Hi all. Here's our new thread. Giving Rainbow a break and until Reastie returns. Sorry there wasn't a more inspiring title, didn't spot any comedy typos this time.

This is intended as a friendly, kind, safe, warm and fuzzy place for people to share discounts, bargains and Christmas gift ideas both online and IRL. Please note the tone and intention of the thread and join with spirit as generous as DC helping themselves to the Christmas chocolate celebrations

Here’s some useful information about how to save the thread or a specific post so you don’t need to have a message to check in for every thread so you have the thread saved:

To watch the thread - click on the little bell that has ‘watch’ under my first message. This adds the whole thread to your ‘watched threads’

You can also bookmark a specific post by clicking on the ‘bookmark’ under the specific post. This saves your exact place in a thread but doesn’t alert you to new replies.

If you have any referral links or codes, please share them on the referral thread here:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/christmas/5444936-bargain-referrals-thread-8

A reminder that we don't use affiliated links on here please

🎄 Emoji to copy if required for posting bargains as some agree this makes deals easier to spot. (or post in bold)

According to DD, I look like a Christmas tree...
is there any hope or should I send the trousers back?

I’m going out for an afternoon tea at a posh London place with friends who are effortlessly stylish.

We are all 40something plus but they are considerably thinner and richer than me so always look well pulled together.

I also have the joy of being a size 18 with huge boobs and horrendous legs so struggle to ever look stylish as usually resort to dresses of some sort.

Please help me source an outfit in the sales/off Vinted. Budget up to £250 if it is clothing I can wear again.

I suit warm tones as am a brunette with brown eyes.

Ok l know im probably going to be slaughtered for this but here goes.
We moved a week ago into a new flat, purpose built block. We both smoke, yes l know its disgusting but whatever.
So today upstairs neighbours came down and said smoke was bothering them, im not sure how as they are not directly above us, but above on other side. I guess none of our frount doors are that good , so smoke is going out of ours upstairs and to the left to thiers? Seems unlikely but obviously they can smell it, they accused us of smoking in communal area hall which obviously l would never do. Other upstairs neighbours directly above say that they can't smell anything.
Im not really sure what to do now, l did say sorry and normally we would smoke outside just been hectic week moving and so wet but if we smoked inside we would do it furthest room away from frount door and close all the doors in between so 3 doors.
Apprently that's not good enough , they also dont want us smoking in the communal garden?
Aibu to think actually we can do what we like in our flat, and to just ignore them.

Let the conversation continue…..

Wow. I wonder what has happened?!

Hello,

I'm looking for recommendations please based on actual experiences of family holidays, ideally from people who've travelled in late May/early June.

I'm taking my 8-year-old daughter away for a week over May half term 2027, just the two of us, and would love to find somewhere that really suits us.

Our essentials are:

• All-inclusive, with air conditioning.
• A proper sandy beach, ideally directly accessible from the hotel, but a five-minute walk is absolutely fine. She loves playing in the sand and building sandcastles.
• Warm outdoor swimming pools! This is a big one. We've previously had a holiday where the pools were absolutely freezing, despite lovely weather, and it really spoiled things. Heated pools would be ideal, but I'm happy with unheated ones if they're genuinely comfortable to swim in at that time of year.
• Really good children's entertainment, particularly enthusiastic, interactive mini discos, dancing, songs and early-evening children's shows.
• Not an enormous, overwhelmingly busy resort.

One important thing about the entertainment: although she'll be 8, she doesn't need activities or entertainment aimed specifically at 8-year-olds. She's still absolutely delighted by the sort of mini discos and children's shows that younger children enjoy. She's also happiest doing things with me rather than being dropped off at kids' clubs, so independent activities aren't a priority. We don't need elaborate late-night entertainment, a lovely mini disco and an early children's show are plenty for us.

Where have you stayed that your children absolutely loved? And were the pools actually warm enough to spend hours in?

Thank you!

For the past week I have been working in a different town. It is temporary, and I will return to my usual workplace by Christmas.

Parking in town is very expensive, so I have been parking in a quiet cul de sac about a 10-15 minute walk from my work.

Every house has a drive way and I’m parked right at the end away from their homes, and there is always plenty of space for anyone else wanting to park there.
I also have a tiny car.
I would never park here if it seemed like I would be inconveniencing the people who live there. My car is doing no harm there and is in the way of no one!

Anyway I return from work this evening to find a note saying ‘TRY A CAR PARK’

It seems utterly pathetic to me, but they clearly think I’m in the wrong.

AIBU thinking about parking here still?

Please help me. I’m breaking down. My partner and I have been having relationship problems for a while but after he came back to me in August I thought we were working on things.

We’ve been together 12 years. We have a 10 year old daughter. He’s my best friend my only friend.

