SimplyBridal Jewelry Giveaway!

Y'all know I love chatting about weddings. I don't get to do it that often anymore now that we're coming up on our third anniversary (time flies!), but I will always love dresses, flowers, cakes, ceremonies, and personal touches! The creativity, personality, and love that goes into each wedding is so special (not to mention the profound sacrament of marriage!). 
Today I have a giveaway for you from SimplyBridal.com, a website that specializes in reasonably priced wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, and accessories! I had such fun perusing their website... they have so many adorable things at such great prices!
Obviously I can't vouch for the actual in-person quality of their stuff, but with free returns, it's definitely worth a try because there are so many cute things! Here are a few of my favorite wedding dresses from their website:

See? Pretty stuff, right? But since I obviously already did the whole wedding dress thing, my new favorite thing to look at is bridesmaid dresses! Y'all. I love love love being a bridesmaid. In some ways I think it's more fun than being a bride. I mean, the whole getting married part of being a bride is amazing, but once you get past that and you have to be the center of attention all evening? It's just hard to relax. 
When you're being a bridesmaid, you don't have to be worried about how you look in photos, or stress about making sure you say hello to everyone at the reception, or worry that you might throw the bouquet into the chandelier on accident, or wonder if you look awkward during the big first dance. Instead you just get to support your dear friend and be blissfully happy for someone else, and I love that. I love fastening shoe buckles and carrying extra lip gloss and squealing over the wedding dress and planning showers and toasting the bride and groom and meeting extended family. I love it. I'd do it over and over again even without the pretty dresses, but I do love the pretty dresses too. :) Speaking of pretty bridesmaid dresses, how adorable are these?

That bottom right one? I want it. 
Anyway, so SimplyBridal.com has some lovely dresses. They also have a selection of veils (many under $30, which is so refreshing after seeing veil after veil priced at $250 in bridal shops!) and jewelry. 

One of you will get to win a piece of your choice from the SimplyBridal jewelry collection! Personally, I think the little coin pearl bracelets are really cute, or maybe the lariat necklaces, but you can pick whichever piece your heart desires! Enter the giveaway through Rafflecopter! 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Few Announcements

I have a few announcements for you today...
1. Cardstore Giveaway! The Cardstore giveaway for a free personalized photo greeting card ends tonight! 

Do you want an adorable free card? Enter here! There aren't too many entries yet, so if you're one of those people who never wins anything, this could be your chance!
2. Switch Your Feed Reader!
Google Reader dies on Monday. So if you're following via Google Reader or Google Friend Connect (or if you're not, but you'd like a nice way to consolidate all of your blog reading), you may want to switch to a different feed reader! I really like Feedly (and it's super easy to switch over), but Bloglovin is a good option as well. 

3. New Blog Layout!
I re-did my blog design and layout recently, so if you're using Feedly/Google Reader/whatever, you might want to click over and check it out! I'm kind of proud of it because I did all the html edits and graphic design myself, and I really like the new color scheme! 

Y'all have to let me know what you think of the new layout! :)

Cardstore Giveaway!

Have you ever stood in the greeting card aisle in a store, picking up card after card, trying to find the one with just the right message? On some you like the design on the front, but the words aren't quite right. On others, everything is perfect except for one little sentence that's just odd. When you finally find one with a perfect message on the inside, it may not be pretty on the outside. So you end up spending ten minutes reading card after card until you find one that's good enough and call it a day. Jeff and I have big families (lots of birthdays, anniversaries, Confirmations, etc.), so I do that way too often.

But the Internet has a solution! I love the new trend of personalized greeting card websites that are popping up. I wrote about Treat a while back, and today I'm back with another one - Cardstore! These websites allow you to choose from a giant gallery of cards (without ever having to go to the store!), and then you can edit and tweak them to make them just right for your loved ones! Add in photos, names, personalized messages, etc.

I gave my dad a card from Treat for Father's Day, complete with photos of him with his kids over the years, and I think he liked the card better than his actual gift! For Mother's Day, I was finally able to get my Gran-Mom and Gran cards that said "For my Gran-Mom" and "Gran" rather than "Grandma" or "Grandmother." Personalized cards = so fun!

 

Cardstore offered me a free card so I could try out their website as well, and of course I took them up on the offer! I ordered a birthday card for my little sister, Karoline. Her birthday is still a while away, but I don't think she reads the blog, so we're safe! 

The Front

The Inside

She's going to be a teenager!

