She’s not just any mate, is Alison. She’s a brilliantly stylish magazine journalist who just happens to write one of my favourite blogs – Not Another Mummy Blog.

Anyway, Alison asked if I was up for a bit of a style contest with her, using nothing but my wily mum fashion sense and the huge array of kids clothes on offer at Zalando. Of course I agreed.

So, I bring to you….

If you’ve never visited Zalando before, be warned – you’ll need at least an hour to peruse the many, many, many different outfits on offer. It took me an hour to eventually choose my three year old’s outfit, so huge was the choice. 

When I’m choosing new clothes for Frog, I have five things I tend to look for:

1) They need to be comfortable

2) They need to be good quality

3) They need to be fun

4) They need to NOT feature a cartoon character

5) They need to be affordable

With all that in mind, this Tootsa MacGinty dress jumped out at me.

Frog already has a pair of Tootsa MacGinty harem leggings, so I know how great quality the clothes from the brand are. Plus, they’re bright, fun and – except for the dresses – non-gender specific, so can be used again if any other bambinos come along who aren’t of the dress variety.

The Tootsa MacGinty St Ives dress was £13 reduced from £28. I teamed it with a pair of cute STUPS high-top trainers for £29 and a Scandi-inspired yellow Kiri scarf for £6 from Finkid, all ordered from the Zalando website.

Our budget was £50 and the only rule was to stick within the price and choose something for our child and not ourself (harder than it looks).

Given the huge array of outfits on offer, you’d expect Alison and I to go for totally different outfits, right? Wrong.

Yep – we both ended up picking the Tootsa MacGinty St Ives dress! What can I say, the lady has good taste.

We’ve both styled up the dress in a slightly different way though. Head over to Alison’s blog to see what other items she plumped for. And then come back and tell me which one you prefer because, you know, it’s a style contest and all.

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I was provided with a £50 voucher to spend at Zalando for the purpose of this challenge. 

The post The Zalando Toddler Style Challenge appeared first on Mother's Always Right.

One of the things I like best about being a Shopcade ambassador is discovering new brands.

Until recently, I’d never come across Joy The Store or 18 and East before – but what a discovery that was.

I’m currently in the market for a range of wedding outfits to kit me out for the gazillion weddings I have this year. Weddings don’t come particularly cheap, so I’m not keen on spending a fortune on a different dress each time. But now, with the help of trusty Shopcade, I don’t need to.

Joy The Store and 18 and East are both my new go-to places for inexpensive fashion, that I won’t be likely to see on another guest at a party. Their designs are unique enough to be a bit quirky and cheap enough to avoid the guilt I often feel when buying frivolous stuff I don’t really need. (Both dresses in the picture above are from Joy and retail at £20 each.)

It’s not all about the dresses though. If you’re not a dress type of person you can browse a bit more and come across your favoured skirt/top or trouser/top combo.

Both the skirt and top in this picture are from Joy – and both cost less than £50.

And – because Shopcade is full of familiar and new brands alike – you can also find items from your old faithfuls, like Dorothy Perkins, Asos, Debenhams etc.

I know what you’re thinking: “Yeah, whatever. She’s a Shopcade ambassador, she would say that.” But it’s true. I genuinely never buy anything online now without checking for a deal on Shopcade. And, most of the time, I already know what I want because I’ve already added it to one of my Shopcade lists.

I get points just for logging onto the site, and I don’t just use it when I’m in the mood for buying. If I have a spare 5 minutes, I’ll pop onto Shopcade and have a browse – in much the same way as I would if I was early for a meeting and there was a shop over the road.

If the idea of social shopping puts you off, it needn’t do. Shopcade is very similar to Pinterest and incredibly easy to navigate – even I can do it without a hitch.

If you join up, come and find me on there – and check out my Fashion for Under £50 list. It’s FULL of bargains!

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Disclosure: As a Shopcade ambassador, I regularly get sent lovely things from the site. All views in this post remain my own. Obviously.

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