Day 23

Day 23 I am thankful for Black Friday and the way I chose to celebrate it with my family.  I really have mixed feelings about this day which I could go on about for hours but in the end, I chose to go out this year.

I understand how a lot of people feel about the day and the irony of the fact that the day we are supposed to sit back and be thankful for what we have is-smashed-up-on-top-of the most commercial day of the year.  I am with everyone on this and have been exasperated by the fact that more and more stores are opening ON Thanksgiving and tons of people across our country are leaving their families immediately after dinner to go wait in line to save $50 on a TV.  They are trampling each other in stores to save $5 on a doll and the message that this gives their children is not one I am looking to pass on to my child. 

This year I chose to not go to any store that was opening on Thanksgiving and I'm even taking it a step further by saying that I will not give these stores any of my money this holiday season.  I was really moving towards doing as much of my shopping with small businesses, on Etsy and on-line so it just seemed natural for me to take a stand and vote with my dollars.  That being said, my sister-in-law and I both agreed that we enjoying the getting up early and waiting in line and feeling like we saved a few dollars on something we planned on buying anyway.

I recently dusted the sewing machine my mom gave me last year and decided to let Garrett pick out some fabric for a new pajama set.  While I know that handmade is not always cost effective, I was surprised at the total when we hit the checkout.  I decided if I was going to make a hobby out of this, I would need to start stocking up on fabric when it was on sale.  Cue Jo-Ann's Black Friday sale.  The store opened at 6pm and had a great sale on flannel fabric as well as some things my sister-in-law wanted.  We roped my little brother into coming along and the negotiation involved a quick trip to Dick's for their buy one get one sale on ammunition.  We made fun of ourselves all morning for the fact that we got up at 4am to get ammunition and fabric and joked that anyone who saw us would be convinced that we were doomsday preppers.  Imagine our surprise when we pulled up in front of the Jo-Ann Superstore to find a line at least 20 people deep.  Thankfully, everyone was more than friendly, no one got trampled and I stocked up on enough flannel to make all the littles in my family pajama bottoms for Christmas.