style & beauty
Quick fixes What it's really like to be female in the construction industry.
you didn't know you had
Habitat
Million Dollar Lady Melanie Rose McDowall
A confidence coach is like your best, straight-talking friend on steroids. They do it everyday so they know what they're doing. Introducing Mel, the stunning online confidence coach with a vast experience in modelling, styling with an impressive and loyal Instagram following, and town planning to boot. No stranger to life's ups and downs, she dusts herself off and comes back more gorgeous, and stronger than ever. Then she uses her experience to help move other ladies forward. I know because we chatted right around the time this magazine was being conceived. I'm no stranger to good sense, having soaked up plenty of sound advice over the years, having a few knocks and comebacks myself, but this million dollar lady even managed to teach me a thing or two, or twenty.
Introducing
Luxe Digital
By Kristin McDonnell
#Luxifyyourmarketing Ever have days when you feel like you’re alone in business? Like you’re tapping away at your computer, trying to work on new angles for your marketing, testing out new offers, attempting to make sense of your social media stats and wishing you had some other people who ‘get it and you’ to bounce everything off?
Marketing, in particular marketing yourself online, can feel overwhelmingly hard. It can be scary to put yourself out there. It can be confusing to know exactly what technology to use or what exactly you should do with all your online marketing funnels. We totally get it. We know exactly what it’s like to be working on your business and feeling disconnected. Feeling disconnected is such a common ailment – weird, when you think we live in a world that is more connected than ever before. Women need community. They really do, women need friendship! Luxe Digital has a mission to support and positively impact 10,000 women globally in the next 5 years. And it all starts with community. That’s why we really wanted to focus on creating a great community; a community where women feel like they can celebrate their successes, share their frustrations, ask questions and really feel like they are growing as part of the group. We know how important it is to feel like you’re surrounded by other likeminded women; women who get what it’s like to be in business for yourself.
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Social media switch off
Toxic free, silky skin
Overwhelm? No problem.
Wellbeing & Leisure
Challenge? SOLUTION.
Jess Lee breaks down how to face challenges and win.
Challenge?
Solution.
Do you approach your challenges with optimism and creativity or do you become overwhelmed and stuck in your problems?
Choosing A SolutionFocused Mindset So what can you do to shift into a solution-focused mindset when you face your own challenges? The first step is to understand what is happening in your brain when you are faced with challenges. When we get stuck in our problems, our stress levels rise. Neuroscientist, Dr Sarah McKay says when our stress is high, our prefrontal cortex goes “offline”. This part of our brain helps us to think critically and calmly about our challenges. Our pre-frontal cortex allows us to more effectively solve our problems, but it is compromised when we become highly stressed or anxious.
Y
ou can begin to develop more resilience, mastery and happiness in your life by shifting how your brain conceptualises and responds to challenges. By focusing on solutions and not problems you will discover how you can keep moving forward to achieve the things that truly matter to you.
At the same time, the emotional part of our brain, our amygdala, has “fired up” and is keeping us in survival mode. The hyper-activation of this part of our brain focuses our attention on the risks and worst-case scenarios. This stops us from seeing the solutions and opportunities that exist in our challenges. Our amygdala can definitely keep us stuck and overwhelmed.
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Ultimate Guides
Elegant dinner party
Pair wine & spices
Habitat Culture & Food
New build beauty Coastal Homes Gladstone
The Ultimate Guide
FURNISH YOUR FIRST HOME ON A TIGHT BUDGET
Habitat
Furnish
YOUR FIRST HOME on the tightest of budgets
GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME
Purchasing furniture for your new home
Moving into your first home can be daunting with all to be done, bought and decorated. We help you navigate your way with our three tried and tested rules.
Habitat
Gorgeous Display Homes
Designed and built by Coastal Homes Gladstone
Located on the Central Queensland coast are the award winning Coastal Homes Gladstone, specialising in the personalised approach to building your dream home. Our beautiful feature house is The Isabella.
Megna Murali
Kitchen Expert Spice Expert and founder of Spice Quater
The reason it's important to pair the right wine with the right dish is that wine is as complex as any food and the right pairing can enhance the flavour of both wine and food. If you recall your early science classes you will remember that there are four basic tastes; bitter, sour, sweet and salty. Culinary experts have now added umami to the list. Umami is a strong, yet pleasant savoury taste. Think parmesan, marmite and wasabi. Every glass of wine is different. Indeed, two bottles of the same vintage may have different tastes and this adds to the beauty and complexity of wine. They key to balancing spices with wine is pairing complementary and contrasting flavours. There are 3 key rules to follow to choose the best wine for spices .
Pair wine with spices Think about the dominant flavours of the spices you are cooking with. If you are using our Nawabi Spice Blend then the dominant flavours are earthy and aromatic coming from the Cumin and Cardamom in the blend. A dish made with this blend, whether meat based or vegetarian, will go well with a light white wine like a riesling or a sparkling variety of white wine. Choose something with light floral notes to accentuate the flavours in this blend.
