Retail Therapy - Holiday Shopping On The Cheap

There is one very lovely young lady who I often help out with a spot of styling or personal shopping who has a two week holiday to Turkey booked for mid August and as a single mum with four children who works very hard, but has little spare cash to splash around (bless her, it has taken her two years to save for this) it is no easy nor cheap task to buy a new holiday wardrobe for the whole family.  We started off last Sunday by going through her wardrobe to see which items she could utilise from her existing summer wardrobe. This process enabled us both to see exactly what was needed to fill any gaps or update styles she had and loved, but that had seen better days.

Now I tend to dress her as if I were her age (34) and had her figure (circa 1988, before my first pregnancy) and had already seen a lovely dress for her which would work for both holiday evenings as well as at home for summer BBQ's with flat sandals or summer evenings out with wedges, lots of gold bangles and big hoop earrings. It is always important to buy pieces that will work at home as well as away when holidays abroad are few and far between.

Luckily she loved the dress as much as me and ordered immediately in case it sold out in her size. We had a days shopping planned for Thursday which sadly we had to cancel, so instead she came round to mine, debit card in hand and we fired up the laptop for some online holiday shopping on a budget.


Warehouse Mosiac Dress was £65 now £30 in size 10 & 12 at House of Fraser here&size 16 at Warehouse here.  Gold Hoop Earrings £3.99. Gold Studded Sunglasses £9.99. Tan Wedges New Look £29.99. Aztec Bangle Stack £6.99. 

We were both amazed by the bargains online at H&M and we managed to fill some wardrobe gaps, get a funky beach bag, swimwear for all the family and some fab pieces for the kids including flip flops for just £1, swimshorts for £4 and caps for shielding the little one's heads from the sun for £2, spending just a total of £75 for literally loads of items!

Admittedly H&M delivery is pretty poor but the bargains are most definitely worth the wait and I would highly recommend making them your first port of call if you have a few suitcases to fill and little cash to spare!

Have you had to shop for your holiday on a budget?  Where have you picked up the best bargains?