Shabby Apple Review and Giveaway

Before I get into the actual giveaway I want to discuss my evolving sense of style for a second---and hello, I am nowhere NEAR being a 'style blogger' or anything that cool. No. I fully admit to being pretty low maintenance with my wardrobe: it's a bonus if I wear something other than yoga pants and a hoodie on my days at home. The older I get the more I find myself dressing in modest (ie temporary-big-boob-covering) outfits, but always trying to avoid the frumpy 'haggard mom' look at the same time. It's not easy to look fashionable and put together on 4 hours of sleep, milk and poo and Lord knows what else smeared across most of my tops, while disciplining a toddler and soothing a baby. But within the past few months, as I started feeling more comfortable in my own skin again, I find myself 'dressing up' more often because if I look like I have my stuff together, maybe I will actually FEEL like I have my stuff together. I find that if I put forth that extra effort to blow dry my hair and straighten it, add a little bit of makeup, and wear something that makes me feel fancy then I get a little pep in my step. And I will take whatever I can get.

Now, have you guys heard about Shabby Apple? I feel like I've seen a lot of bloggers with the Shabby Apple button on the side of their blogs so I have looked around their site before. I definitely looked at dresses on their site when I was pregnant with Cecelia, needing a dress to wear as a bridesmaid to a friend's wedding but not finding a ton of maternity cocktail dresses out there. I didn't end up ordering a dress from them that time but I was pretty impressed with all of their vintage and modern dresses on there. And the swimming suits intrigue me because I'm really into the cool retro look of one pieces these days. I'm not totally ruling out bikinis for my future years as a mom but I forsee a few key one pieces in there, too, and cute one-pieces are not easy to find. So I was pumped when they contacted me to host a giveaway to my readers! Gotta love an online site that offers free returns as a part of their customer service---takes away the scary 'what if I don't like it in person?' feeling to purchasing online. Plus they have a fit guide and a live chat option to help make sure you get exactly what you want.

I got to choose a dress to review and I picked the Ursa sweater dress because I'm casual like that. I just don't have a lot of places to wear a fancy, DRESSY dress, if that makes sense. But a sweater dress with some leggings? Yes. All the time, please. I'm all about function. Although the green 'Animalia' dress, purple 'Arripidae' dress, and the green 'Mariposa Grove' dress were SUPER tempting for me.

I wore the dress to Christmas Eve service with black leggings, my black boots and I wanted to wear a red scarf but of course I could not find it in the attic anywhere (until weeks later when I uncovered it packed with my swimming suits. Of course). I feel like I could also wear this dress with ballet flats to make it more casual. It's really long, even for me, and it's super soft and lined. I like how the neckline is kind of different and the puckers on the front make it interesting, but it's not loud or anything too wild. Very 'me' for sure. I wanted to have a little photo shoot with me in the dress but never found the time. So my 'styling' of the dress consists of two small children as my accessories.





Okay, so here is the scoop on the giveaway: a $50 gift card is up for grabs and you can use that towards anything on their site. Here is how you can enter:

1- Comment on this post to tell us your favorite dress on the site. This part is a 'must' to be entered into the contest. Have fun, I got sucked in to looking at all of the amazing dresses for WAY too long.

Besides that, you can enter your name more than once in the giveaway by doing any of the following:

2- liking Shabby Apple on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shabby-Apple/56291792791) Then make a comment back here to say you did it.

3-tweet about my giveaway here on the blog, then come back and comment to say you tweeted. (I don't have a twitter account, aren't you shocked?!)

4-blog about my giveaway on your own blog, then comment here to say you blogged.

So each of you can potentially comment up four times on this post to get entered into the drawing, as long as you do each of the above. I will use a random number generator to select the winner on Thursday, February 7. Oh, and you have to have a USA shipping address---sorry to my European/Canadian/Middle Eastern/Australian friends!

Because Shabby Apple didn't want to leave anyone out, all of my readers will get 10% off a purchase for the next month (until March 4) by using this code: mylifeintransition10off

Have fun shopping!


{UPDATE: Friday, February 8. We have our winner and the giveaway is closed. See my next post for details and thanks for participating!!}