The Age & The Bra Queen

All Strapped In

COINCIDING with the Busting Out caper by bosom buddies Emma Powell and Bev Killick at The Athenaeum, Renee Mayne, who calls herself the Bra Queen, is conducting the Bra Survey 2009. Mayne, who runs the online sales site Alluring Lingerie, is not running a census-style count of bras, instead she wants women who wear DD cups and beyond to advise what style of bra they want, be it sports, strapless, sexy or one that offers "comfort, support, lift and shape". If Emma and Bev get a spare moment in between handling watermelons, their insights would be invaluable.

Me in a Nutshell!

Everyone has a passion in life, if you haven’t find one! Mine is making people feel good.
I love the satisfaction I get when I fit a woman for a bra and the confidence it brings her.
Knowledge is power. Everyone needs to know what a great fitting bra looks like and shape is just as important.
Now for women with big boobs most of us have gone through our lives with ill fitted bras or something that looks like we stole it from our Grandmother (no offense Granny)
It became my mission to find nice bras for bigger busts. Like every woman I like to feel good about myself, but well I'm so sick of buying Nana bras.

Not one Australian company makes QUALITY bras that actually do what they are suppose too.
So I thought bigger, I began to source and research Lingerie in Fuller Cups on a world wide scale. Well it paid off because I found that beautiful, sexy bras are made for larger cup size ladies.
I took it further; I thought "Well I just don’t want to wear sexy bras on weekends or special occasions. I want to feel that way everyday!"

So I sourced Lingerie Sets that are supportive AND sexy.

And that is the entire Alluring Lingerie collection.

Each bra has been carefully sourced to ensure it is cutting edge fashion, great shape and support but most importantly of the high quality at an affordable price.

One Life, One Chance.
That’s a bit scary when you think of your life like that!
Everyone is so busy, so time poor and I really can’t remember lives ever being this crazy can you?

We need to start enjoying life
Think about what makes you feel good?

• If you are a spiritual person you will believe you have a core.
• If you are a scientific person you will believe you have a chemical balance.
• If you are a builder you will believe you are structurally sound.
• If you are into computers you will believe in your hard drive.

No matter whom you are or what you believe in. Everyone has a core that balances you and makes you feel right.

If you’re off centre, you don’t have sound scaffolding or you are missing your hard drive.
You can’t function to your full potential. It is like wearing an uncomfortable or ill fitted bra. It will kind of do the job maybe but not well, and in the long run not at all.

So think of a bra as setting the foundation, if you get that right the rest will just fall into place. Improve posture, it’s slimming, extremely comfortable and it will make your clothes look nicer but most importantly it will give you confidence it will make you feel good.

It’s something so small that will make such a huge difference in how you feel everyday. It will put a bit of pepper in our step.

A friend of mine bought one of my lingerie sets and when I asked her how she was enjoying them she said “Great, I love them. I save them for when I go out”

Now I don’t know about you BUT I have 2 kids and my going out days are few and far between.

It doesn’t matter who you are, where you work, what you do, it’s all totally irrelevant. It’s about feeling good within YOU.

And that starts from within. One way to do that is to wear nice lingerie EVERYDAY. I don’t care if I’m doing housework or running around after my girls or in a corporate meeting. It makes me feel good so I do it. If I feel good I’m a better Mother, Partner and Business Owner. I am much more positive and proactive through out my day.

It is not going to solve your problems or fix the world however it will clear your head and give you confidence so you can tackle everything you need to.

So what is a good fit?

You want it nice and snug around your back on the loosest hook and even from front to back. If it rides up your back it’s too big! It will put your back out.

Cups- You wants your whole breast to be in the cup, no gapping or spillage and underwire is to be flush against your chest.

Straps- You should be able to fit a finger under them.

Shape- Is just as important, in a nut shell.
Most bras you see these days are the triangle shaped ones. These are good if your breasts haven’t gone south.

Balcony cut bras are great for a smaller cup it will give you lift and shape and make them look fuller.

Then you have the in between it’s kind of like your sweetheart neckline. These are best for bigger busts whether our full or even if they have gone south. They give great shape, lift and will give you the support you need so you won’t want to rip them at the end of the day.

Go for it! Your Life, you're choice accountability IS the new black!

If love is like a flower, you have to water it to make it grow, yes?

We have so many relationships with people in our lives. Whether it is your partner, friends, family or work colleagues and they all need work to work.

I think we become so stagnate in our relationships that we forget to stop and appreciate and reconnect.

You spend more time with your work mates then anyone else in your life so it’s important that you get along. You have to connect on some many levels and like any relationship if you’ve been working together for a long time then some days you’re just going to be sick of looking at that person but as long as most days you work well together and respect each other then it will be proactive.

Your friends, its funny how you can have a group of friends and you all connect on different levels and no two people have the same friendship but you all get along. At different stages through your life it can change who you connect with the most depending on where you are in your life.

Your family is whom you are bound too for life. It probably takes the most work; no one has a ‘normal’ family. It’s where you have a family of let’s say 6. You have 6 completely, totally different individuals who you have to get along with? Who’s crazy idea was that!

