Leaderboard

The end of February brought me grand baby number 7. I'm so in love with her.

You may remember that we didn't give away t-shirts last year due to some unforeseen events that took up much of my time. This year we will be giving away some fun t-shirts on a limited basis. Introducing this year's Black Friday t-shirt: This year's shirt pokes fun at the common sentiment that Black Friday has passed it's usefulness and has nods to some of the stores we've lost along the way since GottaDEAL first started covering Black Friday. The shirts will be given away in our traditional forum contests so be on the lookout for the first contest in the next week or two but know that they will be extremely limited compared to past years, so be sure to enter every contest that pops up if you want the best chance of winning one.

With so many different sales happening throughout October, November and December it can be a little overwhelming to keep track of everything. We have several ways to stay updated with all the new ads and sales that we post: 1. Sign up for our email newsletter. We'll email you about the latest sales and ads as well as the best deals we're finding throughout Q4. 2. Follow the Sale & Ad Discussion forum. On this page, there will be a light blue "Follow" button (on the top of the page if you're on a tablet/desktop and on the bottom of page if you're on a phone). You can get notified when we post new threads in this forum for each ad, sale or catalog. 3. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook , Instagram and/or Threads. We'll post updates on these accounts including when we post new ads or learn about upcoming sales. 4. Bookmark our Black Friday news page and check it regularly for the latest updates. This page also will have a list of ads we've posted, upcoming sales and more.

It has to be frustrating for people who want to shop on BF in store at Walmart because you have no idea which deals will be there without clicking on each item to see a) if it's sold by Walmart or a 3rd party and b) if Walmart carries it in store or is it online only. With the old ad you knew, these items should be available in store. But yeah, the full sale should be out Thursday morning unless plans change.

How I spent my day yesterday: From this… …to this!

I just received Menards and Farm & Fleet in the mail today. Will take pics and get them up on the site soon.

I still would prefer paper ads. Easier to lay them out and compare deals.

I really wish Walmart would stop selling stuff on their website from "other sellers"...if I wanted to purchase items from random people, I'd go to eBay...

Time to do this again. The FDA requires six beans per cup of alcohol to qualify as vanilla extract (anything less is simply flavored alcohol). 750ml is 3.17006463 cups. Multiply that by six beans specifies 19.02038778 beans per 750ml bottle of vodka. So I purchased 20 Organic Madagascar Vanilla Beans Grade B. Certified USDA Organic. 5"-7" for $14.99. The Smirnoff No.21 Premium Vodka 80 Proof (glass bottle) was $13.99. Yield should be about 25 oz with a cost of $1.16/oz. 16 fl oz of McCormick All Natural Pure Vanilla Extract is $42.08 ($2.63/oz), so, unless I screw this up, it looks like I'm saving about 55% and it looks like I GottaDeal. Directions could not be simpler... Cut the vanilla beans in half lengthwise with scissors or a knife. Leave a bit intact at the end if desired. Put the beans in a 750ml bottle of vodka. Screw the cover on and give it a good shake. Place in a cool, dark place. Let sit for at least 2 months. The longer the vanilla sits, the stronger the flavor will be. While it's sitting, give the jar a shake every week, or as often as you can remember.

I just conducted the random drawing from the 1,519 eligible entries and the 2 winners are... Bopeep (post ID #1569649 from the Amazon Black Friday Sale thread) ytmomof4 (post ID #1569019 from the Disney+ Deals on Black Friday? thread) Congrats to the two winners and be sure to check your messages to claim your prize.

I went to get my snow globe yesterday morning and ended up getting the $500 off of $500 coupon for my store. Totally unexpected! I just wanted the snow globe!

I put together a quick and dirty page with a schedule of when I think the various online sales will start this year. You can check it out here: https://gottadeal.com/schedule I'm still working on a new version of the old tracker and I expect to have that ready for next year. There's a lot of data to put on the page and have it work for both desktop and mobile screens so it's taking a little longer. But this simple page has the times listed, you can pick your time zone to customize it and each sale is linked.

