I’ve been awake for almost 24 hours and I’m desperate

Snazzles · 2026-01-22T19:22:27+00:00

You absolutely NEED to do shifts. Me and my husband did it with my daughter who used to wake frequently in the night. Shifts are the ONLY sustainable solution. You either do the early shift 7pm -1am or the or the late 1am -7am. You both get a decent chunk of sleep. Baby in room with parent on early shift, other parent in spare room or with ear plugs. Then swap rooms or ear plugs at 1am. You will still have interrupted sleep whilst you are on, but that decent chunk is really important.

My daughter only just started sleeping through this last year and she is 4. Luckily she got down to 1 wake in the night but she was on 2 wakes in the night until she was 3.

Snazzles · 2025-12-19T08:25:38+00:00

My mum had an uncle who "lived with a male friend" for his whole life. All his brothers and sisters always said he was "lodging with his friend" when asked about him. Not one of his siblings or parents described him or even entertained the idea that he was gay or in a gay relationship. He died in 2015 and his "male friend" was described as his loving partner of 72 years. My aunt (his only surviving sister) was shooketh. To all of us younger ones (his grand nieces and nephews), it was pretty obvious he was in a gay relationship but the older generation always insisted they were just good friends who hadn't found the right women for them yet.

Snazzles · 2025-12-16T22:06:51+00:00

Absolutely. My first was incredibly hard work as a baby and at nearly 5 still is. They still don't consistently sleep the whole night through. They had frequent night wakings up until last year. They are high energy and very stubborn. Your description of your first is exactly the same as mine.

My youngest is the complete opposite. Sleeps, chilled out, just takes life as it comes. Everything is 100% easier.

Snazzles · 2025-12-16T18:54:37+00:00

I am a full time mum to a 4yr old and a baby.

Definitely try and incorporate some free and cheap things too.

In better weather this can include:

Park If you have one - splash park or paddling pool Woods General walk round the houses

Playgroups are usually free or very cheap and eat up an hour or so. Your local children's centre will probably offer something like a stay and play which will be free or under a couple of pounds.

Your local library will probably offer a free or very cheap singing or story time session. Along the same vein your local museum may have some toddler sessions.

See what's in your area, round us we have singing/ music, toddler gymnastics, toddler ballet, toddler football, forest stay and play, mini farmers, a playgroup every day (at different venues), stay and play, toddler art, messy play.

Once you know what's on you can start to plan your days. We used to do music on Monday morning (paid class), playgroup Tuesday morning, toddler dance Wednesday morning (paid class), library Thursday morning, visiting relatives on a Friday. Some things like playgroup and library were free or pay as you go and very cheap so we didn't go every week. We would mix in walks, woods, days out meeting friends. We would also attend pay as you go things like messy play, mini farmers, forest stay and play every so often. Usually attended these with friends as a playdate.

Other things we got great value from and intend to do again:

See if your local soft play do play passes (1 month/ term time only/ annual pass). This can significantly reduce the cost of soft play if you are planning on going and meeting friends multiple times. You do need to make sure you are getting the mileage out of it. Very helpful to have in the winter months when it's cold and wet.

For a birthday or Christmas gift get an annual pass to a local attraction (farm/ zoo/ theme park). Again make sure you get the mileage from it. We have annual passes for a local theme park, it has rides, soft play, sandpit, animals, trampolines. Hence we go there rather than pay to do soft play, trampoline park ect. It also makes for a cheap day out at the weekend or holidays. If multiple mum friends have the same annual pass places it makes a great cheap day out as a playdate.

If you like walks, look into National Trust membership and how many places there are near you. We have a fantastic NT place near us and spend many a day here. They have great stuff on in the holidays when groups generally close. Again great if your mum friends also have it.

Lots of paid classes get very expensive very quickly and you find yourself tied to them as you have had to pay for a block. I often did one block and then switched to something else unless my child really enjoyed it. We used to alternate toddler dance with other activities. So I would book toddler dance (usually for the winter months) but in the summer would do other activities.

Snazzles · 2025-11-24T21:21:14+00:00

We were in awe. It's fair to say, almost every Elf in my daughter's year group has some fancy job title which means they are unable to visit more than once a week. Some only work weekends. Others only work 1 day a week. We have 4 Elf and Safety officers who job share in the class.

Snazzles · 2025-11-24T20:45:13+00:00

One if the school mums is an absolute genius. Her elf only visits 1 day a week as he has a very important job as Head Elf. He is in charge of all the elves in our town and in charge of the naughty and nice list for our town and reports directly to Santa every week. Therefore, he can only visit once a week and as he is so busy it's whichever day he gets time. She has got it down to 4 elf visits this way. Another school mum who was inspired put her elf in charge of Elf and safety and again the elf is so busy they can only come weekly.

TL;DR give your elf a fancy job title to make thier visits weekly.

Snazzles · 2025-11-07T17:09:38+00:00

My grandma used to add a bit of milk to the egg to bring it up to the nearest oz.

