Faith Style

If you spend more time shopping for diapers than shoes and your idea of high fashion is a t-shirt with no stains, you need to enter this contest. The Yummy Mummy Club and Faith Style are teaming up and giving away a package of Signature Style Sessions valued at $500! I will work with you to help develop your personal Yummy Mummy Style, identify your body type, teach you how to camouflage your challenge areas, and discover your individual colour palette.

Also, ‘cuz shopping with a friend is way more fun, your favourite gal pal will get to share in the experience and have a Wardrobe Detox of her own – an additional $250 in value!

It’s a prize that’ll have you looking stylishly chic instead of a school-run-mum.  ‘Cuz somewhere underneath the sweatpants and spit up is the woman you used to be.

This yummy prize consists of 4 one-on-one sessions with me, I will:

Help develop your personal Yummy Mummy Style
Identify your body type
Teach you how to camouflage your challenge areas
Discover your individual colour palette
Go through your closet for a Wardrobe Detox
Teach you how to shop strategically
Put together outfits that suit your style, budget and body

To enter the contest, visit www.yummymummyclub.ca, upload a photo of yourself, and tell us why you need a makeover! Mummy most desperately in need of a makeover will be chosen by a combination of our style panel and votes from your yummy peers.

Yummy Rules and Regs:
You must be a Yummy Mummy Club member to win.
Click here to join the club! It’s free and filled with perks. Contest open to Southern Ontario residents only.
Members can enter once a day! Entries accepted until June 3rd, 2010.
Uploaded photo must be in JPG or GIF format!

Your rational, logical left-brained self might be thinking “I don’t have time for this right now!”  Yet your creative, intuitive, right-brained self is craving simple moments of pleasure and joy.  A moment suspended from your frenzied to do list to just be, feel and experience life.  When we do something that brings us joy, we feed our spirit and nourish that carefree part of ourselves that simply wants to enjoy life.

When we are happy, life is better.  We feel good, we have more energy and we are much more fun to be around!

Taking the time to have fun is different from self care (i.e. relaxing, massages, bubble baths).  While these things are wonderful too, it has more to do with doing things that light you up and put a sparkle in your eyes.

Ideally you would do it on a weekly basis, but for now, even once a month would be a great place to start.

If it’s been a while and you’re not quite sure what you like to do, here are some ways you can begin to reconnect with your fun side:

1.  Get quiet.  The only way to hear what your inner self wants is to actually get still and listen.  Most of us tend to live in our heads, and unfortunately that’s not where the true answers lie.  If you want to know what will make you happy, give yourself a way to connect and listen – try 5 minutes of daily meditation, yoga, or writing in a journal.

2.  Brainstorm.  Make a list of activities. Group them into categories like sports, arts & entertainment, shopping, travel, adventure, etc. and then go through the list and narrow down 5 that appeal to you.  Now pick one and go do it!

3.  Surround yourself.  Spend time around animals and nature.  There’s no better way to connect with our innate human qualities.  Before you know it, you’ll remember what it’s like to be in your body rather than in your head and perhaps get some ideas for things you’d like to try.

4.  Treat your body well.   It can be hard to get into the mindset of fun and excitement when you are feeling less than your best.  If you’ve been running on little sleep and poor quality food, take care of your body first.  For one week, commit to going to bed earlier, eating more fresh foods and drinking more water.  This will give you the physical energy to actually want to get out and try new things.

It may sound crazy, but give it a try.  Put “fun” on your to do list for the next month and see if you notice a difference in all areas of your life.

To your health and happiness,
Feature Writer

Victoria Joanna

Last season at London Fashion Week, Canadian knitwear designer Mark Fast got a lot of flak for sending size 12 and 14 models down his runway. Stylists quit in a huff and he wound up having to change his whole team in order to stick to his vision. Size 12 is smaller than average and many expressed disdain that it would even be considered plus-size at all.

The stark contrast between size-zero and size-two models and the majority of female consumers who buy the clothes can no longer be ignored. Thankfully, a shift is occurring in the fashion industry; more and more, designers are responding to consumer demand by increasing their use of larger-sized models. Is it a desire to do good, or a business decision? After all, it’s not good for sales to alienate your clients.