1
Pair flavours, not ingredients
2 3
Forget the rules you know Use your instincts
As a cook, you are the expert of your cuisine so think about the dominant flavours in your dish when choosing the right wine to pair it with. Have fun with it and don't worry too much about getting it perfect! If the dry spice mix used is red, then it has large amounts of carotenoids, which are organic pigments that give some spices a natural orange or red colour. Food made with red or orange spices and spice mixes need to be paired with a refreshing type of wine. A chilled sav blanc or a sparkling chardonnay are perfect. Think indian curries, african stews and thai stir frys. Food made with sweeter, more aromatic spices like cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg go well with a full bodied red wine like a shiraz or a merlot. Think apple pies and sweet puddings. We have all heard that red wine is for red meat and white wine is for seafood. That is not true at all. If you make a satay sauce it will have sweet undertones. You can use satay with red meat, seafood or vegetables. No matter what you add the satay sauce to, balancing the sweetness is essential. In this case a lovely cabernet or a dry chardonnay will balance the spicysweet flavours of satay sauce.
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Beauty
Silk Perfecton
Nourishing Makeup
Quick Fixes
& Style
Nourishing Makeup FAST MAKEUP HOW TO
Creator of Leesa Barr Makeup shares her time saving morning beauty routine
Do I really need all that stuff?
Leesa Barr Nourishing, radiance refining make up 100% Toxic Free
Leesa Barr lives and breathes beauty. She strongly believes that how we look affects how we feel and that it’s important to dedicate time to taking care of ourselves. Leesa knows how difficult it is to find the time. And with so many beauty products testing on animals and including nasty ingredients, it’s getting harder to know which products to use. This is what led her to the creation of LEESA BARR Cosmetics. Saving time, nourishing skin, and being 100% safe and socially responsible, Leesa has poured her heart, soul and – of course – all of her beauty knowledge into these gorgeous products. She’s so proud to share them with you now and is certain you’ll fall in love with them the way she has. In the following article, she shares some of her considerable wisdom.
How many times have you asked yourself that question? Are you confused by the amount of information available to you. Instagram, Facebook YouTube, Bloggers, the constant deluge of e-mails that pop into your inbox. Aaarrggh! Sometimes, all this is confusing! What do you do, go back to what you know, or worse do nothing at all? I often hear flattering comments from kind hearted souls, "Your makeup is always beautiful. You must spend a lot of time on your makeup. How on earth do you get out the door in the mornings? I wish I had the time!" This last one always amuses me as I have three young children, run my business and help in my husband's business. I help out at school when I can, children's sports and the odd charity event. Leading such a full life has meant I have needed to perfect the simplest make up routine. I wear makeup everyday. Trust me when I say you do have time. There are more benefits to wearing makeup than the way you look. For starters, skin protection from the sun and free radicals in city pollution. You can future proof your skin from premature ageing. To answer the first question do I really need all that stuff? The short answer is no. There are products you can skip and still achieve radiant looking makeup.
Style
silk WASHABLE
dreams really do come true
washable adjective (especially of fabric or clothes) able to be washed without shrinkage or other damage.
Silk is a timeless staple to any woman's waredrobe effortlessly elegant, it holds a certain appeal like no other fabric can. Breathable in even the hottest Summer it's a miraculous, luxe fabric that makes work dressing a breeze.
The challenge is always how to take care of it. After a brief stint attempting to source beautiful, washable fabrics and coming up with only unnatural fibres that didn't breathe, I ended up buying bulk Reiss silk tops. And washing them. Heaven forbid. Silk is not a plant fibre in the way cotton is. It's actually a protein, much like skin or hair, and needs particular attention and care. Washing silk can ruin it. Which is why I jumped for joy when I discovered The Fable. Washable silk. I'll let that sink in for a moment. The genius doesn't end there. This silk is ethically sourced, making sure both the environment, and the tailors producing it are well looked after. Working no more than 8 hours a day, and the silk is manufactured in Jaipur, India employing a small family run factory.The tailors are paid nearly twice the living wage and work in only safe and comfortable conditions. Behind this amazing business is a gorgeous woman named Sophie, who having worked with L'Oreal Luxury, and faced a problem we all have, and like the start of every brilliant business, set out to solve it.
Light hearted life skills MEDIA PERSONALITY AND MUM, BEC OFFERS HELP TO SELL YOUR OLD CAR.
Hey guys, got a slice of heaven for sale: 97 magna v6 - Runs like a dream, we just needed to upgrade - Custom faded paint job 'off champagne' colour - Custom hole in front bumper, handcrafted into the exact size of someone else's towbar, covered by wakeboarding bumperstickers which have been lovingly and carefully desintegrated over approx 5 years - Smells like victory. And cheap vanilla car freshener from the reject shop - Vintage cassette player - Enough fuel in the tank to get you from Bris to approx. Childers - selling unregistered - 348000kms - she is well aged and she is glorious. A lot of good times and some slight road rage has gone in to those kms - $400 and she is yours.
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