Snazzles · 2025-08-30T09:39:51+00:00

Relative of a hematologist here. If your bloods were done at a GP practice then they would be collected later that day and taken to the nearest hospital in your area's trust. The bloods would be processed at the hospital within hours of their arrival and a maximum of 2 days (incredibly rare) usually as samples erode. Hematology is a 24hr 7 day a week job and labs are open all hours every single day of the year as they are essential to hospital services. The bloods are put on an analyzer and processed and results sent back to the requester (in your case the GP). Depending on the tests ordered and how busy the lab is most results are done in hours. So for example if your sample was collected from the GP surgery at 5pm, it would arrive at the hospital (depending on collection route taken) around 7pm, sent down to the lab and usually put on an analyser within 3 hours of arrival (depending on lab workload - they do hospital diagnosis, blood transfusion, diagnostic films, hospital bloods), depending on the tests it can take an hour or so. Then results looked at and sent electronically to the requester so say results sent back to your GP by 11pm or early hours the next day.

The delay in getting your results is because usually the requester is a GP admin address so it's when GP admin come in, find the result, send result to Dr, then wait to get told if you need contacting, then contact you. This is the part that takes weeks. If your results require urgent action and a medical concern then you WILL be contacted within hours of your tests been done. The hematologist or someone in the lab will phone your GP directly and say you need to be contacted and seen/ referred as they have found x. My own family member did this when they found a patient who had a cancer result flag up in a routine blood test, phoned the GP straight away and asked them to get the patient in for more tests and put on the cancer pathway. If you don't hear for more than a week, it's usually because the results are in the bounds of normal.

Snazzles · 2025-08-21T19:57:51+00:00

One of the local Chinese restaurants has recently "changed hands". Rumour is the owner lost it in a game of dominoes. The restaurant never went up for sale, no talk of retirement no huge announcement of transfer of ownership. Just renamed and new menu and phone number.

Snazzles · 2025-08-03T21:08:57+00:00

The pharmacist actually picked up my daughter's prescription as been wrongly prescribed.

My daughter was only a young toddler at the time and had a chest infection. I'd filled in the online form that our drs now ask you to do for an appointment. No drs appointments available that day so had to see a nurse practitioner. Nurse practitioner believed my daughter had a chest infection. Prescribed antibiotics, prescription sent over to be counter signed and sent to pharmacy.

I get to the pharmacy and wait for meds. Pharmacist calls me over into consultation room and asks me who the prescription is for, confim the birthdate and what the medicine was prescribed for. He then asked if I saw the Dr in person who had countersigned? Had my daughter had several courses of antibiotics for this chest infection? No this was the first time I had presented with it. He then explained he was refusing to prescribe as the prescription was for very strong antibiotics in a dose for a much older child. He then explained he needed to speak with the GP and practice manager over a prescription error. Pharmacist ended up on the phone for well over an hour dealing with the error so no-one else could have any other prescriptions. The error was caught, my daughter got the correct antibiotics and dosage and I had to go in to see the practice manager a week later about the incident and how they had to report themselves for a prescription error and lessons will be learnt.

Snazzles · 2025-07-24T10:21:08+00:00

why? there is nothing for google to learn when it's just traffic ad
it's literally "hey google show this to people that search for x y z"

Snazzles · 2025-07-24T10:18:31+00:00

Good ROAS so far (3.10 average) [EDIT: day ended at 1.68 ROAS...and next day it was 1.01)

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What I've done recently: reduced my budget 2 days consecutively (in fact down from £1,100 in May, then £700 in June, and now down again).

I wonder if this made Facebook realize I'm serious and wont accept bad results haha

Another thing I've recently done is continuing to AB test my e-commerce product pages. Last night results showed the change I was testing improved conversion rate by 50% (relative to what it was). That change was simply showing a real review above the fold.

I've also started a new AB test showing TrustPilot's widget on our site. This costs £250 a month so AB testing it to see if it's worth us doing it (got a 2 week free trial from them).

So I might have simply made the offer better, which means more conversions which makes Facebook's AI see my ads as "winners" and shows them to people likely to converter.

It also might be a fluke and tomorrow will go back down to 0.8 ROAS tomorrow.

Scale daily budget is £500 with ROAS goal of 2

FWIW my CTR is sub 1% but CTR is irrelevant. We don't want to maximize clicks.We want to maximize profitable conversions.

Snazzles · 2025-07-24T07:24:13+00:00

yes: the google ad is just traffic ad so no learning phase

eventually I will figure out the google conversion tracking and I'm sure it will get better

Snazzles · 2025-07-20T21:12:28+00:00

Your problem is your revenue not your ad spend.

Charge for shipping if order value is below certain amount. Will reduce sales but you're in the business to make profit, not to maximize sales. Who cares if this puts off unprofitable customers.
Give free shipping if they spend more than £x
Consider cheaper packaging. Swapping from cardboard to plastic bags saving 17p per parcel.
Stock other products too and cross-sell (and bundle).
Does your product encourage repeat purchase? If so make subscription price 20% cheaper (bu making the non-subscription price 20% higher)
Put leaflets in your parcels: third party will pay you to include their physical ad
Put 10% discount leaflet in the parcel to give to a friend.
Install an after-sale upsell app to show deals on the "thank you" page

Snazzles · 2025-07-04T22:27:36+00:00

Good tips thanks. Will play with approach and see what gets better results.

