Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: project

  • The Wardrobe Project

    The Wardrobe Project

    A Year of Buying Less and Liking Yourself More

    What is it about body image we struggle to accept even though we see the same body in the mirror every day? Who is the ‘fantasy woman’ we all have deeply imbedded in our minds, our psyche?

    Why do we shop, and shop, and shop for clothes that never, or seldom, achieve the look we are searching for, demanding and failing to create would appear to be answerless, that is until Emma Edwards had an epiphany and set out to find answers to this vexing issue!

    The Wardrobe Project consisting of not buying any clothing for twelve months, came about after a particularly harrowing experience with online shopping, not for the first time, when the desired, lusted after garment finally arrived only to fall a very long way short of achieving the sought after look as depicted on a rail thin model on the site.

    Emma, a plus sized gal, who has always had issues with her size, her chunkiness and lack of confidence used clothes to create or try to create an image to represent whatever she felt was required, spending time, effort and money towards this end.

    Realising that something had to give she took the brave step of committing to total abstinence from any form of clothes shopping for one year. She set strict guidelines to ensure she did not regress.

    Plunging in she had serious doubts, but as the year ticked past, she met the challenge of working with what she had, discovering so much about herself and her wardrobe choices. This helped create a greater understanding of why she craved the addictive dopamine hit of new clothes and the deeply ingrained psychology we are carefully trained to accept by modern day marketing.

    More than just a book on meeting a challenge to stop shopping for clothes, The Wardrobe Project peals back the layers of a shopping obsession and by doing so has led to a way of life that is lived consciously for Emma Edwards and many other women who needed help to challenge their obsession with shopping.

    Set out in  a nice easy style, with absolutely no judgement, Emma Edwards illustrates clearly why we do what we do and how we can change our habits to make better choices, understand the mental directives that encourage wrong choices, leaning to say no to temptation via online shopping, sales, markdown and lets face it excessive overspending.

     The Wardrobe Project is a book that is enlightening, even for those who really don’t like shopping but feel they must, as to why we do it and how to go about making serious changes which lead to so many  unexpected bonuses in lifestyle.  

    With the Christmas and Boxing Days sales fast approaching, if you are someone who can’t resist a ‘good bargain’ treat yourself to The Wardrobe Project, enjoy the read and accept the challenge as your New Year’s resolution! Go girls! 

  • A Class Full of Lizards: The Grade Six Survival Guide 2

    A Class Full of Lizards: The Grade Six Survival Guide 2

    Enfant Terrible Jesse is back and it is Term 4, the last term of Year 6, the final year of Primary School before he and his friends move into High School and things are not going as well as expected. Not only is his family being forced by his mother to go on a heath diet, Yuk, but there is change happening at school as the classes have to prepare for the end of year celebrations and ceremonies.

    Ian who was a student teacher last term is now the new Wellbeing Officer, which Jesse finds out when he gets called up to the Principals Office to offer Alex, his best friend, moral support, but what for is beyond Jesse’s understanding. It seems that Alex is being considered for a scholarship at St Bennett’s college and he has to go there every Wednesday for the rest of term!

    That piece of news was very disturbing as he and Jesse had been friends since forever and he had always thought they would go to the same High School together. But things only get worse when Mrs Leeman sets the task of studying ‘our closest neighbours’ as a project to be used to display for the end of term assembly. And if that is not bad enough, he realises the only way he may be able to get a decent breakfast, seeing as Mum is not changing her mind about the ‘healthy diet’, is to join the school cross country running group, something that Jesse has always considered as nothing to do with him.

    Add getting talked into adopting a fish tank full of fish, his prep buddy Thomas Moore, who also seems to have adopted Jesse and his friends at recess and lunch, going on and on about the shingle back lizard that lives in the wall Jesse and his mates consider as theirs and you have term full of madness, mayhem and a few life lessons to be learned.

    A Class Full of Lizards from Alison Hart is a riotous romp through the last term of school when change begins to be felt in a big way, life does not always go as thought and learning often arrives in mysterious ways, all adding up to that weird thing called ‘growing up’!