Coffee Break/Gift Idea: Murder Robe

108 Comments

1. I actually love this! Clashes with my LL Bean reality though ha.

   We’re new to the Delaware outskirts of Wilmington, DE. My birthday is Friday and I thought it might be nice to see something besides the inside of our rental. Any recs for things to see and do within…30 mins? An hour? I figure Philly ladies might have some ideas? Besides Winterthur. Thanks!

   1. Longwood Gardens, if you can get tickets. Happy Birthday!

      1. Was coming to say this same thing. If you can, make reservations at the restaurant. They book up inside but try for a covered (heated) porch seating in the days right before your trip.

   2. Definitely Longwood Gardens if you can!

      If not, I would suggest a holiday site + dinner in Philly. We have the Macy’s light show, the Franklin Sq light show, Miracle on S 13th. Or, I would walk around Chestnut Hill, pop into stores and grab a meal – if you want, you could combine this with a walk in the Wissahickon or a visit to Morris Arboretum.

      If you go to Macy’s, you can easily eat anywhere in Center City. Franklin Square would be easy for Center City, Northern Liberties, Chinatown, or Fishtown. For Miracle on S 13th eat in Passyunk Square. If you want specific restaurant recommendations, let me know.

   3. does 30 mins get you to Philly? Seeing as how Longwood is super sold out (though beautiful for planning ahead next year) the Tinseltown setup at FDR Park near the stadiums is … kind of an alternative for outdoor light festive feelings?

   4. Ideal festive Philly outing –

      Holiday show at Macy’s
      Xmas village at City hall
      walk down walnut fancy shopping corridor
      Drink at Parc
      stroll through rittenhouse square
      dinner at my loup

      Happy Birthday!

2. Oh my god I want this.

   1. Love it. Hilarious

   2. I would have called it a peignoir, especially if the 1930s movie star is wearing it in the “dressing for dinner” time of day.

   3. me too!

3. I love this SO MUCH!

   Would also be perfect for a rich Miss Marple victim staying at the Hotel Bertram!!!

   1. +1. But much too dressy for the Pale Horse :)

4. Murder robe?? Never heard that, but I commonly see this robe worn in maternity photo shoots.

   1. Terrible.

      1. i know i’m so confused by that also – what about this says mother?!

   2. My first association was that one of the eccentric characters in a murder mystery would be wearing this.

5. In the post about clothing for 40-year+ women, someone mentioned Modern Citizen. I’m curious about this brand. How is the quality? Do they have sales? Are returns easy?

   I’m around a size 6, kind of busty (32DD) with narrow shoulders, thicker in the middle thank I used to be, but still have an hourglass- ish shape. Modern Citizen keeps popping up on my instagram, so and I find it appealing, but am not sure it would work for my body type.

   1. I was thinking about the featured murder robe, when I read your “someone was talking about clothing for 40+ year old women” and I thought “yes. Yes indeed.”

      1. Ha! Same!

   2. I only have a dress and a top from Modern Citizen, but the dress – the Lenese, which is a sweater wrap style – is magical. I’m an hourglassy pear, but have loaned it to friends who are all shapes and it looks good on literally everyone. Quality is on par with nicer mall stores.

      1. This dress looks like exactly what I need, but I’m worried by the poly/nylon fiber content. Has your dress pilled?

         1. I have this dress from last year. It has pilled some but not such that it is visible and it was my go-to piece for about 6 months. I hang to dry but recently accidentally dried it in the machine and while I will try to avoid that again it is fine.

      2. Thanks for the information!

6. does anyone have a recommendation for an NYC based bakery (or bakery that does a good job with shipping!) that can do custom iced sugar cookies to give as party favors for a shower? Thanks!
   -posted earlier but bumping to the new thread!

   1. I’ve had Eleni’s cookies at many events and they were nicely done and also good cookies. They used to have a store in Chelsea Market, but I think they’re focused on wholesale and custom orders now.

      1. I remember their store in Chelsea Market and thinking the cookies were lovely. Also would recommend.

   2. If taking a train to New Jersey to pick them up isn’t out of the question, check out Able Baker in Maplewood. I had a great experience with a custom order.

7. Recommendations for an adults-only all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean for a babymoon? Anywhere in the Caribbean – location flexible! Looking for a fairly relaxed environment where we can soak up some sun, relax and swim at the beach, eat delicious food, etc. Thanks in advance!

   1. We’re booked into the Hyatt all inclusive in the Dominican Republic for spring break (Ziva/Zilara) there is an adults only hotel and a family hotel. As long as you don’t mind sharing some of the restaurants with kids it has excellent reviews.

