Most of us don’t wake up looking like the actresses in the movies. If you’re anything like me, you wake up in the morning to puffy skin, red eyes and those ghastly wrinkles on your face from sleeping with your face buried in your pillow. Plus, if you’ve been staying up later because the kids are outside after dark catching fireflies (or because you get into a late night conversation on Twitter), lack of sleep just adds insult to injury.

As we age, we need help looking lively in the mornings. But sometimes we just don’t have a few hours to laze around and wait for the puffiness to disappear. Here are a few tips that help me feel and look rejuvenated, even before I’ve had my morning coffee.

1. Try a cool compress. The first thing I do is rinse out a fresh wash cloth with cool water and gently apply to my face. Of course if you have time for a cool shower, even better. But on those days that I’m running late (which are the days when I’m most likely to have puffy, creased skin!!), I just wash my face with cool water and then start my morning makeup routine. If you have time, you can even apply cool tea bags for a few minutes. (If you prepare them the night before, you can apply them to your eyes while your coffee’s brewing.) Green tea is great for this, as it has anti-inflammatory properties.

2) Get the red out with anti-redness eye drops. Go easy on these, though. You shouldn’t use redness drops too often as they have benzalkonium chloride. Instead, try “lubricant eye drops” such as TheraTears to soothe dry, irritated morning eyes. I always pack these when I travel.

3) Speaking of dry, irritated eyes. Don’t sleep in your contacts. Just don’t.

4) Try an eye-brightening pencil on the inside of your lower eyelids such as Benefit’s Eye Bright. I haven’t tried this personally, but I’m adding it to my bag of tricks as soon as I can get to the mall.

5) Curl your eyelashes. This will make your eyes look more open and alert. Try it, I promise you’ll never go back.

How about you? Got any tricks up your sleeve? How do you greet the morning looking fresh and alert?