Well my year of turning 40 is almost half way over! Where has the time gone? I've been reading so much about how women feel better with age, they feel more confident with themselves & their choices. Well...to be honest...it hasn't been going that way for me latley. I have been questioning so many things...my looks, my weight, my career. Why is it that one day I can feel like the Queen and the next day I feel like a servant?  Women are so powerful but we are always being subjected to images that tell us who we are is not good enough. Why do we do this to ourselves? I recently read an article about a 14 year old girl named Julia Bluhm who wants to do something about it! She is my new inspiration! She has started a peition on change.org to have Seventeen Magazine produce one non-retouched photoshoot of a girl each month. She writes:

Girls want to be accepted, appreciated, and liked. And when they don’t fit the criteria, some girls try to “fix” themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression, and low self esteem. I’m in a ballet class with a bunch of high-school girls. On a daily basis I hear comments like: “It’s a fat day,” and “I ate well today, but I still feel fat.” Ballet dancers do get a lot of flack about their bodies, but it’s not just ballet dancers who feel the pressure to be “pretty”. It’s everyone. To girls today, the word “pretty” means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It’s because the media tells us that “pretty” girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin. Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those “pretty women” that we see in magazines are fake. They’re often photoshopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life.  As part of SPARK Movement, a girl-fueled, national activist movement, I’ve been fighting to stop magazines, toy companies, and other big businesses from creating products, photo spreads and ads that hurt girls and break our self-esteem.  With SPARK, I’ve learned that we have the power to fight back.
 That’s why I’m asking Seventeen Magazine to commit to printing one unaltered -- real -- photo spread per month. I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that’s supposed to be for me. For the sake of all the struggling girls all over America, who read Seventeen and think these fake images are what they should be, I’m stepping up. I know how hurtful these photoshopped images can be. I’m a teenage girl, and I don’t like what I see. None of us do. Will you join us by signing this petition and asking Seventeen to take a stand as well and commit to one unaltered photo spread a month?
Click the link below to sign her petition! I did!
            http://www.change.org/petitions/seventeen-magazine-give-girls-images-of-real-girls

I also came across these videos that reminded me what I always knew but sometimes forget. Take a look!
You can also find other Killing Us Softly videos 1 through 3 on YouTube.
What do you think?
 
 
I am so excited! Friday is the start of the spring Rural Society Antique and Garden show in Mt. Vernon! I first went to this show last fall. It was so lovely and wonderful! I am even taking a vacation day from work to go! I will be blogging about it this weekend, so be sure to keep an eye out for my review. The farm where this delightful show takes place was recently featured in Country Living Magazine.  My budget is $100 (at least that's what I told the hubby. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?)  Click below to read my adventures from the last show!   
http://holly-lost-and-found.weebly.com/1/post/2011/10/the-rural-society-antique-and-garden-show.html