First tracking # is in! This would be a good time to remind you - PLEASE post here when you receive your package, even if you are not opening until Christmas. It keeps my spreadsheet happy :).

I wish more ads were in print. I miss going through the big stack of ads on Thanksgiving to prepare for where to go first to get the best Black Friday deals.

My granddaughter was born this morning! 11 pounds 3 oz!! And that's 1 week early. Her and my daughter are doing well. Now I need to get well so I can go visit her!

I saw my shadow, so at least six more months of posting on this thread.

The Christmas tree will remain up for a while longer. The queen has decreed it...

Happy New Year! My luger, Kendall, returned home a few days before Christmas from a 2 week training camp and race in Utah, and just left yesterday for another 2 week training camp in Lake Placid, culminating in another race on Saturday, January 18. In the Utah race, she placed 4th, after being edged out by just 0.025 seconds. Not the result we wanted, and she was pretty upset to be edged out of the medals again, especially since she was 3rd after her first run, but the athlete who edged her out is also 2 years older than her, and has spent much more time on that track, where this was only Kendall's second training camp there. These athletes will meet again next weekend, on what is Kendall's home track, and we are hoping for a better outcome for her. Looking forward to being there to watch her race this time. We bring her home on the 19th, and she will spend about a month home before heading back to Utah for the final training camp of the season, where she will compete in 2 levels of National Championships in that time. In the meantime, she had an awesome article written about her that appeared on the front page of our local newspaper, and will have a third article written for our local area weekly Merchandiser in the next week or two. Today's photos include the pic from the front page of the newspaper article, and a pic from race day.

I miss quickly downloading the pdf ad scan leaks before they got taken down

With each passing year, I miss BF at Walmart pre 2020 all the third party sale items are kinda annoying… Times have changed, but I like the old school sales ad where we could actually turn the page and not do so much scrolling of almost endless products…

The t-shirt winners are: tinkrbel Hartcollectibles BFgrl79 Gator Pam rockpzazz Congrats and check your messages to claim your prize. Next contest soon!

Also, there will be t-shirts given away this year. Not quite as many as past years but I've got a few dozen here and they are kinda fun this year... more details soon.

After the first 6 months of the prize club, we are now at 40 members, down from the original 59. Can't believe we're already halfway to the sales starting up again.

This is 48! Celebrated my birthday on Sunday. Had gorgeous weather here in SE MI, so I even broke out a dress for the occasion. Mark that on your calendars, folks! This doesn’t happen often! lol

I have a friend who is planning to move across the country at the end of next month. She has a lot of canned goods she’s not planning on taking with her. I saw a photo the other day the free pantry at one of the churches in Kirkland showing it could use some donations. I also went through some of my shelved food stuffs I wasn’t using, packed them up and picked up some goods from my friend. I then made my first donation at the pantry. Here’s hoping I did it right. I’ll probably make a stop once a week until my friend’s back stock is diminished. The outside of the pantry at Holy Spirit. What I found when I first opened it. And a few non food items on the bottom. After I added the items I brought. I hope some of these items will fill needy bellies. A lot of these foods need a can opener. Not that I can afford it, but if I could find a deal on bulk inexpensive manual can openers, like at least 100 but no more than $20 for them, I might order some to donate along with the canned goods.

One to rule the tree ... And one to tear it down ... Who will win??? Tune in next time! Same cat time, same cat channel!