Since Monday he’s been saying he doesn’t want to be with me anymore. I’ve begged and pleaded and promised everything but he’s been so cold and adamant that he doesn’t love me like he used to and it’s over.

Cut to tonight he comes back home and I start up crying and begging him to give me another chance but he wasn’t interested then I ask him if he’s met someone else AND HE SAID YES. He won’t tell me who she is. He won’t tell me where he met her. Apparently it’s been going on for 5 days and nothing has happened just talking. That means nothing to me, we’ve been loyal to each other our whole relationship even during breaks (about a week long before he comes back) in my eyes he might as well have fucked her.

I’m completely in shock. We’ve been here before and always managed to work things out over a week or two but never anything like this.

I don’t even know what else to write here I’m shaking and crying and just want to kill myself. And I just want him back so badly STILL.

Please help if you can I have no one else to turn to and I don’t know how to get through the next hour let alone the rest of my life without him.

Thank you for reading x

Looking for some help/support/advice from people who have gone through similar.

DH lost job I March. Was high up in a finance organization. Spent the summer enjoying time with our three children (I supported this). But has now declared he doesn’t want to go back into finance and spends his time coming up increasingly far fetched ‘business ideas’.

I am trying to be supportive but it looks like my own dreams of taking sometime off or slowing down to be with our 3 children is completely unattainable now.

Has anyone been in my situation? How did it work out? I think it would be different if he had a concrete plan to retrain in another industry, but it just seems like he spends his time grasping at straws.

Lighthearted - we all know every other family apart from our own does it wrong!

Mine are:

• no pigs in blankets
• BOILED veg 🤮
• treating the Christmas cracker like a competition (we are are each person gets their own cracker prize family!)

okay so i saw her in london this weekend and it's bothering me.
shes between 45 and 55. Blonde flicky shirt bob. sexy eyes. very pretty with a distinctive english, posh, clipped accent. fairly tall.

My mum is great. She's in peak health, fit,active, intelligent, of sound mind. Will travel and try anything despite her age.
Loves life.

My Dad has always been very bad tempered, spoils for arguments, aggressive and has violent tendencies.

I studied MH and social science subjects and I see right through him now, he had a bad upbringing and is essentially a traumatised child in an(unfortunately large strong) adult male's body. He's younger than her.

For years maybe even decades she's shielded me from a lot. I've expressed concern about their relationship because he had acted like he's hated me since I was very young,my very first memories of him have been fear-based.

He's tried with me over the years to develop a bond (while I was a young adult) but it was all too little too late. When I was a small child he was loud, aggressive, quick to anger and that just cannot be fixed. I feel sorry for him, and I'm civil with him but there's never going to be a loving parental relationship for me.

Anyway my mum has always perpetuated that she's happy and that their marriage is good and he's a different husband to the man he is as a parent..don't get me wrong there have been times where things have escalated (a few years ago he monumentally crossed a line with me at Christmas and I left the celebrations and went home over which I know they had a week or so long argument resulting in him being awful with her, for one of many an example) but overall she's implied that she's happy.

A week or so ago I was at their house. My phone was dead and I needed to look something up and she passed me her phone. It was open on a reddit post page. She'd left the room and I just started reading it. I realised after a couple of sentences that it was her posting in a relationship advice subreddit about how awful hes been, about how their only child lives nearby but is still estranged from him, he blames her and he says she's ruined his life and it is all her fault her child doesn't like him (It's his bloody fault!!) And then he'll come back saying he loves her and then it'll start again.

It was so sad. I've tried to forget it, she got some good advice. But I read it didn't I? I am probably not going to tell her I read it. I mean, it was literally the page open on her phone. But it just makes me feel so upset for her.
I guess I just needed to write this and see if anybody has anything at all to say about it. She's 82 and he's mid 70s. But if you had a summary of them both without knowing or even saw a photo, you'd assume he was the elder. He's overweight, of ill health, can't be bothered doing much most of the time. She's fit and active and glamorous.

I’d like to get her something from a proper fragrance brand, probably not Sol de janeiro or anything like that.

but of course not anything wildly expensive or too sophisticated.

maybe Vera wang princess? Ideas welcome please

Morning all. I need some adventurous trousers but cant decide what. Im bored with jeans.
There is a staff outing in December and Id like to wear them then.
I dont like ankle flappers and they dont suit me so Im looking for full length maybe with an interesting pattern for a change. Check? Tartan? Whats "in" in trousers?

DH and I had our first baby 2 weeks ago. Together 16 years, since I was 19 and he was 23.

His mum has been like a second mum to me watched me grow up from graduation to first apartment, first home, first jobs. She says she considers me like a daughter and a close friend, and has always cheered us on as a unit.