Joe Fresh loves to pay a well-known international model top dollar to walk down its runway at Toronto Fashion Week, drawing attention and anticipation. This season they chose Crystal Renn, a plus-sized model (only a 12, but still) who used to wear a size zero before becoming fed up with the exhaustion and hair loss that comes with starving yourself. At the young age of 23, she now embraces her curves and accepts her natural size, continuing to work steadily as a model for international runways and magazines. Her new book, Hungry, chronicles her battle back from an unnatural size to one that is more true to her.

The Ben Barry agency provided two models for Sunny Fong’s VAWK show at AGO during Fashion Week: one aged 55 and a size 14; the other aged 23 and a size 12. “I think there is a movement within the international fashion industry toward diversity on the runway and on magazine covers – and Toronto fashion brands are leading the way,” said Barry, a model agent who promotes diversity among his roster of talent.

The runway at Toronto Fashion Week also featured the designs of Jessica Biffi, the Project Runway Canada contestant from Season 2 who premiered her collection two seasons ago. Although the designer herself is plus-size, her designs were made for smaller women. This season, however, she decided to showcase collections she designed for Addition Elle and MXM, womenswear retailers specializing in sizes 14 and larger. The lines were launched the same day as the show and sales surpassed all expectations. Biffi obviously filled a gap; larger-sized women also want access to well-priced designer clothing with the cache of a famous brand label attached. Many sought-after brands, such as BCBG, only make clothes as large as size 12.

High-fashion need not be restricted to the under-12 set and designers are finally responding to the desires of all women. Whether the reason for the positive change is consumer demand or designer conscience, we like seeing women of all shapes and sizes. Because that’s how we are.

Read more about the positive changes on the runway at Laura’s Blog.

Shibang Designs, a Canadian company owned and operated by textile artist Robyn Stephens.  Shibang Designs are accessories as beautiful to admire as objects and functional enough to use everyday. Bold colours and textures that are seamlessly embellished and integrated into timeless styles of purses that make a statement. Take a closer look at the details and layers of each piece and discover that each one is truly unique.

Robyn has a great selection of cosmetics bags, purses, clutches, change purses, pencil cases and laptop cases in a variety of designs and colours to connect with anyone’s personal style. Opt for something different, beautiful and sensual and every time you see a Shibang piece I guarantee you’ll smile.

Trunkshow + Designer Appearance
April 28th, 2010
The Room
The Bay, Queen Street
Toronto
12:00pm – 6:00pm

*Gift With Purchase: with the purchase of any Jessica Jensen item, shoppers will receive a limited edition leather bound Jessica Jensen journal – retail value $88

*Personal Engraving: on-site engraving services to personalize your Jessica Jensen luggage tag (tags included on all large handbags)

The past few months have been incredibly fun for me.   I’ve really been enjoying my life, feeling grateful and happy for each and every day.

Okay.. not exactly earth-shattering news, but given how I was feeling just a few short years ago, I am particularly appreciative of having so much joy each and every day.  I thought I would share this rather personal revelation for two reasons: 1) perhaps it may inspire someone else out there who may relate to where I was, and give them the courage to change their circumstances, and 2) the more I get out there and work, network and connect with people, our biggest obstacle to real wellness and happiness is our ability to live the most authentic version of ourselves.

When we finally stop pretending and trying so hard, our lives take on a very different quality.  Life is much easier and many of our compulsions, addictions and self-destructive behaviors fall away.  Being yourself is more than stating your opinion or having your own fashion style, true authenticity usually involves a level of vulnerability; it feels personal and a little scary.  It pushes you outside of your comfort zone and stretches you to grow in order to become the person you are meant to be.  Growth is a part of life.  It makes you feel alive.  When you’re not growing towards your full potential or perhaps are a little off track, you have a sense of staleness in your life, it may feel like something is missing, like you’re not quite in love with your life and you’re not sure why.

Nothing earth-shattering has happened to me in the last few months, other than having made a conscious effort to focus more and more of my work and effort in the areas that I am most passionate about.  The ones that reflect what I love, what I believe and what makes me happy.  In doing more of what I “want” rather than what I thought I “should” be doing, I had to become more and more of myself.

While I’ve obviously done a lot of personal work up to this point in order to go through the process of a career change, I can tell you that this type of growth is a process and sometimes requires the removal of several layers in order to reach the core.  But I can also tell you this, there’s no better, calmer, lighter and more peaceful feeling in the world than being yourself.