Happy February!! It's been a busy month since my last post here. My luger had.a training camp in Lake Placid for 2 weeks, culminating in the second USA Luge North American Continental Cup race, in which Kendall redeemed herself after missing a bronze in the first part of that race in Salt Lake City by 0.025 seconds. She won bronze in the Lake Placid race, besting the Canadian that beat her in Salt Lake City by a large margin. Next up is Kendall's final training camp of the season for 3 weeks in Salt Lake City, with Youth National Championships (for ages 12 to 17) taking place over the course of 2 days the second weekend of March, Jr. National Championships (ages 14 to 21), taking place on March 14th. Kendall has a very good chance of bringing home a medal in at least Youth Nationals, but will have stiff competition in Jr. Nationals, though barring anything unforeseen, she should still do very well. A few days before she heads to SLC, she will be flying to Wisconsin to spend the weekend with her bestie teammate, and they will fly on to SLC together for camp. I'm heading out to SLC in March to watch both races, and to fly back with Kendall. I'm excited to.be in Utah again, since it's been 3 years, though with all of these recent air travel events, and me already being a nervous flyer, I'm not thrilled about flying anytime soon, nor with sending my child flying on her own. With Kendall being a Team USA athlete, this one accident hits way too close to home, as we have likely seen some of these ice skaters during Empire State Winter Games of years past. Surreal. Anyway, here is a pic of Kendall with her "bronze" wooden medal, lol

It’s here!! I’m out of town so I won’t be opening until Christmas Eve. Thank you so much for all the wrapped goodies. I can’t wait to see what’s inside Thank You Secret Santa

DISCUSS BLACK FRIDAY & WIN 1 OF 2 APPLE IPADS! Time for our annual forum contest. We covered our first Black Friday here on GottaDEAL two decades ago, so we've got two prizes this year instead of one! Here's how it works: Through Monday, December 9, 2024 at 11:59:59pm EST, you'll earn one entry into the contest every time you post in one of the Black Friday and holiday shopping-related forums including this main Black Friday Discussion forum and the Sale & Ad Discussion sub-forum. As usual we're not going to require your posts to be a certain length to qualify or anything like that - we just want a lot of great discussion. We know there are times when a one-word reply is fine. All posts in nearly all threads in these forums will count, including other contest threads. However, posts in the GD Prize Club threads will not count. So create interesting threads, reply to other members' questions, give your opinions on everything that is being discussed. This is a discussion board - let's have some interesting discussion here! On Tuesday, December 10, 2024 we will randomly select two lucky winners from all eligible entries and you will each win a brand new Apple iPad 9th Generation Tablet. Prize must be claimed by replying to the winner notification PM here on the forum by January 31, 2025 or prize will be forfeited. And as a benefit to those who were here early this year, all the posts in the forums up until now (again, aside from the prize club thread) will also count towards this contest. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me and I'll be happy to answer them.

Prize Club is closed with 56 members to start. Good luck to everyone!

Happy BF! I got my bucket.....I am happy.

I love seeing all of the new members chatting and getting the items they want. I remember when I found this site and all of the excitement and help from the veterans of BF shopping. Len Mullens (sic) is a technical wizard and has helped me by tv's, computers, and even a GPS (dating myself). So if you are looking for something or need help, post it here or in the respective chats and we will all be happy to help. Welcome to the Gottadeal Family and I hope you stay around all year as the sales never end.

I miss having a finite list of items that we could type up each year and utilize a search feature across the ads to compare items. Now, it spans 7 weeks and 10,000 items that is just unreasonable to manage/follow the items and the sale intervals.

Thanks Jesusluvu. Yes she loved her sweets! I have a tons of pictures of her eating too. I used to send them to her aide, almost daily, when I took mom out to eat. Her aide used to get a kick out of it. She could never get over seeing a 92 year old woman who could eat as much as my mother did.

I’m in!

WooHoo, Let's go! We are on day 3 of tornadoes in Oklahoma. Hopefully Mother Nature gets her stuff together and gives us some fall weather the rest of the month. I saw someone on Facebook post "We wanted hoodie weather, not "evacuate your hood" weather!"

October! Breast cancer awareness month! 14 year survivor!!!!!!

Sad, but true... Just the other day I was thinking back on the stores I used to hit up every BF, starting with K-Mart on Thanksgiving morning, Toys R Us and/or KB Toys were always a stop... how standing in long lines in the cold, snow and/or rain was the norm and I couldn't wait to do it... but yeah, it's pretty much dead in 2024...

Can I trade the iPad for a Gottadeal t-shirt? Asking for a friend.