Personalized Message

Cardstore had lots of cute designs to choose from, and the website was easy to use. Plus they have a whopping 15% cashback with Ebates! The print quality and paper thickness is great, and I think Karoline will love her card! 

I had mine mailed to me, but you can also have them mail the card for you directly to the recipient!

And now for the fun part... one of y'all gets to win a free greeting card from Cardstore (free shipping too!)! Use Rafflecopter to enter below! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Glasses USA Giveaway

Recently I was offered a pair of prescription glasses from GlassesUSA.com! They were like "hey, we'll give you a store credit and give one of your readers a store credit and give the rest of your readers a discount code!" and I was like "of course!"

I wear contacts. I have a pair of glasses, but they're very old. I never wanted to pay for updated eyeglasses because I rarely wear them. But with prices like the ones at GlassesUSA, I can totally afford them! It's hard to buy glasses online without trying them on, but GlassesUSA's" Try-it Mirror" lets you see the glasses on your face.

I was overwhelmed by the many options, so I just picked one of the "best sellers," the Masyn Black. 

Want to try the Try-it Mirror? 

The glasses are great. It's so nice to have a pair with an updated prescription, and since they're not all scratched and outdated like my old pair, I might actually wear them out of the house! The price was right, too!

I can't comment on shipping time because mine were accidentally delivered to my neighbor, and I'm not sure how long she had them before bringing them over. I never received a shipment notification email (even though the order confirmation e-mail said I would), so I didn't have a tracking code, which was annoying. 

Another weird thing was the prescription input. The online form wouldn't let me put "none" for the right-eye axis like my prescription said.

It wasn't a big deal because you can email a scanned copy of your prescription instead, so I did that. A few days later someone from customer service called to "confirm" my prescription. I was kind of like "uhh, you have the scanned copy of it, shouldn't that be all the confirming you need?" But they did get my prescription right in the end.

Overall, I'd buy from them again. GlassesUSA is great for the wide selection, virtual mirror, and awesome prices. Downsides include the lack of shipment notification and tracking number, and the inconvenience of having to scan in my prescription and subsequently confirm it via phone, but I'm more than willing to handle those things for the great price! 

GlassesUSA wants to give y'all 10% off your order (use code "Blog10"), and they want to give a $25 store credit to one of you! Enter to win through Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Minted Christmas Cards + A Giveaway!

For those of you who still haven't bought Christmas cards this year, I have another great suggestion for you! Minted has some really beautiful card designs this year, and they want to give away 50 free cards to one of you! Take a look at some of my favorites from their collection:

Oh, and I must mention this - Minted will address your cards for you! For free! Isn't that amazing? Think of all the time you'll save! And another fun thing about Minted - you can have your cards cut into shapes! Aren't these super cute?

If you just don't think you can get cards done in time for Christmas, there are a bunch of cute New Year's options too!

There are about a million other adorable cards on their website! It was so hard to just pick a few! Check out the rest of the Minted holiday collection too! 

Now for the fun stuff - Minted wants to give away a $100 coupon code to one of you (you can use it for holiday cards, or whatever you want)! The giveaway starts now, and it will end at 11:59 pm on Monday, December 10th. This gives you just enough time to order cards in time for Christmas (Minted says orders placed on December 11th will arrive by December 19th). Or, of course, you can always wait and send New Year's cards (or baby announcements, or moving announcements, or whatever!). I'm using Rafflecopter for this giveaway for the first time, so let me know if anything doesn't work well or doesn't make sense! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Everyone Gets a Free Card!

For those of you who are still bummed about not winning the TinyPrints holiday card giveaway, your day is about to get a little better! The folks at Shutterfly and TinyPrints have started a new line of greeting cards called Treat, and today EVERYONE gets a free card! 

Yep, I said everyone! Create and send a totally personalized greeting card from treat for FREE! Whether you're sending Thanksgiving wishes, wishing a friend a happy birthday, or giving your sweetie a sweet surprise, Treat lets you create a customized card that is sure to make someone smile! 

And even if you don't need any cards, some of their cards would be so cute if you stuck them in a frame and hung them on a wall (or pinned them to a bulletin board... or framed them and put the frame on a bookshelf... the possibilities are endless!). Check these cute ones out: 

Act fast though, the offer is only good today and tomorrow! Use coupon code TREATBLOGR to get your free card from Treat today (November 19th) or tomorrow (November 20th).  Enjoy!