You have 6 different roads and 6 different drivers. Now each road, each car and each driver has their own unique way to get to their destination. No one is necessarily going the wrong way or the right way its how you get there.
For this to work you have to respect each other for their beliefs and their choices.
No one is better, more deserving or more important then anyone else. Regardless of income, what you own, what job you have it doesn’t matter. If you think it does. Then get off your high dam horse, suck it up and have a look at yourself. You will grow up alone with no real support, no real friends, no real family only the tangible materialistic crap that you can always replace it’s the intangible things that matter.

I understand that you do things that feel right at the time. You do the best you know how. I want you to be happy! You know happy from the bottom of your heart happy, you know so happy that you can cry. If your not I want to help you get it, but I can only help if you’re willing to help yourself.


I respect you, I love you, I trust you and I will never take you for granted.

My TOF baby is Home

This is undoubtedly the happiest, saddest most nerve racking day of your life!

Maddison at 6 weeks come home with her nasogastric tube in. So we went through ‘the training’ of how to change it and test it to make sure it was in her stomach.
I wasn’t very good at this the tube kept on curling when I tried to get it over the bridge of her nose and go down into her stomach! Chris was good at it though.

We were soooo happy when she drank 20ml on her own. Then slowly slowly she took more and more. As you know they forget how to suck during their time in hospital. Maddison was 10 days old before she even had an oral feed.

At times I found this more stressful then the surgery, oxygen and morphine. I had the breast feeding nazcey on my back so I avoided her like the plague because she stressed me out so much.
You know when you have such a sick baby and everything being so out of your control that all you want to do is breast feed to give them a kick start when they can finally eat.
So meanwhile we’ve been expressing for weeks our freezer no longer stores meat but milk, milk and more milk!
I drowned my poor girl every feed, so much so I would have to change her whole outfit.

So once I decided to keep expressing and teach her to eat through a bottle that way I could control the flow more. I felt better and more in control and because I wasn’t stressed out so much and I think she felt that and she relaxed and in return she drank more. So eventually she could drink on her own. Still not as much as want she should but enough that she was putting a little weight.

So then comes that day THE happiest day ever when the tube comes out! We took so many photos because she looked so different. No longer would people stare at her in shops and follow us just to ask us what was wrong with her. I felt normal! I could just focus on being the best mum I could be.

Solids! ARHHHHHHHH that’s another story.

My TOF Baby

Maddison my 2 ½ year old was born with Tracheo Oesophageal Fistula with a distal Oesophageal Atresia. What is it?
It is where there is an abnormal connection between windpipe and stomach. The picture below should paint the picture.



When Maddison was born she was in Special Care they thought it was “wet lung” so when I had her obliviously they detected a problem but we were unaware this being our 1st baby, so we were like ‘Oh OK no worries’ I went up to my room and Chris went home to sleep.
Then the Doctor come in and said “Have you ever heard of Tracheo Oesophageal Fistula with a Oesophageal Atresia?” my answer NO?

So he draws me a picture and I understand what was happening, it sounded all too easy really!

She got transferred to the Royal Children’s Hospital where she got operated on when she was 24hours old. How they manage to open and go in between 2 tiny ribs get to her Oesophageas and repair something that is the size of a Prima straw and repair around it so there is no leaks, Crazy!

So then it’s the recovery this I have spoken about before in The Chaser= Bad Comedy, so feel free to read about that road!

But 1 in 3000 babies are born with Oesophageal Atresia so we are not alone but sometimes months and years down the track when everyone has forgotten about their condition we do feel alone. So what happens down the track, when you get home, when you start solids, when they stricture and when they stricture again.

I will continue to write about our journey, our experiences, what I’ve learn t along the way even share recipes! So we don’t feel alone in our journey.

What's Hot in Hair this Winter

So what is hot and happening with hair this winter?

Think Romance! Soft and playful hair with relaxed curls falling on your face, loose pony tails. Quite 1940's wartime.

Think Elegant yet Edgy! Take a traditional French Roll and mix it with I-just-rolled-out-of-bed look.

It's all about volume and a mixture of textures this year! YAY, I don't mind a bit of volume, I love big hair!

Cuts- taking the above in mind the cuts are quite simple allowing you to style it many different ways.

Short to Mid length hair- It's quite moulded and sculpted.

Color- Think Subtle!It's all quite natural focusing more on the condition of your hair. So simple rich colors and treatments, treatments, treatments!

And regardless of what you are hearing everywhere DO NOT CUT IT YOURSELF! Leave it to the professionals!

Who do I recommend?

Melbourne- Zucci Hairdressing, they have quite a few around Melbourne now so it's convenient for all.

Sydney- I LOVE Brad Ngata, love his salon and love his work.

Gold Coast- I'd have to say Oscar Oscar

2009 Bra Survey

OK! I have just launched a Bra Survey this could change the way we shop!

It will take just a couple of minutes

Click Here to take survey

Thank You