Sent everyone still eligible for a prize a message requesting your address so be sure to reply to that when you get a chance.

Happy August! We took our oldest back to Temple last Thursday (he is an RA, so he needs to be on campus before students), for his junior year. My most recent high school grad is taking a gap year while he tries again to get into a watchmaking school, which is extremely competitive. He will apply to a program in Seattle again this fall. And my daughter, the luger, just got back from her last summer training camp last week. She had two great camps, and this upcom8ng season, she will be sliding in both singles and doubles. This month's pics are flat ice training, practicing their paddling, with her coach (and former Olympian), photobombing to let me know that Kendall and her doubles partner are doing well for just starting out, and Kendall taking 2nd place in a starts race against her fellow Candidate team level teammates, as well as the next level team (Jr. National Team), of athletes aged 17 and up (Kendall just turned 15 in June).

Thought this was funny. Hopefully I don't offend anyone...I still LOVE BF.

I looked at Instant Pots on Amazon during the prime days deals. I passed as I didn't know how much I would use it and I'd have to store it. Last night I saw on Facebook someone offering an Instant Pot; these are missionary friends back in the states and downsizing what they have in storage for when they are here. So they are dropping it by; I can bless someone else with it if it doesn't work out for me!

April's here...hopefully bringing warmer weather here to stay. This past weekend we were close to 70 degrees, yesterday and today in the 40s and barely feeling like it. It's supposed to be warm again tomorrow but bringing in some nasty weather with it. On a good note...a couple weeks ago hubby won $10,000 on an Ohio lottery scratch-off! No April Fool's joke, he really did!

I had my most recent annual physical in mid December. At that time, my weight has been the highest it has been since before I started keto, my blood pressure was slightly high, and my a1c test for my type II diabetes came back over 7 again, which it has done every three months for the past two years, even with the diabetic and high blood pressure medication I am on. A couple of weeks later, around New Years, I started seeing the ads for the “natural Ozempic,” as one tends to see weight loss ads at the start of the year. I mostly ignored them, but my curiosity finally convinced me to watch one, which said there was a simple three ingredient recipe that could be easily made and taken daily to help weight loss and blood sugar. So, I watched it. Of course it was for a pill that was being sold, but I decided to do some searching and see if there was anything that could made at home. I had heard of the anti inflammatory benefits of ground turmeric in the past, so I looked to see if there was anything that could be made at home that could at least help. I found some articles which claimed the combination of ground turmeric, ground ginger, and black or cayenne pepper has been studied and found to be beneficial in some participants. I decided to add each to my two cups of coffee each morning. I started off with a quarter teaspoon of ground turmeric and an eighth of a teaspoon each of ground ginger and fresh cracked black peppercorn into each cup of coffee. This is in addition to the half a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon I have put into each cup of coffee for the past decade or so. The combination is reminiscent of chai in my coffee, but it’s not totally unpleasant. I made no other changes to anything in my daily routine. At the end of January I had a follow up hematologist appointment, and was surprised to see my weight was down five pounds since my physical the month before. I seriously expected it to be up a few pounds, as had been the trend for the past year or so, as well as having just gone through the holiday season. The next week at the start of February I increased the amount of ground turmeric, ground ginger, and ground black pepper, basically doubling each, so I was now having a teaspoon of ground turmeric, and a half a teaspoon each of ground ginger and fresh cracked black peppercorn daily in my coffee, as well as the teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon. Again, I changed nothing else in my daily routine. Today I had a three month diabetic follow up at my primary care physician. My weight is down another seven pounds since I saw my hematologist at the end of January, my blood pressure was 113/75, and my a1c was 6.7, the first time I’ve been under 7 in a couple of years. I know, it’s very gradual and possibly very circumstantial, so I’m probably being silly to be hopeful about this. I need to stop the turmeric, ginger, and pepper for the next couple of weeks, as even western medicine admits that turmeric is a blood thinner and I have a procedure coming up the first week of April. But, trust me. Once the procedure is finished, I’m going to be adding them back in for as long as they seem to benefit me.