   2. “All-inclusive” and “delicious food” don’t normally go together. If food is a priority I’d consider staying in a place that isn’t all-inclusive.
      If you’re open to Mexico I’d consider Le Blanc or Live Aqua in Cancun. Both are great adults only all-inclusive resorts with good food.
      In the Caribbean islands, a lot of all-inclusives are in the DR and Jamaica, which are not my favorite islands to visit – there are many other islands that are more beautiful and romantic. CocoBay in Antigua is a nice place but the food is nothing special. Jade Mountain in St Lucia is supposed to be amazing but is $$$$ ($2k/night+).

   3. There are no AIs, but Anguilla is fantastic for a couples vacation, and the dining is some of the best we’ve found in the Caribbean.

   4. Excellence brand resorts are the only ones who do delicious food with all inclusive and no kids. Several in DR, Jamaica, and Mex.

8. How did I not know I’ve needed a Murder Robe all this time?

   1. You’re not alone. I also just found out today that this is the piece missing from my wardrobe.

      1. Samsies

9. What, now? I consider myself well-read, but I have never heard of a murder robe. I’m getting vibes of the rich boss’s wife in Christmas Vacation.

   1. Jelly of the month club!

      1. Ha, we just showed that movie to our 12 year old who LOVED it (broad slapstick humor and bad words are his favorites). We’re watching Christmas movies nightly and I’m really looking forward to rewatching Scrooged!

         1. I laugh my ass off when he rides the sled after applying the solvent. Every single time. My kids turn and look at me to see if I’m going to laugh again.

   2. Apparently the term is from tiktok…not something I associate with being well-read, lol.
      This robe is so awful, I love an old hollywood Elizabath Taylor look, and this is just not it.

      1. That explains why I’ve never heard about it! :)

      2. Ummmm……… there are a lot of people who read on TikTok! Have you heard of “BookTok” which catapulted Colleen Hoover to fame? Some of the people on there may not sit in their libraries wearing velvet smoking jackets and reading Dickens all day, but there are a ton of readers on the platform.

         1. No, I haven’t lol (I don’t know who Colleen Hoover is, either), because tiktok is not something I have ever wanted -or will ever want- in my life.

            1. The NYT did a huge story about Colleen Hoover, so it’s not like only cool girls don’t know who she is anymore.

               I was pushing back against the millions of people who use TikTok as automatically being dummies who can’t read, which was what the comment implied. It’s okay if you don’t use it, but a loud segment of the platform users is meaningfully engaged in the world of books.

   3. I do not participate in trendy society to any degree but amongst my sewing buddies (see I told you I was lame) this is called a dead husband robe, we love them.

10. to my well meaning colleagues, please stop wishing me a merry christmas when you know i don’t celebrate. and to people you don’t know – stop wishing people a merry christmas.

    1. Ugh yes. I don’t mind it so much from strangers in the grocery store, but it’s really frustrating when colleagues I’ve worked with for 10+ years who’ve heard me say many times that I don’t do Christmas still say “Merry Christmas”.

    2. yes, i work in higher ed, which is super into talking about diversity, thinking of your audience, micro aggressions, inclusive language/actions etc., yet the number of people who’ve wished me a Merry Christmas, or send out holiday photo cards via email with all employees in ugly Christmas sweaters, or everything in red and green, etc. feels quite hypocritical this time of year

       1. Where I am, it’s mostly Happy Holidays, but I find myself overthinking whether that’s also weird – doesn’t it put a veneer of inclusivity on something that to me, personally, means Christmas? You might not be celebrating any holiday.

          1. I hear you, especially this year when Hanukkah ended early, but I take “Happy Holidays” to include the new year, which virtually everyone in the US celebrates (even people who have a separate new year like Jewish New Year or Lunar New Year still celebrate the western New Year).

          2. good point. i think i’m extra salty this year bc i’m jewish and being reminded over the past two months how there is still so much jewish hatred in the world

          3. This is my issue. I used to very carefully separate my cards list into two groups, and send “Merry Christmas “ cards to people I knew celebrated and “happy holidays” cards to people I knew didn’t (or if I wasn’t sure). Then a Jewish friend complained one year that it’s lame to say “happy holidays” when the only reason we’re doing any of this is Christmas and he wished everyone would just say Merry Christmas and be done with it.

             1. Huh. I always think the extra hubbub is because Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve converge and if they didn’t it would all be less of a big deal all around (more like Easter). But maybe those who do the whole 12 days of Christmas/Epiphany (whatever all that is) look at the entire period as a long celebration that eclipses NYE and that everyone should be taking two weeks off anyway because of that.