DH is the oldest of 3 boys, so this is her first grandchild.

She came over 5 days after I gave birth. She gave DH a lovely, expensive leather wallet engraved with our baby’s name and a card saying how proud she is of him as a first-time dad.

She got me nothing. Just a quick “congratulations.” No card with both our names, no flowers, nothing. And she didn’t ask how I was feeling, if her girl needed anything, how my body was adjusting, how I’m holding up.

It felt like: “well, I have my granddaughter, she provided me with, and that’s what matters” not how SHE is doing.

This was after a long, difficult journey to get pregnant that she supported me through. She knows what a huge deal this pregnancy was for us and our families. So to not even be acknowledged...

What makes it hurt more is how much I included her. I included her equally to my own mum the whole way through ultrasound pics, pregnancy updates, shopping for baby things together, all of it. She was welcome at the hospital ASAP. I also made it very clear that both my MIL and mom were invited over anytime they wanted after our baby was born. The only people in the delivery room were DH and the doctors. I didn’t do that because I felt obligated, I did it because I wanted to. She will be the grandmother just the same as my mum will, and I wanted to genuinely include her because I love her dearly. I didn’t treat one different to the other.

So to do all that and then not be treated as a unit in return... it stung.

Honestly, it’s crazy she didn’t think about me at all. I’d just grown a human for 9 months, given birth 5 days ago, and I’m sitting there sore, bleeding, exhausted, trying to keep a newborn alive, and she’d put all that thought into a gift for her son and zero thought into me? I didn’t want something expensive a card with both our names, a snack, a coffee, a chocolate bar, anything small to say “I thought of you too” would have meant the world. She didn’t bring me so much as a bottle of water.

If she sees me as a daughter and close friend, why wasn’t she happy for me too? If your daughter/best friend just had a baby after fertility struggles you watched her go through, wouldn’t you be bursting to say “I’m so proud of you, you did it”?

I do get that dads get overlooked and I’m glad she thought of him he deserved to feel seen. But why does him getting a gift mean I don’t get one? It’s not either/or. She could have celebrated him AND acknowledged me. Why does him being seen have to come at the cost of me being invisible?

Even my boss sent flowers addressed to both of us by name. My BOSS. And my mum congratulated BOTH of us, said she’s proud of BOTH of us, asks us BOTH how she can help, and brings meals making sure there’s something DH likes too. I’d be mortified if my mum treated DH like an afterthought.

I honestly thought the days of me feeling like an outsider were over. I thought once we were a family with a baby, I wouldn’t be “his wife” and “his mum’s grandchild” anymore we’d finally just be us, one family unit. But in that moment I felt split off from my own family again. Like she was celebrating her son and her granddaughter, and I was just... separate. After 16 years together and everything I’d done to include her, I thought we were past that.

A few minutes after the wallet, I said, “I’m sorry I’m going to go to the back room with my baby now because I’m really not feeling too well and I need a moment,” and I left with the baby. I was curt. I didn’t yell or cause a scene, I just removed myself because I was about to cry.

I told DH after she left that I felt like an incubator for her real family her son and grandchild and an afterthought, separated from my own family unit.

I later texted her directly because I didn’t want it to fester. I said I love her, I was happy she came, but I left feeling hurt and invisible. That after everything it took to get here, it was hard to watch her have such a thoughtful gift/card for DH and nothing for me, not even asking how I was. I said I wasn’t looking for a big gift or a fight, I just needed her to know because she means too much to me to pretend it didn’t hurt. I didn’t accuse her of doing it on purpose. All I got back was oh I’m sorry. Something is definitely off.

It’s not about the wallet. It’s about being made invisible at my most vulnerable. If my mum had done the same to DH, I’d have pulled her up on it immediately.

AIBU for leaving curtly and then texting her I was hurt? Or was that the adult thing to do?

The clapping hands gif you see on Facebook. It reminds me of clergy.
Those disposable flossers, when people throw them on the ground, they make me feel sick.

Any more?

Anyone else noticing more of this amongst ladies especially who like getting their nails done? I'm a nail tech and been noticing upsurge in acrylic toenails (mainly french pedi) so of course I'm all for it, (plus think it's cute.) Business wise a big difference maker if it becomes more normalized.

They have contacted ITN and the Guardian to make sure victims know how to report any criminal acts, bit far have received nothing.

If the victims don't make complaints, does that mean there will be no prosecution or can they act on the reporters' evidence?

We’re both in our 30s and have been friends for around 15 years. I have a 1yo son and am a SAHM. My friend doesn’t have children and doesn’t want any for the foreseeable future, if that’s relevant.

