Inventory Day

Day 8 - Inventory

All the way through this course and for as long as you are interested in being an interested person, which I hope is for life - use Sundays as your inventory day.
Check your assets and take out your liabilities and look them into face. Enjoy your progress, congratulate yourself on improvements, that’s your credit side. Make some definite plans about the debit side.

There isn’t an ugly woman in the world, there are undiscovered women, unrealised girls who have not had the drive and determination to create beauty within themselves, to uncover the hidden charms that every woman possesses.

There is a basis for beauty that cannot be manufactured - genuine peace with yourself. This is the most important thing I can ever tell you: Contentment is a woman’s best cosmetic. The look of happiness on your face will be worth all the make up tricks you can ever learn. Beauty and health shine from within. But the most beautiful look in the world is the glow on the face of a woman in love. You will have to take care of falling in love yourself, all I can do is help you to become lovable. Then even though I can’t guarantee a delivery of a man at your feet by the end of this course, I’ll be tempted to bet on it.
~Anita Colby~

Use your Sundays to actively cultivate your soul. Give it a good spiritual exercise. Relax during the day with a book of good thinking and do some reading (Mrs Colby recommends: Three Minutes a Day by Father James Keller or As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. Madame MG recommends Creative Visualisation by Shakti Gawain or anything by Dr Wayne Dyer).

Then take yourself outdoors or to somewhere else that inspires you; the fashion collection at Victoria and Albert Museum works for me every time. This is how you clear out cobwebs from your mind, eradicate worries and belittle your own troubles

And finally grade yourself from 1 to 10 for degree of accomplishment, be fair and honest.


My weekly score:

1. Have you followed the basic principles of the course - diet exercise, rest? 6/10
2. Have you intelligently done your daily 1,2,3 beauty routine? 7/10
3. Are your teeth, hair, hands and clothing well groomed? 6/10
4. Can you do your exercises well? 9/10
5. Do you practise good posture constantly and back it up with daily deep breathing sessions? 7/10
6. Can you relax completely to relieve tension of mind and body? 8/10
7. Are you breaking your bad habits, tidying up your mind? 5/10
8. Are you widening the horizon of you interestes, your friends, your hobbies and cultural pursuits? 8/10
9. Do you find your viewpoint, your effectiveness as person improving with your physical appearance? 7/10
10. Have you found a true, living, working faith? 8/10

Score: 71/100

I didn’t score too badly, I’ve stuck to the cleansing plan, but traded soap and water to some Lancôme cleanser and toner, my blackheads are disappearing even though the only major difference to my normal routine is cleansing my face with a cleanser in the morning too, previously I would have just used a bit of toner after shower and before moisturising, now I cleanse properly twice a day.

I have done my exercises, not every day but a good five times so far and tilt myself into Hollywood Slant at every opportunity, it feels great, you should try it.

But I have to come clean, diet wise this week has been a disaster… wine, beer, ice cream. pizza, cake and all sorts of other lovely things that you are supposed to enjoy in moderation - not daily! I seriously need to plan my eating a bit better. Wine is great and British summer so short (and often non-existent) that it seems a pity to say no to an ice cream when it’s really hot, but needs must.

So for next week I’m going to focus on the diet bit.

I took a sneak peek to what’s in store in the coming week and there’s manicure, sunbathing, hairstyling and towards to end of the week we are finally getting to my favourite part; make up!

Personal Habits - They Make or Break a Beauty

Day 7 - Breaking Bad Habits & Date Night

Use your Saturdays to collect yourself to restore order to your mind, your body and your belongings.

All the things your do from the moment you wake up until you shut your eyes at night form a pattern of your life, your self-portrait to the world. You are simply the sum of the million little things you do every day. So the way to change yourself is to check off bad habits and break them.

Stop picking on yourself:
Some of the things you say to yourself you would never say to someone you love. Be kind to yourself and stop comparing your looks to somebody else's. Learn how to look like yourself, but your very best, individual self. Analyse and study your face and body for their own special assets and then polish yourself from top to toe.

Do you flounder through life? Are you the kind of person who is always having accidents? Do you let things "just happen" to you, lose interest, or your grip or your man?
Coordinate yourself, keep your body in such poised and perfect alignment that it takes you beautifully through life. Keep your mind in balance too. Plan your life, your time, your budget, your pleasure and your duties, so that you make things happen as you want them to.

Do you get slipshod about being clean, clean, clean ,clean? There is no basis for beauty not even for self respect except scrupulous cleanliness.
Follow your cleansing regime religiously.

Do you gobble heavy, rich foods when your skin and your figure tell you you shouldn't?
Eat with sense, follow your diet, count your calories.

