wittenlover

Box shipped and info sent, Chief Elf!

Oh geez! What a pain! Good luck with the replacement - hope it arrives unbroken and ready! Box for my SS will ship tomorrow!

Got my box yesterday! (Thanks to Bopeep for confirming, as my dad is also notorious for having stuff shipped to me without telling me this time of year, so I was unsure.) I always wait till Christmas to open but many thanks in advance, SS!

Tree’s up! Will decorate it either later tonight or tomorrow.

Happy December, folks! My first Christmas in my own house (vs apartment) in my adult life has given me the opportunity to actually decorate outside. Got blessed with one (likely) last 50+ degree day here in SE MI yesterday and took advantage of my lunch break as I worked from home to get my outside lights up. Posted pics over in Holiday Discussion "Christmas Decorations" if you want to take a peek. Nothing too elaborate but I think they turned out nicely.

As promised… Just my tree to go as far as decorations to go up. Maybe some lights around the front windows inside… Otherwise, pretty happy with how this turned out for my first Christmas in my house.

I'm not done yet (looking forward to the expected warmup tomorrow here in SE MI) but I have my new inflatable Rudolph up in my front yard, along with my Peanuts ice skating path lights along my sidewalk. Still have multiple outdoor items to go up (wreaths/ribbon/lights) and need to get my tree and Christmas window clings up inside. Will post pics of my progress tomorrow

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend! Flew by way too quickly for me, since I spent a good portion of the weekend working but still was nice to get a small break. Now it's time to start packing up the box for my Secret Santa and start baking for my other buddies. The rush to Christmas has begun!

So I got stuff from Kohl's early access sale: - Throw (because of course) - Couple new bath towels (better color for the house than what I had) - Calphalon cookware set (needed some new stuff) - Cuddl Duds sheet set When Walmart put the Apple Watch 9's on sale, I promptly went to Best Buy and asked if they would price match (at the suggestion of some fellow GDers on our Discord). Best Buy agreed, so I left with two of them - one for me, one for one of my best friends. I have a Best Buy card, so we got them at the Walmart price but with 18 months, no interest to pay them off. We'll do it far sooner than that but it still made it nicer to not be out the chunk of money on the spot. Meijer "Black Friday All Week Long" sale: - BOGO $1 shoes: Got a new pair of Skechers sneakers and a pair of Skechers water-repellant boots (which I'm currently wearing and they are comfy/warm). As a size 11 women's shoe wearer, I was excited to find two pair that I actually really liked. - Christmas lights (because HOUSE! Ahhhh!!! lol) - the 100-light strings of mini lights were on sale for $2.49 each. Bought 5. That'll be enough for what I want to do both inside and out, at least this year. (She's a beaut, Clark! ) Home Depot BF savings all month long: - Gorilla multi-position ladder, $99 (in-store pickup) - Three wreath deal, $19.98 (or something very close to that, also in-store pickup) - 6.5' Artificial pre-lit tree, $49.88 (delivered for free to my door) When Sam's Club sale went live Wednesday night, I purchased two SWA e-gift cards ($1000 credit total) for 799.98. Good deal when I know I'll be flying SWA with friends to Vegas in March for the spring NASCAR race. Saves us all a bit on our flights that way. Friday, I was up early and pulled into Menards as the doors were about to open. There was a decent sized crowd there but, based on what I'd heard from others, far tamer than it used to be. I picked up several smaller things: - Gift sets for coworkers (three, $8.99 each) - Three packs of the lightning cables ($4.99 each, 3 cables/pack) - Two wireless charger sets ($9.99 each, I think) - Two electronic rechargeable hand warmers ($9.99 each, I think) - Three pawprint keepsake kits ($1.99 each) - Two 20k mAh power banks ($9.99 each) - Jump starter box ($39.99) - 15' outdoor extension cord 2-pk I'm thinking there might've been one more thing but I can't think of it off hand. Home Depot in-store was next: - Free donut! Woo! Breakfast! lol - Batteries (AA/AAA) - 50' Outdoor extension cord - Smart outdoor power stake (6 outlets - handy for the holidays!) - Inflatable Rudolph (the red-nosed reindeer) - Pair of thick work gloves for outside house work in the cold PetSmart in-store: - Great Choice scoopable cat litter, 42-lb boxes - I bought 6. That'll hold us for a while! - Stuff for my SS person's fur kids - Two holiday cardboard scratchers, 50% off - Friskies canned cat food (not really on special sale, just restocking for the hungry felines since I was there anyway) (Break to go home and give my Mew her morning meds and unload my car) B&BW run: - had coupons for three free full size items - used a candle coupon for a discount on a 3-wick I will give as a gift - $10 off $40 purchase before noon - 25% off entire purchase also stacked - All told, walked out with 10 full sized items (of various kinds) for just under $45 total. This was the largest crowd (volume of people vs space of store) I saw all morning. Then went to Culver's for lunch and called it a day on the shopping - had to get ready for my Torrid shift. lol All told, crowds were lighter than I'd expected/experienced in several years, even at B&BW. This definitely was unlike any BF I can remember (not counting COVID years). I miss the rush of the thrill of the hunt. I will say, though, that I was pleased to get the deals I got on the Apple Watches and the SW cards. Those were my big wins.