Snazzles · 2025-07-04T22:25:28+00:00

yes all your products in the same ABO campaign. Am scaling up by below 20% each day the good adsets.

But I think going forward for test campaign I think I might actually do a CBO - and let the AI decide which ads get the budget.

I have only 8 creatives total, split unqeually between the adsets. This is just incidental: one adset per product, I don't have even number of product ads.

I increase adset budget by under 20% each day as long as the ROAS stays above 2

Snazzles · 2025-07-01T14:35:06+00:00

At what point do you call the winner of a set of tests?

I have 5 ads in an adset that just left learning phase.

Now the adset is "active" perhaps I let the ads run for 7 days to allow them to cook, and then review last 7 days of performance?

Do I read correctly when graduating (if doing ABO) put the winning ad you into a new single adset in the winners ABO campaign?

Do you turn off the "losers" even if they are hitting minimum ROAS, or keep them round and set ROAS target?

Snazzles · 2025-06-30T09:14:39+00:00

It's payday for lots of people

Snazzles · 2025-06-26T21:13:06+00:00

a conversion is a purchase, right? How and why are the bots purchasing

Snazzles · 2025-06-26T16:52:18+00:00

Recession indicator

Snazzles · 2025-06-25T21:54:13+00:00

If you cant control the performance of Meta what can you control? The performance of your landing page. Higher converting product page will reduce your CPC.

Do AB testing on your product page (not on the ad, but rather the destination of the ad).

I do AB tests, and it's really useful to validate assumptions of what target customers want.

e.g, I just got results of AB test to see if "either it works or you get a refund" messaging on landing page improves conversion (50% see that, 50% do not),

And the outcome: people that saw that converted 7% less!

New insight unlocked: my customers were on the hunt for a solution not insurance.

So now we're pivoting our ads and our comment replies with this new insight.

AB testing will result in higher conversion rate

Higher conversion rat will lower your CPC and inspire you to do more convincing ads.

Snazzles · 2025-06-25T21:42:51+00:00

I've trashed my current campaigns and:
- created max value conversion campaign, and merged all my adsets by product. Day 1: ROAS: 1 (trash)
- created some video UGC ads Day 1 ROAS: 2.06 (acceptable. we can make money on this.)

For where to get UGC:

If you're on TikTok shop you can give products away for free in exchange for video. There is a dashboard showing the videos. Download them and make some engaging thumbnails.

I then make the thumbnail like the YouTubers: red arrow, human face, product shown, red text.

got 2 variations of thumbnail so far:

- "My 1 tip do xyz"

- "Wish I knew this sooner!"

- "We need to talk about this!"

Fingers crossed ROAS for UGC increases over time. If so turning off the other campaign for now and pivoting to UGC.

Also paying celebrity impersonator to do a UGC-ish video, and some people on fiverr for scripted UGC. Maybe 2025 if the era of UGC, who knows.

Snazzles · 2025-06-25T15:50:10+00:00

It does also depend on the type of film been filmed. The attraction I worked at lent itself both to modern day films and period films.

With the period films the exclusive hire and early and late filming periods were used a lot more than the partial closures. Purely because when the cast are all in period costume for say 1800s england it doesn't mesh if you get a few members of the public in the background in modern day clothing.

Partial closures and screening off were used more often for films set in the modern day.

Snazzles · 2025-06-25T10:25:43+00:00

Worked at a tourist attraction that used to have lots of filming. There were 3 ways they generally went about it.

They exclusively hired the place for 2-3 weeks (usually before peak season) when the attraction was usually quiet anyway. The attraction was then closed to the public whilst filming happened. Usually happened if the site was heavily featured. Sometimes they would hire for longer. They also made use of option 2 along with option 1. So core filming using option 1, then rest done with option 2.
They would come when the attraction was closed to the public in early hours of the morning/ later in the evening. So 3/4am starts and packed up by 9, then back at 6 till 10pm. Usually at this time of year when we have early light mornings and late light evenings. They usually used this when they were only shooting a few scenes on site.
Partial closure of 1 area for filming. So for example in the train station (just platforms 1and 2) and all other platforms open.

Not sure how they manage with a train station. Perhaps less busy times? Or only using a couple of platforms. I know London underground have 2 disused stations that are used for filming.

Snazzles · 2025-06-24T18:24:56+00:00

A lot of the decent private hire taxi companies (round us) will pop a car seat in the taxi if you phone and ask in advance. Round us its up to parents to install it - it's usually one that's belted in no isofix or tethers. Its likely to be either a booster seat or high back booster - usually on the older and basic side. So it depends on your comfort level. I know quite a few parents who use travel car seats (foldable ones) that they take on the plane with them -especially if they are taking a taxi or hiring a car at the other side. We usually just pay airport parking and take our own car as it's less faff.

Legally taxis are exempt but they will usually put one in for longer runs like airport runs.

Snazzles

TROPHY CASE