Do you let careless elimination habits (that's having a poo to you and me)cloud up your skin and vitality?
Try to establish regular daily hours for your body's elimination habits. Drink enough water if you're not regular - 6 to 8 glasses between meals - but no more.

Do you wave dry, wrinkled paws?
Moisturise your hands at every opportunity, after carefully drying every finger, every inch of palm, use lotion, keep a bottle in your bathroom, by the kitchen sink, on your nightstand... A daytime glove habit keeps your hands protected summer or winter (plus looks super elegant!)

Are you armadillo elbowed?
Oil a lot, at night, before baths. In the tub take a scrubbing brush and soap to work off tough outer skin. Dip elbows into halves of lemons after you've pumiced and oiled them.

Have you got fresh breath?
Even your best friend won't tell you if you smell bad, but stinky breath makes a girl about as uncharming as a girl can be. Do your proper tooth brushing after every meal or munch hard fruit and raw vegetables to clean the teeth. Keep a moutwash in you desk drawer at work, see a dentist regulardy and don't specialise in high smelling food or drink. (Now if only she had given advice on how to let somebody know they have a vile breath without upsetting them...)

How about BO?
Keep clean, fresh and fuzzfree, use deodorants and antiperspirants.

Do you allow underarm or leg fuzz to grow?
Don't! Shave regularly, at least two or three times a week and don't think stockings are going to hide unshaved legs, it's like putting your legs under glass.

Do you live with messy dressing table, bureau, drawers?
Tidy up your table tops, put underwear, stockings, gloves, scarves, bags and sweaters in proper drawers. Put sachets, scented lining paper or emptied perfume bottles in your bureau. At work keep a small space in the back of your drawer for your cosmetics, moutwash and comb.



Date Night

What do you do when you have got a date at eight but you are exhausted after shopping all day? (I hope you sneaked a look at yourself in the shop window - are you a better looking girl than a week ago? Did you have a posture so regal you could have put those parcels on the top of your head and carried them right back home?)

But your feet ache, your hair is stringy, you are tired all over and there's just an hour to go.

Start from the feet, rub and massage deeply with olive oil and then a quick shower or do a contrast bath like Betty Grable (picture above) used to do, stinging hot and then icy cold sprays, scrubbing with a brush and massaging.

Set your hair in cologne, it dries quickly and makes your hair smell lovely to the man you are dancing with.

Cream Clean your face, long and thoroughly, smoothing away the tired lines, then tone and lubricate (that's moisturise to you and me)

Make eye lotion pads and lay them on your lids (cucumber slices, teabags, table spoons that have been in the fridge for a bit or just a simple gel eye mask will also do the trick).

Now the Hollywood Slant, put those feet up and massage them if they are still giving you trouble, use a menthol foot cream. Before you put your shoes on sprinkle shoes and feet with talcum powder. Go limp, see black and lie there for 15 minutes with blood flowing to recharge your face.
Now then, refreshed and bright eyed, remove the cream from your face, put on your make up and perfume the pulse spots of your body, brush out your hair, slip into your date dress and shoes, comb your hair into shape, blot on some lipstick, check your reflection in the mirror and go and have fun.

The Hollywood Slant

People of the theatre have always known this simple fact, that you have to help your heart circulate. Blood flowing into the brain up into the neck and face. Myself for a few minutes each day , I stand on my head, I have been doing it for fifty years.
~Elsie Mendl~

A woman starts aging from the head down, so you must learn to give face, neck and shoulders more circulation, but luckily this doesn't mean you have to do headstands, although by all means do if you can.

Lean an ironing board against a low bed, put pillows under your bum and and heels on wall, reverse your angle on sofa or chaise longue, head down, feet up. Do anything to put your body on about a 30 to 45 degree upslant. Start off with 10 minutes at a time, work up to 20, then to a half hour a day.

Lie this way when talking on the phone, while waiting for your nail polish to dry, while you give yourself a facial or simply whilst daydreaming. But do it everyday, get a fresh supply from your own fountain of youth. All the delicate muscles of face and neck slide back up into positions that make a lovelier face. Jaw and cheeck contours firm up, down drooping lines disappear, chins undouble and you’ve fought off old age a bit.

Apparently everybody in Hollywood does it, to freshen themselves in the short breathers on location, to relax after a long day's shooting and to restore their looks and minds.

Ginger Rogers used to drop off for fifteen minute naps with her heels hung up over the head of her bed. Olivia de Havilland went over her lines with her head on the floor and her feet on the side of a couch. Eve Arden rested between scenes with her feet propped on the wall.