I just returned from the Galentines Day bake off competition where I entered the Meyer Lemon Cheesecake with Blueberries that had the lumpy batter. Long story short, I didn’t win my category, even though I had a 50/50 chance as there were only two entries. Read the captions on the photos for details, including what the head judge told me as to why I didn’t win. As a reminder, here’s the practice cheesecake I made last week. This is the entry cheesecake immediately after decorating it. I tried a different method of piping the lemon curd which worked even less well, so I won’t do that method again. However, I think increasing the size of the heart definitely helped to define its shape better than the smaller one. Because the piping was so terrible, I decided to dress up the sides by adding miniature candy hearts to the sides. I think it definitely looks pretty… FullSizeRender.MOV Here’s how I displayed the cheesecake at the competition. We had to display our cakes by 12:30 PM with the winners scheduled to be announced at 3:00 PM. I used the lid of the inexpensive Dollar Tree cake carrier to hold ice so the cheesecake could sit out without being refrigerated. My only competition in the cake category. Obviously a carrot cake by someone much better at decorating than I am. This carrot cake won my category. It definitely looks luscious! What the head judge told me “off the record” after the competition ended was that the flavor and texture of the cheesecake itself was spot on. There was no evidence of the lumpy batter (yay!). If I had left it at that, I would have edged out the carrot cake to win. However, while the judges appreciated the color and look of the candy hearts on the sides of the cheesecake, they said the candies did not soften at all and that the crunch detracted from the smoothness of the rest of the bite. For that choice, they awarded it to the carrot cake. I had fun preparing, entertaining, and attending this event, though. I appreciate everyone’s input on the flavor choice and decoratingg ideas. I think I’ll definitely enter again if it’s held again next year!

Happy New Year! We are digging out after the weekend weather. I've heard 16 inches here.

Thanks to a guest, here are a couple of photos from the second night Seder I prepared. Seder plate in the center Ashkenazi charoses in fat upper left Sefardi charoses just to the upper left of the Seder plate White grated horseradish (the strong stuff) to the upper right of the Sefardi charoses Matzah ball soup with carrots, parsnip, and celery Grated horseradish with beets Clockwise from bottom left: Basket of Grandma Bessie’s recipe for matzah meal rolls Platter of white meat roasted turkey Platter of dark meat roasted turkey Turkey gravy using chef Alex Guarnaschelli’s recipe which thickens the gravy using roasted onion and garlic Crockpot holding garlic mashed potatoes (I forgot to turn it on once plugged in, so they were cold by the time we got to them) Crockpot holding matzah farfel “stuffing” (That crockpot was on, so the “stuffing” was warm) Platter of George’s roasted asparagus Hollandaise sauce for the asparagus Cauliflower Tabbouleh-style salad (This really should have macerated far longer for the flavors to meld, but it sufficed) I also finally got the Kosher for Passover adapted noodle kugel made. I think it came out really well! Fresh out of the oven Plated for storage An interior shot showing how the Kosher for Passover egg noodles didn’t quite meld into the filling; it’s a bit chunkier than usual. However, the flavors were spot on if a bit dense in texture. All in all a great adaptation.

Happy April! My daughter's 2023/24 luge season wrapped up on Saturday, with USA Luge Youth National Championships, in which she placed 4th out of 18 athletes. The three athletes that placed ahead of her are each at least 2 years older than her (Kendall is 14), and have all been on the Candidate Team for 1-3 years longer than her. Several athletes Kendall placed in front of are also athletes who are older and more experienced than she. Kendall has had a great season, and we are super proud of the progress she's made in her first year on this higher level team. The new team selection list comes out on May 1, and summer training will begin in June. You can find her on FB, Kendall Achen, USA Luge, or her group page that I handle, Kendall Achen, USA Luge Jr. National Candidate Team, if you'd like to follow along as she moves forward toward her goal of becoming an Olympian! https://www.facebook.com/share/v/2xeCoAr2JsbAnD6E/?mibextid=oFDknk