MUMMY OF STYLE AND SUBSTANCE

Shop designer pieces for great causes

We all love to do our bit to help charities and what better way to do this than to buy special limited edition pieces from your favourite Australian designers.

Gorgeous luxe baby brand, Marquise have teamed up with four leading Australian Fashion Designers including: Camilla and Marc, Mimco, Fleur Wood and Bassike to create a Limited Edition Singlet range in the hope of raising over $20,000 for the Gold Week Telethon, the major annual fundraising campaign for the Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick.
The Limited Edition Singlet range will see a Marquise baby basics singlet transformed with a personalised, screen printed design in the theme of celebration, as Marquise celebrates their 80th birthday, their biggest milestone to date! How cute are the singlets?

Sold exclusively through Westfield.com.au, Australia’s most comprehensive online shopping mall, the Limited Edition Singlets will be on sale throughout the month of June, with 100% of the proceeds going directly towards supporting the Hospital’s seriously ill and injured patients.
The singlets will retail for $20 and in sizes 000, 00 and 0 (only 300 singlets from each designer will be available so get in quick!)
Visit www.westfield.com.au from TODAY! June 1st 2012 to purchase your designer singlet and help change the lives of seriously ill children.

Another great cause is The Make-A-Wish Foundation, who have partnered with one of Australia’s most loved fashion brands, sass & bide.

Sass & bide have designed three limited edition star necklaces, which are available in fluro pink, citrus and orange, to raise much needed funds for Make-A-Wish. These gorgeous necklaces are only $25 with free shipping.

All profits raised from the sale of the necklaces are being donated to Make-A-Wish® to help bring hope, strength and joy to the lives of children with life-threatening medical conditions.

There has been an amazing response to the launch of these necklaces – they are almost completely sold out! Get in quickly before they all disappear!
Buy one now: http://www.sassandbide.com/make-a-wish-4.html

Ditch your 'fat' friends?!?

An article heading caught my eye online yesterday "Wanna get skinny? Might be time to ditch your fat friends" so I started reading it and the further along I read into the article, the more angrier I became.
Since when has society become so superficial that we value a persons looks over who they are as a person?
You see according to Susie Burrell of The Punch, you should ditch your friends if they are larger than yourself, as they are likely to be making you fat.
Seriously? Aren't friendships about what you have in common and how you get along? If we all judged people on their looks, it would be a very sad and lonely existence, wouldn't it? "Oh, sorry I can't be friends with you because you don't look a particular way or weight less than me."

What is deemed skinny anyway? My size 12-16 (depending on stores), 5 foot 10 body might be skinny to one person but I maybe seen as overweight to another. Personally, I don't care what others think but my friends love me for who I am and definitely not for what I look like, as I do with them. My friends are all different shapes and sizes and I didn't even think of it as a consideration when becoming friends with them. Over the years, how many of us fluctuate up and down with our size anyway? It doesn't or shouldn't effect our friendships.
Doesn't it make life more interesting if we are all different? Who gives a toss what our friends look like?
How about giving credit to someone for their intelligence, humour, their love of life/ exuberance, self confidence and inner beauty. Someone who is nice and friendly, not bitchy and puts others down.
A friend should be someone who supports you and makes you feel good about yourself, no someone who criticises how you look, if you have put on weight etc.
I would rather be friends with someone I can have a laugh and good time with, than someone who carries on and on about the gym, how much weight they have lost, protein shakes, how many calories are in their lunch, how many calories are in my cappuccino or the piece of cheesecake or slice I'm having with it (we have all had friends like this before, yes?).
Yay for thought provoking conversation and laughs over a coffee or glass of wine/ bubbles, not conversations about diets and gyms. Surely they have more to talk about then that? Or maybe not? Hmmmm.... sad really if they don't. Oh wait, maybe they can't have a good time for fear their botox might move and cause a wrinkle? Oh the horror of it all!
I tend to find people who are so self centred, shallow and superficial to be very boring to be honest. Go get a life, go experience more in the world... there is more to a life than eating lettuce leaves, drinking water (and nothing else) and living at the gym.
I am all for having a healthy lifestyle, I am usually careful with what I eat and exercise everyday but being so shallow to think your friends have to look a particular way is just elitist. I suppose Susie's friends also have to have a particular income range, lifestyle and live in particular areas of Sydney (ie the wealthy suburbs) as well? Good luck to her... I'm sure she has some deep and long term friendships there.

Personally, I know I will be like these two dear old ladies when I'm their age:

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I'm loving myself stupid.

For those not in the know, Glowless aka Trae put the challenge out there for Valetine's Day to write about what you love about yourself.
The challenge went a little like this:
"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a Valentine's Day post featuring something you love about yourself and why. Got great legs? A sharp wit? Awesome craft skills? Good ear for music? Fabulous negotiating skills? Whatever it is, it has to be something about yourself that you L-O-V-E!"

OK yes, I'm a day late but in my defense I had Mr's 7 and 9 home sick with bad colds. Yes, they have been back at school for a week and already diseased... what the hell!! I have everything crossed this isn't a hint for the school year to come *Mum starts packing her bags to escape to an unknown island destination in preparation*.

Anyhoo, back to the challenge...

In my 30's, I have come to accept my body for all it's lumps and bumps and the fact that I am never going to get back to a size 8 -10 unless I starve myself and work out for a few hours a day. a) I don't have the time b) who really can live like that? I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who do but I prefer to enjoy my life. I love trying different foods and I'm definitely not giving up my sweet tooth. Everything in moderation, yes?

So, the things I love about myself......

Physically, I love my:

Legs... having had a dancing background, I've managed to maintain my long, lean but curvy legs. It helps that I am 5ft 10 too!

Boobs... Until I had Mr 9, I was a 12B for years! I am now a 12 - 14DD (depending on the brand/sizing). I finally have boobs! Although, buying shirts/ jackets can be a pain, I wouldn't change a thing. I love being feminine and curvy.

Natural redhead... I love having auburn hair and I definitely wouldn't change it for the world. Not a lot of women have natural red hair and I like being different.

Green eyes... again, not a lot of people have green eyes and I've been told they are the first thing a lot of people notice about me, so I tend to play them up with lots of mascara (Benefit's Badgal lash and They're Real to be exact).

The other stuff:

I'm kind, generous, loyal, intelligent (well most of the time lol), positive and see the funny side of things especially in myself, a great friend, supportive, keen bargain hunter, gardener, house proud with cleaning ocd perfectionist tendencies (hmm is that a good thing? :S), the ability see both sides of an argument and can separate my feelings from a situation to give a logical/ practical view or perspective...

What do you love about yourself?