Did you finish your taxes? If you did, treat yourself to my April blog sponsor giveaway! If you didn’t, you still got time… get on it … and then enter the giveaway!!

Thanks so much to my awesome and generous sponsors. ONE LUCKY WINNER will receive the following:

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(Thanks, Unique Vintage, for sponsoring this post!)

I had a little adventure! Manda and I went to Dolores Park on a Lemon Drop #CYClemondrop to leave some lemon stress balls out for people to take during tax-time and National Stress Awareness month. Don’t forget you can make some, too!

I decided it would be a fun outing to try out the sunny yellow dress that Unique Vintage sent to me as part of the Style Society. This is a longer length of dress than I’m usually used to wearing, but I really liked it because I felt comfortable going out without leggings or tights (I have a thing about my knees!). It has a soft yellow background with white polka dots and some cute navy blue anchors. Also the back has some stretch in it for the perfect fit.

Manda took my outfit photos. I’m pretty used to taking them on my own with a tripod, so I felt kind of weird posing in front of someone else, while all these people walked by wondering what we were doing! I need to get more used to this and just not care! The dress was really fun to wear, though, since it’s so swingy and flowy and twirly. Also you can squat down in the grass and string labels to lemons without your butt hanging out!

I mentioned on Instagram that I sort of Iron Chef my outfits. I started with the dress and knew I needed a cardigan, and the only cheery one that I had was that pink floral one from Forever 21. Then I grabbed this Fatally Feminine circus cookie necklace to tie in the pink. Since we were adventuring, I put on my trusty boots from UNIF. I feel like normally you’d feel pressured to wear a dainty shoe with a dress like this, but I am a die-hard black boot lover, and I think it worked out ok!

I also recently received some fun retro bags from Sun Jellies! I’d been following them on Instagram for some time, and I was so surprised and excited when they offered to send me some to check out! This photo makes the bag look a lot smaller than it actually is, but it carries quite a bit! It was perfect for our lemons, tags, and tools. I’ll show you more photos from our Lemon Drop below the cut! (Also stay tuned for the April giveaway later this afternoon!)

Outfit details: Dress – c/o Unique Vintage, Necklace – Fatally Feminine, Boots – UNIF, Bag – c/o Sun Jellies, Cardigan – Forever21? (ages go!)

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I’m excited to tell you about the first giveaway happening right now where you can win a copy of my book! ALSO, you can win either a finished honey bear apron OR the yarn and hook needed to make your own. Head on over to SuperCuteKawaii to enter to win!! You have until April 19th, but do it now before you forget ;).

It’s April and that means it’s National Stress Awareness Month! ARE YOU FEELING IT!? I’m teaming up with the Craft Yarn Council again this year to help spread the word about knitting and crocheting being wonderful stress relievers and mentally akin to yoga and meditation. Last year, I created a pattern and video tutorial for a crocheted lemon stress ball, cuz when life gives you lemons… you can make one… and squeeze one!!

This year, the CYC is taking the lemons even further… all the way to NYC! The CYC ran a big crochet/knit lemon drive with guilds across the country, and the CYC will drop thousands of these lemon stress balls into the hands of frazzled New Yorkers on one of the most stressful days of the year, Tax Day (which ironically happens to land during National Stress Awareness Month). On Monday, April 18th, people rushing last-minute to the James A. Farley Post Office Building in Manhattan to wait in line to mail their 2015 Tax Returns by the due date and filing deadline will be met with a sunny surprise and important message… knitting and crochet are good for you! I wish I could see this all go down!! If you are in NYC and someone hands you a lemon, YOU GOTTA TELL ME ABOUT IT!

We can still participate in the Lemon Drop Takeover locally by knitting or crocheting a lemon, tagging it with an encouraging message (the CYC created a sample tag, here’s the front, and here’s the back), and giving it to someone we know, or leaving it somewhere public for someone to find. Snap a photo and share it on social media with #stitchawaystress to share your Lemon Drop!

You can check out other weekly #stitchawaystress challenges by following the Craft Yarn Council on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Also, I’ll be taking over the CYC Instagram next week, April 13th, so you can see what adventures I get up to with my own Lemon Drop!

(All photos and graphics courtesy of the CYC!)

Surprise! For the next 3 months, I’ll be part of Unique Vintage‘s Style Society. (Image plucked from Unique Vintage’s blog!) This means I’ll be showing you guys some cute outfits I’ll put together from pieces from their shop. If you are not familiar with UV, they specialize in retro and vintage clothing. I think I might’ve bought a dress from them years and years ago to attend my former boss’ charity gala, but I guess I didn’t say where I got that from, so it will remain a mystery! I know I’m not generally a vintage/retro gal when it comes to my outfits (I do dabble on occasion), so I think it will be really fun to try incorporating more into my wardrobe!

Anyway, I have been really bad about blogging outfits lately because A) crappy phone-cam Instagram photos have replaced outfit blog posts, and Instagram is just easy and fast, with quality not being an issue for me there, but mostly B) I kinda lost my go-to in-house locations for good outfit photos. I used to shoot a lot in my dining room, but now my dining room is my craft room and there’s less room and more clutter. My yard is really ugly, so that’s not so much an option. I was thinking maybe in front of my books where the light is better, but there’s not a lot of space. If someone can recommend a good camera lens to get for small spaces, that would be really rad! I have a Canon T3i.

Regardless, contributing to the Style Society will really kick my butt in gear to get my outfit-photo-set-up sorted out. More soon! Also do hit up the UV blog to check out the other Style Society gals. I’m already really enjoying one of their blogs, and actually accidentally ran into her blog today while image-searching Buxom lip gloss swatches :P.