Black Friday 2015

Black Friday Shopping 2015

Black Friday shopping is the only Friday where I actually enjoy getting up at 5:30 in the morning. No, I don't enjoy the 5:30am wake up call and dealing with massive crowds - but I will not let a few bad eggs ruin my entire day!

For the most part, people are generally polite when I go shopping on Black Friday. My Gram and I have had the same schedule for Black Friday since I started going when I was like 15. She's had the same schedule for like 20 years probably! My family is not one to start shopping on Thanksgiving. We spend our time together and we enjoy it.

Our Black Friday Schedule:
5:30 AM - Wake up call!
6 AM - Don't get glam, just get dressed because we're walking out the door at this time.
6:15 AM - Kohls, which is a department store that we particularly enjoy. I love the sweaters they usually carry and I've gotten some of my absolute favorite dresses from here. It was surprsiingly empty this morning which made for a pleasurable shopping experience. 
8:30 AM - End store one, head to store two. (JCPenny) Which was fairly busy at this point, but everyone was still in good spirits and we were feelin' good. We got some coffee and continued on our adventure! 
12 PM - Hangry and ready to eat! Food court here we come!
As soon as we got everything in the car and we hit the food court we all went our separate ways and got the food we wanted. We all reconvened at a claimed table and ate until all the hangries went away!
We always make sure to hit Bath and Body Works, Sears, Victoria's Secret, and a couple other smaller stores inside.
12:30PM - Mall time!
We always make sure to hit Bath and Body Works, Victoria's Secret, Dillards, and a few other smaller stores inside. Chris and I got a Christmas 2015 ornament for our tree customized with ours and Busters name on it!
3 PM - Ornament pickup and then we're out! B&BW was an absolute cluster-f***. It took us over an hour to checkout because they were so slammed. VS took 45mins, the only thing that was fairly quick was the Estee Lauder makeup counter at Dillards.

Afterwards we may hit a couple more stores but by this time we're usually tuckered out and ready to go home and take a nap. (which I did)

This is a typical Black Friday excursion - I did however do quite a bit of xmas shopping before black friday this year because I did not want to try and get everyone done on one day this year. I did spent quite a bit of money - but managed to stay pretty close to my budget. Can't wait for the credit card bill this month... /cries

Stalk me?

Twitter & Bloglovin & Facebook & Instagram & Tumblr 

Current App Obsessions

Current App Obsessions

I never ever ever ever in a billion years thought I was going to be one of those people who played mobile app games. For the longest time, I wasn't. It hasn't been until recently (aka in the past month) where I've kinda sorta fallen in love with a few app games. Only 2 though!

Best Fiends

Best Fiends is a game I probably started playing about a month ago - and I'm currently on level 106. It feels a lot like candy crush - following the "get three in a row" and complete some goals theme. It's only a little different because you aren't actually moving the board pieces, your "linking" three in a row. So diagonal moves are possible and there are special pieces on the board that do special things. You also get creatures called "fiends" who each have their own special ability and can help or hurt you in your pursuits to complete each challenge. I honestly really enjoy it as a time waster while I'm waiting or if I'm sitting on break. Kills my battery though!

Neko Atsume

I WANNA COLLECT ALL THE CATS - pretty much Neko Atsume. Its a super simple concept - leave stuff out in your yard that cats may like - and then kitties from all over come and play on the cool stuff in the yard! The shop has 31 pages of stuff you can put in your yard - AND you can get a yard expansion. Its great for the crazy cat lady in all of us.
P.S. Totally just got the yard upgrade, and Tubbs (the chunky cat) gave me his momento. I feel accomplished and even more addicted to this game.

Stalk me?

Twitter & Bloglovin & Facebook & Instagram & Tumblr

Blogging Advice: Breaking the Scheduling Stigma

Blogging Advice: Breaking the Scheduling Stigma

On this month's Blogging Advice I'm gonna talk about something that gets a lot of flak - Scheduling. And I'm not talking about when you schedule one or two posts - it's when you've got month's planned ahead of time.

I find that people feel scheduling that far ahead to be "cold" or to be "inorganic". Which, to be fair if your writing style comes off that way, it definitely can. A reader can always tell when the author isn't really into what they are writing about. But scheduling so far in advance doesn't make you detached from the subject in which you are writing about. If anything, your view may change and grow while that post sits and waits to be posted and you can always go back and change what you've written. (Whether it's been published or not, your opinions are allowed to change.)

If a topic comes up that you've like to post or speak about first, you can always reschedule! Moving a schedule around the moving your posts around is not as hard as it seems  - heck maybe you can even post off-schedule. *gasp* Bonus post! These extra bonus posts can also help your schedule if you're currently going through a bit of a dry-spell.

This is def a piece of helpful advice when you are working with brands and you schedule more than a month in the future: Let the brand know. Most brands like at least a tentative date in which their product will be featured. This keeps your relationship with them open and honest - which (when all's said and posted) leaves both of you with a successful post and a good working relationship.

Scheduling is not a bad thing, (tbh this post was written a month ago, with some edits throughout the month) and it definitely allows for less stress and panicking about getting posts up on time. Which I know I've done the mad dash right around posting time where I've got no ideas, no pictures, and a seemingly insurmountable task. Scheduling ahead of time gets me around that. (and scheduling my tweets for the week on Monday helps too!)

Stalk me?

Twitter & Bloglovin & Facebook & Instagram & Tumblr