3 Less-than-1-minute tricks to look less tired

Yes, I know you.

You, who totally clicked on this story about how to look less tired.

You’re beat. And exhausted.

You were up with the baby who wanted to party at 3am for no reason, or you were laying on your pillow from 12:30am to 1:30am, pondering how you’d be able to strip the toddler out of his favorite Thomas the Train pajamas to get him to school by 8:15am.

Well, the good news is you don’t have to look as haggard as you feel. (The bad news is, you still have to figure out how to ditch Thomas.)

Here are 3 simple ways to look less tired:

1. Wear a bright lipstick. I know, it’s totally counter-intuitive. The hot pink lips will only bring out your hot pink bloodshot eyes, right? Not the case. In fact, when I was in TV news, our consultant actually recommended that I wear a light pink eyeshadow. Blew. My. Mind. Now, I love a bright lip. My personal favorite colors are L’Oréal’s Velvety Fuchsia and British Red. Have fun with it! Don’t be too serious for a bright lip (unlike the lame picture of me below).

2. Wear big earrings or eye-grabbing jewelry. I also talked about this when I showed you how to look put together when you have 5 minutes. Basically, the key to looking less tired is giving people something else to focus on besides your haggard face. (LOL sorry, that was mean.) A big earring will do just that. One time, I had almost zero sleep, and we were going on a camping trip the next day. I put on some big earrings, and the first thing my friend said to me when she picked me up was, ‘Those are cute earrings!’ I told her my something-to-look-at-other-than-my-face strategy, and she laughed. Then we went to Target and I got 2 more compliments on my earrings from random strangers. And then I laughed at myself for wearing gaudy earrings to go on a camping trip, and took them off before we got there.

3. Wear sunglasses. Duh. You’ve been doing this since college, or maybe even before. I live in Florida where it’s sunny almost everyday. Therefore, oftentimes, there is literally no need for me to put on any eye makeup, to cover up my pathetic exhaustedness, because I’m going to be wearing shades almost all day.

Get it girl. And be fabulous. Even if you only had 3 hours of sleep last night and your entire day will be devoted to scraping kid food off the floor. At least you look good. (Well, better.)