Coffee, cats and catching up…
Why bother waking up early? I honestly don’t know. To be fair, I used to be a really early morning person, but not by choice. I used to wake up at 4:30 am to get to work by 6:30-7am but I don’t have urgent time commitments like I used to. I generally try to aim for a wake up call between 5:30 and 7am, just to get some quiet time to myself before the day starts to consume me. I initially put this time aside to write but I find myself reading or just sitting with a cat and a cup of coffee.
I do find myself to be more creative in the late hours, but I feel like the day is wasted when I sleep in. If I wake up late, I feel like I shouldn’t bother making espresso. I guess that’s my reward for waking up early, super strong coffee! That alone is worth the early wake up call. But for the most part, being an early riser means I get more time to get my routine back in order I had a terrible cold/ cough the two weeks surrounding Thanksgiving, and now I find that my throat seems very dry. So I’m aiming for at least two 32 oz glasses of water, three large (16oz) cups of decaf tea in the afternoon, one latte in the morning (2 shots of espresso and some frothy milk and stevia to sweeten) and at least one smoothie to replace a meal during the day (I try for a green smoothie with no dairy, at least 32oz). I am trying to stick to just one cup of coffee when I first wake up, and then water or tea the rest of the day. I devote at least 30 min to 45 min to a basic/ beginner yoga practice. I am using the conair facial steamer for 5-10 min every morning to de-puff and loosen up all the stuff in my nose and chest. I use filtered water, if I use straight up tap water I get a lot of calcium deposits on the underside of the plastic attachment. Sometimes I will cut up a few pieces of aloe leaf and put that in the water, but there is no real need to do that. It is refreshing, maybe I should so that more often! I also find that it’s best to get your ‘me’ time out of the way so you can focus on work later in the day. I start projects early in the day so I can have that time in the late afternoon to collect myself again. Or I will do the prep work (gather images, sketches, etc…) the night before and then I have everything ready for myself to knock out things first thing in the morning. Since I am waking up earlier, I find it to be so much fun to play around with my makeup again! It used to be a time thing, but since my mornings are more stretched out now, I really like doing my face. I combine a daub of my true match foundation with a primer and a bb cream and mix them together in my hand, apply all over my face, then I use a large round brush to blend around my eyes and mouth, around my nose too. Then I usually just do a light translucent eye shadow, dark gel liner at the top lid and mascara. I’m really loving the LOC matte lip color I got last month from Birchbox. See my Instagram for more details. Another side effect from waking up early, I have the time to put a good breakfast together. I often find myself making my coffee and something simple for breakfast, like cut fruit or eggs, and I bring it back to bed with me and my laptop. It’s a working breakfast-in-bed meeting with myself and at least one kitty. It’s pretty much perfect. But I do like the feeling of getting most of my tasks done before 10 am. Today I did the food shopping, went to the bank, ordered some basics via ebay, put an estimate together for a returning client, and updated the blog here all before lunch.