             2. You can’t win and make everyone happy, is the moral of the story here. Happy Holidays encompasses everything, from religious to nonreligious holidays, that falls during this time of year. At some point, you’re looking for something to be mad about.

       2. Didn’t you know: all that stuff matters for everyone except Jews. You are allowed to say and do totally antisemitic and vile things to Jews. Jews don’t count.

          1. This seems very paranoid, and makes it seem like you have a persecution complex. On this blog, people have posted extremely supportive messages about being Jewish or supporting Jews. So whoever your little shot was intended for? It’s not us. Tell it to the people in your life you’re really mad at.

    3. I had someone wish me a Happy Hanukkah today. I am not Jewish. I smiled and said “thank you”.

       1. That is odd since Hanukkah has been over for several days.

       2. That’s very weird because Hanukkah ended last week.

       3. I would love it if there were community open celebrations of everyone’s holidays. I’d come. Purim? Now Ruz? I will celebrate your party with you.

    4. Can we throw in the wishing every older female “Happy Mother’s Day” as long as we’re at it? I try to smile but that one just really cuts, and I still freeze every time.

       1. Yes, this one is awful.

11. Any ideas for games or fun (ish) activities you can do with three adults who are quarantining from each other in separate bedrooms? One of us has tested positive for Covid, another has symptoms but is negative, and the third is negative with no symptoms and we are trying our best to avoid spreading to the healthy one, who has upcoming travel that is not possible to reschedule.

    Instead of spending the holiday baking, watching movies, and doing cozy activities with our home-from-college kid, we have Covid running through the house. We are keeping spirits up texting goofy messages or yelling through the doors to each other, but we have at least a week of this to go.

    1. play dominion online and open a Google meet, or similar voice chat. Or play other games online. If none of you is too sick you can also do a wine tasting via video chat.

    2. When my husband and I were long distance, we would watch the same movie at the same time and have a google chat open to talk about it – that could be fun?

       Sorry you’re sick!

    3. You can still do a streaming party, right? So you could all watch a movie “together apart” on your various devices.
       There must be web-based games you can play together, too.

    4. Amazon movie watch party.

    5. Can you watch the same movie on your separate laptops or TVs?

    6. Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne are both good on iPad I’ve heard – or among us seems really social too.

       Synchronized movie watching?

       1. Jack Box? Ticket to Ride has a good app too I think.

    7. If they all have access to a computer, Jackbox games are a lot of fun.

12. Help! I want my kids (10yo twins) to have what I had at their age: a way to play music in their room, whenever they want, from a selection that they choose but that their father and I oversee. And that’s big enough that it stays in one place and won’t get lost and in two seconds. Everything is streaming, and highly portable (i.e., lose-able) and either has no real ability to sort through what’s on there, or is a full on tablet/smartphone/laptop. We don’t allow unsupervised internet use, but don’t want to have to be there every time they want to listen to music. My perfect device would have my Spotify account on it, with an ability to make either voice requests or use a search function to find specific songs, but with Spotify’s language screening capability, and an ability for us to see what they’re listening to. All in a ‘90s style boombox. Does anything like this magical unicorn exist?

    1. Or maybe you could try trusting your kids.

       1. Disagree, the world would be better off if more parents supervised internet use.

          1. Hard agree. I think many adults without kids haven’t seen the horrendous side of the internet.

       2. +1. The oversight bit is what gets me – my teen just logs in to my Spotify account and listens to what she wants. I see the history and her playlists.

          1. I was kind of annoyed to realize Spotify has videos and podcasts too! And if you’ve ever wondered about the efficacy of the Bark service, I keep getting “violence alerts” because he’s listening to Hamilton. Sigh.

       3. Except one of my kids has shown himself to not be trustworthy online. And even well meaning but curious kids can wander into things they aren’t ready to see.

          1. This, exactly.

    2. Buy them CDs and a CD player? That was part of the experience, right? You didn’t have unlimited music options. Library will probably have to stuff to check out if kiddos want to try a variety of stuff before buying it.

       1. This is what we did.

    3. I just searched for MP3 player and got a bunch of hits, including one by Sony. This seems like it should work and either connect to a Blue Tooth speaker or find one with speakers in it.

    4. It’s called a record player and it’s currently trending.

    5. Either hook up Spotify to a device like an Alexa (and get over the language monitoring aspect – if kids are in school they’ve heard all sorts of language before) or a CD player + CDs. You can find plenty of current music on CDs (I have a CD player in my car and still buy new music for my car).

