OcalaMom.com

Happy Thanksgiving (a day late) to everybody! Hope you enjoyed your day w/ your loved ones, whenever you celebrated it. We had fun w/ my family.

Anybody brave the early morning crowds this morning for shopping? Or are you planning on waiting for Cyber Monday? I have been playing online some b/c I want a dvd camcorder and not my old VHS one so am looking for deals, instead of reading for my Monday a.m. test!

My turkey was the best I've ever made!!! It was a great day. As far as shopping, NO WAY!! I am not putting myself through that craziness. I've never shopped on black friday but I've seen people waiting all night to be the 1st one's in, & really & truly, are the sales that great?? I've noticed that "sales" re going on thru til xmas.

Hi everyone!
Thanksgiving was great! The whole family got a nap in the afternoon. As for Black Friday, it's tradition in our family, so my husband and I left the kids with our niece & went out at 5am. We stay away from Best Buy and Walmart at that time, we went to Home Depot in the Villages for some tools he wanted. Wasn't bad there, then we hit the other stores in the Villages like Target, Walmart, Circuit City. It's not too crazy down there and we found almost everything we wanted. It's fun if you don't have to drag the kids, and we were home by 11am ready for a nap!!

Yeah chuchu -- I wonder that, too.
Maybe ocalamom12 knows since she was a brave soul out there, lol. What are the best deals out there that make it worth it, or is the experience part of the fun?

I read an article, though, that people were doing more Black Friday this year b/c of the economy and they thought those sales were by far better and made it possible to do holiday shopping. I will say I got a good deal last night on some Ralph Lauren pillows (online) from Macy's normally $44 IIRC that I got for like $12.50. Bummed I couldn't get free shipping w/ the 20% off code I had, though, lol.

Maybe if you were buying some pricier electronics that would make a big difference? I know when we were at BJ's there were these guys trying to get people to give them their coupon books to buy the TVs and stuff on a good sale and resell (we were guessing.)

I left the kids with my parents and was in town at about 6:30. I had a couple of things that I wanted that I saw in adds. I hit Bealls first and the parking lot wasn't full. It wasn't dead, but not crazy. Kmart next...I wasn't impressed. Not many deals at all. Target was a mess. Lots of people...lots of deals, but by 8:30, a lot of the deals were gone. After breakfast I hit TJMaxx and found some good deals there, but they weren't Black Friday Deals. Just typical TjMaxx.

Im glad I went..even if it was to start my day differently and to have some Mommy time!

I got up at 4am to go to Walmart at 5!

Yes I have lost my mind!

Seriously though we did get some REALLY good deals......I can't list them all here but several of the toys I wanted for the kids were more than half off, I got some really nice sheets for super cheap, a portable DVD player for Doodles for $49!! It has a rechargable battery and everything!

I did really great this year. My sister, my MIL and I went together and we plan on doing it as a yearly tradition!

I was looking online to do some shopping that way, I did buy my daughter a new comforter set from target but maybe it's just me I have a hard time buying clothes for kids on line, can't really see what they llook like, I can understand buying toys. does anyone else have this issue?? and this is the 1st thing I purchased online, if I don't like it can i send it back??

I'm the same way ChuChu, I have to see it, I hate to order clothes on-line.

I am sure Target has a return policy for on-line purchases. I can't see why they wouldn't take it back.

Hope the comforter set turns out nice!!

By the way, I had SO MUCH FUN shopping on Black Friday. I got almost all of my Christmas shopping done, and about 99% of the things I got were half off or better.

You can do returns -- usually for large stores you can do either mail return or return to a local store. Sometimes online deals are better than in stores. I rarely pay shipping.
I check out sites -- my fav is retailmenot.com -- to see what coupon deals there are.
There are TONS today for Cyber Monday!

I've bought clothes, all the time, actually. Gymboree, Baby Gap, Eddie Bauer, etc... Often free shipping w/ 20% off, even on clearance items. You can often enlarge the pic and zoom in closely to see the material.
I did mess up recently w/ a jacket for Jodi from Gymboree -- I HATE touching velvet and didn't read the description and it's super cute but velvet! I had thought suede maybe from the pic. I just don't touch the outside, lol.