I have never experienced Black Friday although thru my Aunt who was a buyer for a big department store, i know how meaningful that day is! My kids grew up on military posts and the biggest "I want-need-want that!" years were overseas with little commercial influence. Now I am a grandparent (x5) and Oh, how different and fun this all is not being the Santa Claus! And this year I did lots of BF buying over the net....sales plus free shipping! I even have my new artificial tree up tho not decorated. Now, this artificial tree is almost a crime for me who delegated Hubby in charge of bringing in the fresh tree and to decorate it--on Christmas Eve! What a wonderful mad rush that all was! I think all my outdoor gardening has made this rather heartless transition to pretty but plastic easier and my bad-back guy just brought in a bottle of cedar spray to ease the tension of this less-mess "new". Guess we are getting delegated to the sidelines now, but still having great fun and have great memories.

Oh yeah. I'm the crazy one. LOL I LOVE Black Friday. It's actually become a tradition in my family. We all pile in the car at about 6 am and drive ~3 hours to a HUGE outlet mall and shop all day. We break for lunch at a local texmex joint that we love, and stop when we're ready for dinner. We eat someplace nice, then head back on the three hour trip home. It's actually not as crazy as it might sound, because for us, it's fun. It's actually become a fun family day. The outlet mall is huge and opens the night before so the real swell of crowds have subsided by the time we arrive. And just about the time it's getting a little bit crazy with crowds again, lunchtime, we drive off site for lunch. Since it's such a large mall with something like 300 stores, there are very very few stores that have untenable crowds. And really, those stores are usually the ones I'm not particularly interested in anyway. By the way I will say that I go with NO agenda. We don't do any holiday gift exchanging (I'm like emagineer in that I prefer to buy gifts throughout the year when a need or want is expressed rather than waiting Bdays & holidays). So mainly I'm shopping for myself, for the house, like that. Great bargains to be had and really, for us, a fun fun day.

I went to KAM in Hyannis and bought dishwasher, but not because it was black Friday but rather because I really need a new one since I'm putting a new kitchen in as I type. Timing just happened to be this way. Bosch has a November rebate - not related to Black Friday - on their stuff and you have to have purchased it by Nov. 30. I had only decided the day before the get a new DW. However, I got home and was looking online at the DW I had bought that morning and saw it was much less expensive online, so I called KAM and they honored the price difference, plus $10. However, I have to pay sales tax, which I wouldn't have had to do buy buying it online. KAM, though, will service it if it needs it since I bought it from them, so I think worth paying the tax. Wheeled the old lousy but working DW out to the end of my driveway with a "free, works, all parts" sign on it, and it was gone with in a half hour. Discovered a part I forgot to stick in the DW this morning, though. I feel bad.

I went to our local Meijer on Thanksgiving day to take advantage of 3 of the "one day only" items that were financially worth it to me enough to tempt me there -- but hated that they do that (and that I gave in to it), it creates this circle of "demand was there" so people came, but if they offered them on Friday instead the demand would still be there and they wouldn't have to require so many to staff the store on Thursday. In fact, on Friday it turned out that they offered one of the "one day only" items again, and a better offer on a similar of the other. I went to Old Navy on Friday to get the $10 jackets. The line was not as long as I've seen in the past. Also stopped at Walmart late in the day to get the very cheap ($2) towels -- I have a special use for them. I have seriously considered getting one of the smart TVs but still not convinced that it is essential to my plan for cutting the cable, so I am waiting.