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| Photo: Patrik Andersson |
1. Has it been more than five years since you rethought your style? Even the most classic look needs occasional tweaks.
2. Typically when you look in the mirror, do you love your hair? It seems like a simple question, but when life gets busy, it's easy to think, "Well, it's okay/fine/best I can do." Talk with a stylist about options you might like more.
3. Do you see your haircut—or anything remotely similar—in any current magazine? If your answer is no, except in a "before" photo, your style probably needs to be refreshed.
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What would it take to change your life for the better? It may be less than you think—we’ve got mini-makeovers to help you upgrade everything from your workout to your weekend. #10: Shake yourself awake tomorrow.
Billed as the "un-arm clock," LARK is a sleep system in which you program wake-up times into your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, slip on the wireless wrist band, and then hit the sack. When it's time to rise, the band wakes you with gentle vibrations. The best part? If you and your partner are on different schedules, it rouses only the person who needs to get up, as there's no audible alarm.
Available at lark.com
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30 Days of Makeovers
Your best energy source—sound sleep
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| Photo: Courtesy of LARK |
Available at lark.com
Keep Reading
30 Days of Makeovers
Your best energy source—sound sleep
How to wake up more refreshed
 | I believe how I act today will affect the way I am tomorrow. — Katherine Hepburn |  |
| I believe how I act today will affect the way I am tomorrow. — Katherine Hepburn | |
Another Friday has come and gone and yet there is still so much to be grateful for in the world. Let's begin...
1. The organic beauty of cities:
2. The gift of giving never gets old. This bookstore is spreading the joy of reading with a simple message.
3. If dogs could speak, this one would say "I missed you... a lot." Unfortunately, a joyous embrace to welcome home his owner from the military will have to suffice.
4. Katy Perry becomes the first female and second ever recording artist (tied with Michael Jackson) to have five songs from the same album reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
5. The perseid meteor shower is as lovely to listen to as it is to look at.
Enjoy the weekend!
1. The organic beauty of cities:
2. The gift of giving never gets old. This bookstore is spreading the joy of reading with a simple message.
3. If dogs could speak, this one would say "I missed you... a lot." Unfortunately, a joyous embrace to welcome home his owner from the military will have to suffice.
4. Katy Perry becomes the first female and second ever recording artist (tied with Michael Jackson) to have five songs from the same album reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
5. The perseid meteor shower is as lovely to listen to as it is to look at.
Enjoy the weekend!
| Photo: Thinkstock |
Researchers from the National Institute on Aging analyzed data from a study of 1,988 people using the assessment tool of the "Big Five" personality traits, which include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. [Curious about your personality profile? You can learn more about the Big Five personality test at the Berkeley Personality Lab site, and then take an online version of the test.]
The strongest predictor of who would be overweight was impulsivity, they reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. We could have guessed that, but the numbers are still bracing: Participants who scored in the top 10 percent on this trait weighed an average of 22 pounds more than those in the bottom 10 percent. Compared to participants of normal weight, the overweight and obese participants were more impulsive—and warm, and assertive. They were also more likely to seek out excitement and prefer to be around others. Alternatively, those people who scored high on conscientiousness (aka, the task-focused, efficient, dutiful and organized) tended to be leaner.
Now who would you invite to your party? The study highlights a conundrum familiar to any weight-conscious social butterfly: It's hard to pass up fun events just because Temptation might also be on the guest list. [Find out how to be a spontaneously savvy party-goer, after the jump]
Imagine a world where four courageous yet completely ornery older people—Granny, Frank the Fixer, Madge the Merciless, and Emile the Organizer—take on the evils of today's society, battling nefarious financial planners and knocking out health insurance company representatives. This is the inspired, much-needed idea behind Coot Avengers, a comic book now being funded on Kickstarter. (Technically, the project has already reached its $2,500 goal, but we advise donating anyway—just for the free-with-donation gift comic entitled Everything I Know About Wall Street, I Learned From My Cat.)
The geniuses behind the mature, laugh-lined superheroes are Kay Wood (age 60), Michael Silverstein (age 70) and Doris Lane Grey (age 72) who got together one afternoon for pastries, only to begin discussing getting older and dealing with various bureaucratic agencies. Silverstein in particular was in the middle of a nasty battle with an insurance agent over who was going to pay for a colonoscopy. "People our age are in a daily fight with government agencies, city hall, and even private employers who don't want to hire anybody over 50," says Wood.
Soon the three had pooled their artistic resources to try something new for all of them—a comic, populated with characters who are "feisty, wise, and when circumstances demand, intimidating."
"The project has been so enlightening," says Silverstein, "to be able to have a medium that allow you to focus attention on these issues—not beat people over the head with them—but present them in a really poignant, fun way." His particular comic alter-ego, he claims, is Frank the Fixer: "a tall, slender, gawky guy who doesn't like to take a lot of guff from people."
The fact that originators of the Coot Avengers are seemingly as feisty and wise are their characters is not that much of a surprise, but one tidbit on their website did wow us: Some 44 million Baby Boomers will be eligible for Social Security between now and 2029. With those kind of numbers, you have to wonder if that particular group needs a superhero—given that the last time they stood up for something, it was for the end of the Vietnam War.
| Photo: Getty |
There have been many similar-looking Matilda cats since the original made her debut, but last week the hotel celebrated its latest "Algonqueen," Matilda III [left] with a cat fashion show.
To see some of the best looks from the runway alongside witticisms from the hotel's cattiest human guests, keep reading.
What would it take to change your life for the better? It may be less than you think—we’ve got mini-makeovers to help you upgrade everything from your workout to your weekend. #9: A fast and free mini-massage for instant relaxation.
You can schlep to a masseuse for $100 an hour, or relieve stress in minutes for free, using acupressure—the Chinese art of applying pressure to specific points on the body, says Dr. Mehmet Oz. Start by gently tugging your earlobes, pressing lightly with your thumb and index finger. Rub your lobes and move up the outer rim of the ear. This can stimulate endorphin production and reduce stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
Keep Reading
30 days of makeovers
The hidden health benefits of massage
4 easy ways to incorporate touch into your day
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| Photo: Thinkstock |
Keep Reading
30 days of makeovers
The hidden health benefits of massage
4 easy ways to incorporate touch into your day
If you're one of the roughly 39,503,203 people in the United States who was born between 1959 and 1968—meaning that in 1988, you were at least 20 but had not quite reached 30—today is the day to fake some kind of scar,y crippling gastro-intestinal illness and flee directly to the nearest multiplex. (If you are in any other age group, you could pull the same stunt, but you will have less of a historical impetus to justify your actions.)
One Day, the novel that charted the friendship/romance of a certain brilliant but befuddled Emma and a certain charming but self-destructive Dexter over the course their formative youth (and beyond) opens in theaters today, starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. True, we swooned over their love story. But we also swooned over the portrait of a time—1988 to 1998ish—when one's 20s could be spent writing a never-to-published first novel on a typewriter with no correction key or writing love letters instead of "we r over" texts and—most vitally, missing life-changing phone calls because, geez, there was no such thing as a mobile.
But these are just the obvious markers of this generation. This was time when cool girls lived in Doc Martins (see photo left) and—going back to the book that birthed the movie—not-so-cool girls wore a certain accessory noticed by Dexter on Emma, circa 1991. "Why didn't she get contact lenses instead of those big ugly spectacles?....And velour scrunchies, she wasn't doing herself any favour with the scrunchies."
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