Love the nip in the air? The smell of roasted corn, mouth-watering samosas, cups of garam chai, smooth hot chocolate?

Well we are not at our brightest in this season which makes you hit the snooze button more often than you think, and the morning runs suffer.

Make sure that your skin doesn’t. Use simple tricks to keep your glow on even in the driest of weathers.

Facial Care: Your face lights up someone’s world, so let the lights not dim in this drab weather.

• Cleanse carefully, avoid washing your face too often and try using cold milk with cotton as one of the cleansing alternative.
• Scrub as little as possible with milder scrubs
• Do not forget to tone your skin as it tends to secrete more oil in winters to combat dryness.
• Moisturize without blocking those pores. Add a bit of extra virgin olive oil to your daily moisturizer / night cream. Applying mustard oil on your face at night helps too (if you can bear the smell)
• Masks made from kitchen ingredients like ripe mashed bananas, avocados, buttermilk or cream (malai) with a pinch of turmeric, egg yolk can be quite beneficial to combat dryness.
• Pout pretty by scrubbing your lips with olive oil and fine salt to exfoliate. Make your you do not have already chapped lips as this will not only irritate the dry and bruised lips but may also result in redness or bleeding and chances of infection are high.
• Apply petroleum jelly , lip balms or simply home-made ghee to keep the smile pain free.
• Make up needs an additional base layer of moisturizer to avoid flakiness. Choose mineral or cream based make up depending on your skin type.

Skin Care: The rest of your beautiful body needs attention too. Don’t let the wind blow away your enthusiasm for a stricter regime during this season. Your skin need extra pampering in this season.

• There are times when you are tempted to take long hot showers to combat the chill, but this is exactly what you need to avoid. To keep your skin supple tale 5 minutes lukewarm showers.
• We feel less thirsty and crave for more teas and coffees and hot chocolates in this season. But remember anything with sugar and caffeine will dry your skin, so drink more water (eat sattu to boost thirstiness).
• Eat lots of Citrus fruits, nuts, foods that are rich in protein, vitamin A, B1, and B2. Avoid fried food as much as you can. Give the sweet tooth a break and eat natural sweet dates for energy and to curb the craving. This will also help you keep your weight in check due to over eating.
• Make note of winter rashes and try to prevent them by wearing breathable fabrics, moisturizing your skin, using natural, fragrance-free soaps, using broad-spectrum sunscreen that has an SPF of 30 or higher.
• Avoid rough cracked feet by regularly exfoliating and moisturizing your feet.
• Use hand creams regularly to avoid those pretty hands from becoming dry and flaky.
• Moisturizing before bedtime is quite beneficial. Stay away from tight jewelry to avoid rashes.
• Take care of your elbows because even with the body well moisturized the elbows tend to look white and dry. Moisturize them well.

Hair Care: Let that mane not get matted, avoid bad hair days / nights and stay stylish
Winter tends to make the hair drier and frizzier than normal.

• Avoid washing hair too often however tempting it may be, use lukewarm water for hair wash. Do not for get to condition your hair for better results use leave in conditioners during winter.
• Beware of the dangers of dandruff which is especially high in winters Don’t forget that those hot oil massages don’t just feel heavenly they nourish your hair from deep within too, go ahead indulge but don’t over indulge as leaving the oil in your hair for longer periods of time can lead to dandruff so can over stripping it by shampooing too often. So, try to maintain a balance.
• Rinsing the hair with apple cider vinegar before shampoo helps too.

Style tips: Bring on those jackets and shawls and wear them with panache.

• Just make sure you have pre-washed and stored those woolens well. Air them well to remove any storage or damp foul smells.
• Treat your woolen garments well and instead of wearing one bulky sweater and then sweat if the temperature changes use multiple layers of clothes with the base layer closest to your body being soft and nonabrasive (to particularly avoid rashes).
• Step up your style quotient by wearing your scarves and caps differently.
• Sometimes step out with the scarf tied to your handbag belt or use it actually as a belt and later if required use it as a scarf.
• Bring out your boots and funk them up with pieces of jewellery over drab black boots.
• Don’t freeze to look stylish, you can wear long sleeve blouses, bandh galas, traditional jackets and clothes in thicker material like velvet, brocade, silk, jaquard.
• Wear warm leggings under your sarees lehengas. Wear knit blouses.
• Wear embroidered jackets over sarees.
• Use designer shawls (especially ones with any kind of embroidery work on them) instead of dupattas.
• If your head feels cold cover your head the traditional way or simply wear some silk hats with jeweler to raise those eyebrow as well as a few temperatures in the room.

Go ahead enjoy the winters in a wise, wacky way and yes don’t forget to smile, after all everyone needs the warmth of the sun and the smile.

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