn’t much if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, so you have to find them and do more with them. Education can come from work experience; it can come from pursuing projects, cultivating wisdom, and spending your time nourishing your mind and reading books. Life is a learning experience, and you should be in constant pursuit of educational excellence. 

Seeing More.

Life is about seeing more and seeing things you’ve never experienced. If you’ve always wanted to watch a tennis match, step into the ocean, or see the sights in a new city, now’s the time to start making plans to do those things. We all deserve to see and experience beautiful things, so it’s important that we find the time to do so. If I hadn’t made the time to find beauty in the mundane, I wouldn’t have made it far. You don’t have to spend money pursuing beauty; I find the most beauty I’ve seen in my life is found on short walks and time spent around my city. You should spend your time both looking for beauty and becoming beautiful too.

Doing More.

Doing more is next. I’ve spent my life trying new things, failing, succeeding, having a good time, and learning about what I enjoy. You should be doing more; your twenties are for moving away, visiting new cities, trying new foods, working jobs you hate and finding jobs you love, going to new restaurants and getting into new relationships, and doing more with yourself. All of the greatest women I’ve ever known have told me that they spent next to no time resting in their twenties because they had so much life to live. I’d encourage you to do things without holding yourself back, and if you don’t know what to do with yourself, find things to do. You can't waste your youth being idle; now is the time to get out of your room, see the world and what it has to offer, and do more with yourself and your gifts.

Richarlotte x

YOU DO NOT HEAL BY UNDERSTANDING YOUR TRAUMA

You heal by feeling safe enough to stop repeating it

Not reverting to your old coping mechanisms anymore is how you break the cycle

You want to understand because understanding gives the illusion of control

When we go through pain our mind kicks into overdrive trying to make sense of it. It’s the mind’s way of saying If I can figure this out, I can prevent it from happening again

Sometimes there isn’t a logical answer that will make the pain go away because it had nothing to do with you. And trying to intellectualize everything can become a way to avoid feeling the things that actually needs to move through the body

We try understanding because it’s less scary than sitting in the unknown. Stop trying to solve everything like a puzzle and instead start soothing the part of us that feels afraid, abandoned, unworthy etc

You don’t need another explanation

You need a hug

A deep breath

A new boundary

Or someone who looks at you and tells you that it wasn’t your fault

Because it wasn’t 🤍

Fire and Air placements be like

#Beautytips #perfume

How do I smell nice all the time?

I am pretty sure the best compliment (okay, if not the top 5 best compliments ever) is something along the lines of ‘you smell so nice’. It inflates my ego just right and I get giddy with happiness. Smelling nice isn’t just about wearing perfume. No, it starts at the shower and ends at after when you spray your perfume. The most important key to smelling good is scent layering. Scent layering is the art of wearing different scents at any one time and it can be traced back to the Middle East. Scent layering either really intensifies the one group of fragrance you are wearing or it helps you create your own bespoke signature scent.

Scent layering starts in the shower. Its actually very simple, if you want to smell very Vanilla- use vanilla scented products, if you want to smell like flowers, use floral shower gels and lotions, if you want to smell like musk… use musk scented shower products. Old rich people love the dove unscented bar and so do I. If you don’t know in the shower what you want to smell like, use a neutral smelling soap. It truly is the best bar of soap because it doesn’t leave an overpowring smell after using it. For your vulva, water is enough. Mild soap if you want to ‘really’ clean the area but stick to the outer labia and don’t put it in you. I use the dove bar after I have been to gym or during my period and I use just water to really clean between the folds. Also change your underwear everyday please. I like to store my underwear with some scented wax tablets or scented sachets. I like to put them in all of my drawers just so my underwears and socks can smell nice.

For everyday shower, I use a loofah, silicone body brush and a muslin cloth to clean my body but every third day I go in with a coarse mitt or a silk glove and exfoiliate my skin that way.  I spend a good minute cleaning both my armpits.  Thats the only place I really sweat so I need that place to be squeaky clean with no odour. I cannot have hair there either because I hate the way armpit hair traps body odour so I wax them every-week. My favourite deodorant is the Salt of the Earth, which hands down is the beat deodorant. I don’t know what they put in it but it is magical. It works against the worst of BO; I know someone whose sweat was very unpleasant and after I have gifted one to her, both of us have been very happy. I have all the spray versions and I rotate through each one depending on what I want to smell like that day. I have a whole foot care routine which I will talk about at some other point but for foot odour, I reccomend  wearing different pairs of clean socks everyday (you should not be sharing shoes and socks). I use the same Salt of Earth deodrant on my feet and if I am going to gym then I use foot powder as well. After I come home, I like spray the insides of my shoes with a shoe deodourizer and then go wash my feet in the shower.

Carrying on, scent layering phase 2 is lotions and oils. The same rule applies, stick to the same smell group. After you start getting the hang of how perfume and smell works you can start mixing different scented lotions and perfume but until then just stick to the basic groups. I use my body serums, lotions, moisturisers and on top of all that I put my scented moisturiser on. This way I can use my body products that help with KP and dryness and still smell nice. Perfumes and especially perfume oils stay on better on moisturised skin as the oils lock onto your skin better so always make sure you put some lotion on before you spray your perfume. I also mix traditional perfume oils that I have collected from all over the Arab world to South Asia into my lotions if I am going for a more traditional smell that day.

Tip🪄: Perfume brands will actually sell scented body lotions, shower gels and even hair mists in their popular acents. The body lotions are usually much cheaper and you can totally buy just that and still smell amazing for the fraction of the cost. They are also great for people who find perfumes in general to be a but too much but still want to smell like something. For my fave perfumes I buy the entire set so I smell like my fave perfume.

Spraying the perfume is phase 3. I use perfume before I put my clothes on. There is a lot of debate on how many sprays and how many whatnots but my rule is maximum one spritz on each and every pulse point and one cloud one. As much as I love perfume I dont like being choked by it. So I am always mindful about how many sprays because your perfume should be lingering and alluring not cloaking and invasive to people’s repository system. I will do one final spritz on my hair (using a hair mist) and that is me done. 

Your home smell is very important as well. You yourself are nose blind to it, but you do smell like your house and that can affect how others view you. What you cook, how you store your clothes, how stagnant the air is in your home, it all adds up. As a South Asian, the smell of my food ending up in my clothes is inevitable. To tackle this, I am strict at having different pairs of home clothes and going out clothes. As soon as I come in, I change into loungewear and spritz my clothes with a deodourizer and fabric freshner and put them away. When I cook I am mindful to open the ventilations, open the windows and keep the doors to my closet and rooms shut and I always wear an aporn.

I like everything to smell nice and that includes my home. I light various Thai/Japanese/Tibetan incense which makes my place smell like a monastery and some bakhoor to add sultry oriental feel. My old Sudanese friend taught me how to smoke my clothes with incense and I do that a lot too. I find it imperative to have mini dehumidifiers in the corners of my shelves and closet and these hanging ones on my clothing rails and in my drawers I have these tiny ones. They are great for humid enviroments and stop mold and mildew forming on the clothes.

Daphne xoxo