Since having my son, he comes pretty much everywhere with me: shopping, errands, meeting friends, museums, restaurants, family visits etc. He’s a fairly calm child and I enjoy having him around. I have plenty of family who could look after him, but unless there’s a reason he can’t come, I generally just take him with me. He’s also happier with me than any other caregiver so I really don’t see a reason to leave him. Obviously, my social life looks a bit different now. I go to fewer bars and fancy restaurants and see friends less often (because long journeys and child-unfriendly venues aren’t always practical), but I’m genuinely not bothered. It’s just a different season of life and I’m enjoying it, probably more than I enjoyed pre baby life.

This friend has seen me 3 times in the last year: once at my house when DS was 2–3 months old, once for a walk in the summer and once at a pub to celebrate a milestone of hers, where I stayed for about an hour with DS asleep in his pram. She recently messaged saying she missed me and asking if we could go for coffee or lunch. I said of course and asked when. She suggested a day and then asked, “Do you have someone to leave DC with?” I was a bit taken aback. Why would I need to arrange childcare for a casual coffee or lunch? If we’re going somewhere child-friendly, I don’t see why he can’t come. Honestly, if it’s just a social catch-up and he can’t come, I’m not particularly keen to go either. I’d obviously make exceptions for things like weddings, funerals or medical appointments, but I don’t feel the need to leave him behind just for the sake of it.

AIBU? Should I make more effort to see friends without my son, or is it reasonable to expect casual daytime meet-ups to accommodate him?

I have had a lodger staying Monday to Friday for about 5 months.

It was generally working out quite well.

He has his own large room, which has a sofa and TV, and his own bathroom.

We share the kitchen and dining room. I have a separate living room.

The arrangement started that I provided basic breakfast food items for him to prepare: cereal and bread, butter, jam, honey etc

An evening meal was not included in our agreement. I did tell him, however, that he was welcome to have what I’d cooked, or if I was out or he wanted something different he could have one of several ready meals, or use any food in the fridge or freezer unless it was earmarked for another meal.

I made it clear that I eat fairly early, normally around 6.00pm, and if he wanted the meal I’d cooked and he wasn’t home in time, I would plate it up and he could re heat it when he liked.

He was happy with this as he hadn’t expected any meals ( the rent is very low for the facilities provided in this area), and had only asked for space to store his own food.

He now has his own cupboard/ fridge space in case he wants something different.

I like to cook and the meals I provide are cooked from scratch and accompanied by fresh vegetables. If we are both there when the meal is ready we often eat together in the dining room.

He has recently mentioned a few times that he would prefer to eat his meal when it was hot, rather than having to re heat it. This is quite a change from when he first moved in, and told me that he often ate Pot Noodles as he couldn’t be bothered to cook.

I advertised for a lodger to help with the bills and am happy to let him share my food, but I am not running a hotel. I don’t want to eat later, nor cook a separate meal for him and be clearing up at up to 8.30pm. He arrives back somewhere between 5.30 - 8.15pm.

Our contract only states that I will provide basic breakfast items. I am under no obligation to provide any other meals, although I am concerned that it might appear so through custom/ practice.

I’ve already told him that I am not prepared to change the timing of my meal, but it hasn’t stopped him mentioning it.

I am considering withdrawing the offer of evening meals altogether.

I am posting here to try to get a balanced view.

In other ways he is a good fit as a lodger, although there have obviously been some niggles.

I was thinking of adding panelling to half way up the wall. I've seen loads of pictures I like in home magazines but can't seem to find panels to buy!

Has anyone found any nice ones please?

We run a company, where quite a substantial part of the workforce are minimum wage or slightly above.

We usually go quite big on a Christmas Party, but this year I was thinking that perhaps with the cost of living crisis they might prefer a bonus instead of the party.

It wouldn’t be a huge amount about 200 quid each extra in December pay slip.

What do people think?

I've been dragging out the same bikini for I'd guess nearly 20 years. I don't remember it being unusually sturdy at the time, but compared to the things in the shops now, I'm very well covered!

I'm 5'6, slim and reasonably well toned, small bust, but not tanned and 56yo, so whilst I'm in decent condition for my age, I don't look like the woman in the picture, and my bum is definitely suffering for lack of collagen.

I've bought this, size 10 (to give an idea of my shape). DP likes it, but I'm not sure I completely trust his judgement.

I know I should just wear it if I like it and I'd love to not care what anyone thinks, but I'd rather not be the topic of pointing and laughing on the beach.

In reality I'll probably only wear it in the sea, with shorts and the top if just on the beach, which is what I'd do with any bikini.

bikini

For years I’ve been buying sheepskin slippers from Celtic & Co, but my style of choice (which has always been pricey) is now £99 which is ridiculous.

Can anybody recommend a really warm pair of slippers that ideally won’t make me look like my own Grandad and don’t cost a fortune?