       1. Or create playlists with clean versions of songs, if you want oversight and control over the language piece.

       2. We got our elementary-age kid an Alexa for this purpose. He had a CD player and CDs, which he uses occasionally, but the Alexa gets a lot of use. He also likes to listen to calming music to fall asleep. You can set it so it will not play explicit versions of songs.

          I totally get the concern over unsupervised internet use. I don’t have the same concerns as you over explicit music, though, and you can see what they are listening to.

    6. Could you just do an old iphone/ipad hooked up to a blue tooth speaker?

       only have the spotify app on it and lock down the app store so that they can’t download anything else on it/access the internet?

       1. They will take it elsewhere in the house and lose it. Not all kids, but one of mine has ADHD that’s off the charts, and he moves things all over the house without realizing it and leaves them in random places (like the chest freezer in the garage.)

          1. Can you buy those phone cable lock things that phone stores use to prevent theft of the floor models? Seems like it would also prevent an ADHD child from walking off with things.

          2. Bolt it to the wall? Glue it to a giant yellow brick?

             Only slightly facetious.

             That’s what’s the find my iPhone function is for.

    7. Bolt it to the wall? Glue it to a giant yellow brick?

       Only slightly facetious.

       That’s what’s the find my iPhone function is for.

    8. I wonder if you can make yoto work for this?

    9. Spotify kids + Bluetooth speaker that lives in their room. Just take it away for a week if it leaves their room and they will leave it there.

    10. iPod and a device to connect to it to play music. Buy a used old school one that doesn’t hook up to the internet; they last forever and a day.

    11. It may a bit too juvenile for them (or not), so throwing in Yoto as a recommendation.

13. Going to target in an hour for gift cards – I’m almost never in there any more! Any great things I should check out?

14. I need a script to decline to provide an attorney recommendation to an acquaintance who struggles with mental health issues. She’s very good friends with one of my very good friends, but we don’t have a close one-on-one connection; I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve hung out with just her. When she is unwell she is very unwell and has been hospitalized many times. I’m a lawyer and she will periodically ask me for recommendations for a lawyer to handle X so she can (frivolously) sue someone. If it’s not in my wheelhouse then I say so, but sometimes it is in my practice area and she knows it. I do not want this person tied to me professionally. I do not want her calling my contacts saying, OP said I should call you because I totally have a case! I do not want to tell her she does not have a case – which she doesn’t – because I don’t want give her legal advice. The one time I tried to gently suggest that there isn’t a lot there, she got pretty (verbally) aggressive and accusatory – another reason I don’t want to subject my lawyer friends to her. Any advice for how to shut this down?

    1. You don’t have capacity to take on a new client at this time, and neither does your friend, Expert A.

       1. Don’t give the name of Expert A. Just say you don’t know anyone who has the capacity to take on a new client.

       2. Just to be clear – there’s no expectation that I would take on her case. I don’t do plaintiffs side work. I use that as an out when she asks me about the strength of her case. “I will tear apart anything that comes my way, I’m not the right person to give you a good over under on your odds because if I’m on the other side your odds are always zero.”

          1. It’s totally fine to say, “I don’t really know anyone for that one!” Then repeat if she keeps pushing. “No, I really don’t. Look at the bar association website for plaintiff lawyers.” Etc.

    2. I have suggested someone I know is equally nutty, or sometimes I’ll say that I don’t take those cases and don’t really know anyone else who does, but she should try looking at XYZ directory.

    3. I would probably go with some version of “You know, based on what you’re describing, no one with the right expertise is coming to mind. The bar association has a referral service that can be really helpful!”

       That gives you an out even if it’s a practice area where you theoretically know someone – it suggests there’s something special and unique about her situation and you just don’t have the right referral for that. Since she’s a nonlawyer, she’s unlikely to know how legit that is.

    4. I would go with some variation of “I’m sorry, I don’t make recomendations”.

    5. You don’t need to respond to her at all

       1. She corners me in person. If she texts me I usually ignore it because I’m “busy” and “not a good texter” much like some of the guys I dated in my 20s. Hey look I did learn something from those jerks!

15. Okay folks, I’m going to have to make a plug for the OG murder robe – the Catherine D’Lish Gown. Yes, these are more expensive than the amazon version but they are WORTH IT. Also, a lot of brands use D’Lish gowns as their product photos but send you something cheaper and of a poor quality. Invest in your luxury – trust me, it’s worth it. https://www.catherinedlish.net/category/marabou-dressing-gowns

    1. awesome — thank you!!

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