" A Crazy Morning and a Decorating Splurge "

So tradesman and I decided to brave the Black Friday shopping this year. We have never done this before and thought we would give it a whirl. As Canadians, we had NO idea what we were in for!
We had perused the flyers online Thursday night and we wrote down what we had hoped to pick up. The buys seemed really great, apparently too great.
We set our alarm for 3:45am and rolled out of bed full of anticipation.
Here's tradesman ready to go. I took a picture of him in front of the microwave so you could see what time it was when we left. Unfortunately, the crazy time is blurred. (4:15)

How this man can so look so incredibly cute at such an ungodly hour...I'll never know.

Getting across the border was painless, a 30 min. wait was about all we had. By the time we crossed at about 5:15am the line ups behind us were huge and stretched out as far as we could see over the bridge.
As we drove by some of the stores, I was completely stunned! Crowds of people were lined up outside in the parking lots... what is wrong with these people? It was freezing outside!
We headed to Walmart first and were not at all prepared for what we found. I have never seen anything like it in my life. People were lined up with FULL carts all the way to the back of the store! The sale had only started at 5:00am!
What we hadn't known was that Walmart had opened at midnight and people had been there since then shopping and waiting to cash out at 5:00.
You could not even maneuver through the store with a cart let alone find anything. We did manage to get a couple of good deals and we saved ourselves hours of waiting in line by getting in line at the jewelry counter. Best $10 I spent all day that watch was!

We decided to just avoid all the other stores as they would all be the same song and dance Walmart was. We did however head to HobbyLobby. Now THAT was really exciting!!
They had ALL their Christmas decorations 50% off. This is unheard of in Canada! No where would anyone put decorations on for 50% off BEFORE Christmas! It would be completely absurd!
We made a beeline for those aisles. It didn't take me long to find a few items that I loved. Tradesman just kept on insisting (casually mentioned) that I should buy them and I tried to argue (not really) that maybe I didn't really NEED them. He can just be so convincing or was that me...details, details.

Anyhow, if you know me well you know I love a good deal AND I absolutely LOVE to decorate for Christmas.
These 3 adorable decorations were $14 in total! Stuff like this cost a small fortune in Canada. So yes I splurged and my girls were just as thrilled as I was when they saw my purchases.

This coming weekend is when we will pull out all our decorations and put a tree up. We are looking forward to making our home cozy, inviting and beautiful for the many friends and family we will have visiting this coming season.

Since I'm sure many of you are doing the same... Happy Decorating!