Making pretty: good habit

"Make pretty" is something I've been trying to add to my morning routine. I've mentioned face washing and the putting on of skin stuff at night to battle the skin issues slowly creeping onto my face, and this morning routine is the flipside. 

Of course, I've always washed my face in the morning; it just helps me to feel awake. But "making pretty" involves things that my face seems to benefit from at this point in my life. Curling my eyelashes, putting on a bit of eye liner, perhaps a bit of blush, caking on the undereye concealer... it all makes me look a bit fresher, a bit more polished and, dare I say it, a bit more adult. And of course, having some slap on my face encourages me to wash it off at night.

The other part of "making pretty" is doing my hair, and this is the reason that I almost never cross this step off my list. I actually get off easy here; my hair is super dry, so I only wash it twice a week (trust me, you cannot tell on the 3rd or 4th day that it's not freshly clean; these are actually the days I get the most compliments on it), dry it straight, and if I want a lasting style, I just flat-iron the ends a tad. Voilà, days and days of styled hair.

But my god is doing hair boring. It takes at least half an hour, which is time I could spend asleep or eating. And then of course it involves using hot tools that dry out my hair even more, requiring the addition of product, etc. So I usually let it air dry into waves and then shove it in a ponytail for the next few days.

I don't want to continue on down this path. I don't want to be unkempt or sloppy looking.  I admire ladies who are stylish and well-groomed (and well-maintained), and I want to be one.  So "Make pretty" is on my daily to-do list, and I'm trying, really, to stick to it.

What this means in practice: I need to budget time on those mornings when I'm washing my hair to allow for drying and flat-ironing. I should listen to something I enjoy while I do it so that it doesn't seem so godawful boring.  And I should use needing to wake up earlier to further encourage me in my pursuit to go to bed earlier. 

So many of these good habits are tied together, aren't they? Those of you who were taught these things as kids, as just regular routine, are lucky. Learning them all as an adult ... well, it could be very difficult if I let it; thankfully it's still new enough to be interesting.

And now I'm off to do some of my sewing projects. I will finish something today, really!