Show Us Your Attitude of Gratitude

The season of gratitude is upon us, and we here at Shabby Apple have a lot to be grateful for. And we bet that you do, too! So, we are going to put our gratitude to the test and give some of those around us a little more to be thankful about themselves. Here to tell you all about it is our very own Sallee Mathews.


I love taking a day to remember to be thankful for all the good things in my life (of course it doesn’t hurt that the food served up on Thanksgiving is INCREDIBLE. If you’re good I’ll share my recipe for gluten free cornbread and goat cheese stuffing. It’s to-die for).


In the spirit of being thankful the CEO of Shabby Apple sent an email to the staff listing some of the many good things we have to be grateful for. Like...

1. Shabby Apple has been in business for almost four years (time flies!).

2. We’ve almost doubled in size every year.

3. We’ve been featured on the TODAY show, Lucky magazine, Shape, Daily Candy, Glamour, Redbook, Marie Claire and People and will be featured in Town and Country and possibly Oprah. I received a personal email from the fashion editor of In Style just the other day.

4. The original plan was to launch three new lines a year. This year we've launched 10 already and we have one more to go.

5. Most importantly, we’ve given SEVERAL THOUSAND women in Third World countries the opportunity to have a micro-credit loans and start a new and better life. Ninety-five percent of women pay these loans back and use them to start their own businesses, which helps them support themselves and lifts them out of poverty. This was the major reason we started Shabby Apple and I know both Emily and I are really happy that it’s working.

6. We’ve provided women with a REAL selection of modest dresses. These dresses are now bought by many women, not just those who deliberately want to be modest. By selling these dresses, we are contributing to helping all women dress in a way that helps them respect themselves and have more respect in their places of work and in their lives.

As we're fond of saying around here, that is not too shabby.

In fact, this email inspired all of us. We love what we do, we love our customers, we love fashion. We've got a whole lot of love going on. We’ve been brainstorming about gratitude and we have some awesome ideas about how to show it (trust me—you’re going to love the Give One: Get One campaign but you have to wait until the new year for that).

For now, we decided to start out simple. For the next 3 months (from now through December 31st) for every new person who “likes” our Facebook page, we’ll donate 5 cents to charity.

Now, you may be thinking, “What in tar-nation can you get for 5 measly pennies and how are they going to make a difference?” Good question. We happen to think that it can do a great deal. There are all kinds of stories to prove that a small effort can make a big different. Don’t believe me? Check this out.

Our goal is to raise at least $25 (that’s 500 new facebook followers). That’s all we need to make a micro-loan at through a really fantastic micro-credit organization called Kiva. I happen to think that we can raise a lot more than $25 but I’d be happy with that. We need you, and your friends and your neighbors and your kids and all your Facebook acquaitances to help us out.

Because really you won't be helping us out. You'll be helping Yung. She’s married, has one child and makes her living as a farmer and a knitter. She needs a loan so that she doesn’t have to carry the water that they use for their fields by hand. You can learn more about her here.

(If you’re inspired by her story or other stories like hers, join the Shabby Apple Kiva team and make a loan of your own. It’s $25 and when your loan is repaid you get to loan it out again.)


If making a $25 loan isn’t in the cards for you today, that’s fine. There’s a really simple thing you can do to show how grateful you are for all the good things you have. If you don’t already “like” Shabby Apple’s page on Facebook, do it today. Right now! Ask your friends to “like” our page too. If we can inspire 5 of you to “like” the page today and send it out to your friends and just 5 of them (only 5 out of the hundreds of friends you have!) “likes” Shabby Apple’s page and tomorrow they send it out to their friends and on and on, in just 4 days we’ll be able to send a loan to Yung. That's just four days to help Yung build a better life. And once we have helped Yung, we'll pick someone else to help. Because we have plenty to go around.

So please “like” our page and ask your friends to do the same. If we can help someone every 4 days that’s more than 20 loans to women who need the help before it’s over.

To "like" Shabby Apple on Facebook, click here.

Thank you, friends. From the bottom of our hearts. And Yung's, too.