As a teenager, I had always been envious of people that had the courage to be really different, to stand out, and move to their own beat.  I was much too concerned with what others thought.  The fear of being judged, ridiculed, or god forbid, disliked, drove many of my decisions.   I wanted to be the best at everything, but what I didn’t understand was that “best” does not mean competing with the outside world, but rather being the best version of yourself.

What finally changed for me?  I got to a breaking point.  I had more days of sad, quiet, frustration then I did of joy, excitement and ease.   I wanted more from my life then living for the weekends.  I wanted to get through a Sunday without the dread and heaviness of looking ahead at another week.  I wanted to surround myself with things I cared about, and work, talk, read and study things that actually interested me.  I wanted to have a sense of purpose, of contribution.  And most importantly, I wanted to look forward to each day, each year and each decade.  I wanted to be excited about my life, rather than live for the vacations, mat leave and retirement that might rescue me from my reality.

It’s funny.  Why do we believe we have to live that way?  When do we stop dreaming?  At what point do we stop paying attention to what makes us happy?   It’s seems like this little “should” voice takes over and tells us that responsibility, stability, sacrifice and compromise are the noble qualities we should live by.  That choosing to pursue something simply because you like it, is indulgent and selfish.   Nothing could be further from the truth.  I believe that if people were more inclined to do what makes them happy, there would be more happiness to go around – in our work relationships, friendships, families and our interactions with strangers.

I know that what I’m saying may seem simplistic and naïve to some.  Believe me, I was once in that place.  The idea of changing and starting again seemed absolutely incomprehensible.  My only glimmer of hope was reading inspiring stories from others.  Knowing that other people not only had found themselves in the same place, but also managed to get to the other side.  This was all I needed to keep me going.

Deep within each of us is a personality and purpose uniquely our own.  The person we are meant to become is like a fingerprint.  If we want to fulfill all that we are capable of, we can only do so by living an authentic life and tapping into our unique gifts.

The first step is to listen to your internal voice.   Stop pretending, comparing, judging, competing and struggling to prove yourself.  Instead, start to explore what draws you, without judging and over-analyzing.  Give yourself permission to do this no matter how silly, small or insignificant it feels.  Developing knowledge and self-awareness takes time.  Most likely, you’ve spent a lifetime ignoring your intuition, so it may take some practice.  More importantly, you likely carry some preconceived notions of what is “acceptable” and what is “right”.

Depending on where you find yourself today, the journey to get there is not always easy.  But I can tell you this, the joy you will experience when being your true self is worth the effort!

To your happiness,
Victoria Joanna

A beautiful temptress
Who has us in a trance
Greets us at the entrance

“Welcome child
Welcome man and woman
To the carnival of wild

Enter The World of fantasy
The turf of the soothsayers
And grimoire”

Enchanting music everywhere
A violin here, a mandolin there
A tambourine and flute to spare

Come across a pair of dancers
These buskers who are The Lovers indeed
Such tenderness expressed by these prancers

Many wearing masks
Clowns and pirates and venetian masks
And Judgment in their actions they lack

The Fool drinking his elixir of immortality
Mischievously grins
At Death who sits and waits patiently

“Come in, come in further”
Charms the soothsayer
“For I am no pocket slayer”

“What is it that you seek
Oh Sweet spectator?
I can hear your thoughts, no need to be meek”

“It is The Star” says I
“That will illuminate my path
And cease The Hermit lie

What is the answer to my prayer?
Temperance I no longer have”
“Cease to be the spectator” says the soothsayer

Continue to explore this carnival and more
Visit the High Priestess who chants her lore
Such power she will make you roar!

Children play The Tower game
Use many cards but don’t let them fall
This brought The Magician much fame

And Justice never sleeps
On everyone a weary eye she keeps
As malice never leaps

The Devil and the Hierophant
Are not preaching on this day
Too busy dancing the same and who says they can’t?

The carnival ignites with fervor
The Moon rises on the horizon
Use your Strength wisely and do not wither

The parade of floats begins
With damsels in gorgeous garments
Like the ones seen in midnight dreams

The Chariot with encrusted jewels
Carries the Emperor and Empress
Carnival royalty rules

But with beauty doesn’t always come the warming
On the next float is The Hanged Man
Who serves as a warning

Life is nothing but a Wheel of Fortune
It can dance to your own tune
And it can end your luck too soon

As The Sun fast approaches
Bid adieu to this eventide
And leave with no reproaches

Study the insight
Nurture the wisdom
The seers have spoken and leave us tonight