I'll be packing and shipping this week!

Got my SWA gift cards! Took about 12 hours to show up but they did come through successfully. Excited to save money on the Vegas NASCAR trip.

Oh gosh... iFly would be a total fail as a gift for me given my aversion to any sort of extended stay in the open at any significant height. LOL I do hear lots of folks enjoy that, though. That said, yes... Experiences. Those things make lasting memories. Example: Just took a young grad student friend of mine to her very first ever live concert. My best friend's dad bought us 4 tickets to a show we were super excited about as a gift for my birthday and told us each to bring another friend. Long story short, as I tried to decide who to ask to join me, this poor little grad student has been working her tail off this semester and suddenly I knew she should be the one to come with me (as long as her schedule would allow). I didn't know she'd never been to a concert until the day of the show. She had a great time and my bestie and I made sure she had some merch to commemorate her first concert trip. Lifetime memories made there. That's the good stuff.

For ads that we already have here on the site, the hours are typically listed on the ad itself. Others may have info on their websites and/or posted right at their entrances.

OSJL needs to work their way just a bit further west! PA is a little too far afield for me to make use of, dang it. lol

STILL waiting on PetSmart now that Menards is out! Cmon PetSmart! Mama needs a kitty litter deal!!! LOL

OH goodness... I have a list!!! Guess I'll be returning to my early morning BF routine to go raid Menards!!! Several things I want to grab there.

I will say those SWA e-cards at Sam's are a solid deal but they are only jumping out at me because I have planned travel coming up that I can use them on basically immediately. Otherwise, I'm basically with you. Not much that truly is jumping out at me.

My SS shopping is just about finished! Just a couple small things I still want to pick up. I'm ahead of schedule this year for a change!

Ooooooh.... Thank you! That's a heck of a deal, especially since I know I'll be flying SWA. Edited to add: For those without active SC memberships already (like me - I live solo and can't really justify it for the things I usually need/SC locations not really on my normal routes), there's a $20 membership deal active right now. That makes sense for me (and maybe others) to grab, as I'll still save almost $200 on those SW GCs, so it'll pay for itself on the spot.

I wanna know what that Southwest Airlines gift card is going to drop to since that's what I fly to Vegas every spring... $500 for less than $449.99 (what it is now) would be amazing.

Leave it to this engineer. I'll math for ya...

I don't usually have much to wrap, so overall it doesn't take me too terribly long but it definitely takes me a good amount of time because I'm picky about how I wrap things. And yes, I do bows/ribbons. That's a memory of my Mom for me, so I get joy out of taking the time to curl the ribbon and add bows for gifts I'm not shipping.

Ah the good ol' days... When we knew the BF season had truly started - the annual arrival of the WM cease and desist letter...

Went into Best Buy last night armed with my Walmart app loaded up to the Apple Watch page and got a price match on the Series 9 ($349 for the 41 mm face size I wanted). Got two of them - one for me, one for one of my best friends. Win! Thanks, Walmart...

Darn. No good cat litter deal for me in there this time unless I just missed it...