Black Friday 2016

Hey guys,

Happy First day of December! I know this post is going up late but it's been a semi-rough week for me. And the reason I say semi is because I've had worse and I know other people have had much worse as well. I definitely don't want to over-react haha. But I first wanted to say that I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and got to spend time with their family. I spent some time with both my moms family and my dads family. We had lunch with my moms family as usual and then we drove to Lakeland where my grandparents live (on my dads side) and spent some time with them.

So the reason I had a rough week and why I haven't posted anything in a while is because I was super busy with going out of town on Thanksgiving and then I closed on Black Friday and then the weekend flew by, I honestly can't even remember what we did haha but then on Monday night after I got home from work, my family and I decided to go pick out my parents Christmas Tree and grab Olive Garden To Go and then a couple of hours later I ended up getting sick with either food poisoning or a stomach bug. We're not entirely sure, I've had a stomach bug before and this wasn't as bad so I'm guessing it was only food poisoning. However, my sister has had food poisoning before and her's was just as bad as my stomach bug. So what the person goes through may just depend on how bad the food is and the person.

Basically, I was stuck in the bathroom all night long (I won't go into detail, mostly because I don't want to relive it haha) and then I was so exhausted the next day and half that my phone pretty much stayed above 90% the whole day which says a lot because it normally dies by like 7 pm. Thankfully it was the night before my day off so I was able to stay home and sleep most of the day and then I went to work for a few hours the following day and was able to come home and rest again. I am feeling so much better today and I am so grateful to my mom and sister and who are always there to help me whenever I get sick (which happens a lot, unfortunately)!

A picture of me and my cousin!

So now on to what today's post is really about! It's more of a life update type of thing. I meant to do a post featuring some of my favorite sales that were going to be happening on Black Friday and maybe some items that I had my eye on but I unfortunately didn't get this much this year because I didn't really have time to shop. 

So, normally my mom, my sister and I go out Black Friday shopping sometime after midnight (we're not fans of starting on Thanksgiving, even though we totally did it this year) and we head to our local outlet mall which is Miramar Outlets. The reason we go there is because we love outlet mall shopping and they also host a $100 gift card giveaway! Every hour, I believe starting at midnight, they give away 10, $100 gift cards that can be redeemed at any of the stores in the outlet mall. I believe that they usually go until around 6 a.m. or maybe later. Last year when we went, my sister won $100 and I won $300! Granted that has never happened before expect for the first year we did it, my sister won $100.

However, since we bought a house this year, I wasn't really planning on doing a lot of Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping unless it was for items for the house or for the blog. There were a few items that I wanted to buy online on Monday but I worked in the morning and then we went Christmas Tree shopping and then I got sick so I didn't really have any time to actually get on the computer and purchase some stuff, sadly. However, I did buy myself a new handbag but that's to be expected for me haha, I am obsessed with handbags!

This year for Thanksgiving we ended up having lunch with my mom's family like we normally do and then we hopped in the cars and drove up to Lakeland to spend the rest of the holiday with my dad's family. Nothing was really planned out and so we spent some time visiting with the newest member of our family which is my cousin's son! Then my mom, my sister, and I decided to head to Target because we had very little time to actually Black Friday shop and we needed to hit up Target because it's where we always buy DVDs for my dad for Christmas haha. 

The day before Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving day we had talked about possibly driving to Orlando while we were in Lakeland to do some shopping at an outlet mall there but I wasn't too keen on the idea because I had to work the next evening. I'm a kind of a spoiled Princess incase anyone hasn't figured that out yet haha! But I didn't want to have to be too tired for work and I thought that staying up late and driving an extra hour on top of the two we had already driven would make me super tired but thankfully I wasn't tired at all! 

(I totally didn't even realize that I had posted that photo to Snapchat with the bar across my face. This is what happens when it's late and you're tired! haha)

So after leaving Target (at around 10 at night),  I was like "So do we just want to drive to the outlet mall?" and my mom and sister both said yes! So we headed to the outlet mall! Haha (It took almost 20 minutes to find parking which we ended up parking across the street at an Outback haha.)

The stores we checked out were the usual ones we look at such as Kate Spade, Michael Kors, and Coach. We also sometimes check out J. Crew which we did but we didn't buy anything which is normally what happens haha. Some new stores that we checked out include Nike, Adidas, and 7 For All Mankind. We also normally hit up Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic but we all agreed that no one in the family needed clothes unless it was for blogging purposes only. Which even I said I didn't need any clothes for the blog at the moment. I still have a couple outfits left to photograph and a couple other outfit ideas that I can put together using clothes I already own so I didn't really need anything new. We go to other stores as well normally but since we were on a time crunch and none of use were buying clothes, it left us very limited. 

The store we wanted to check out the most was the Tory Burch outlet but unfortunately the line was almost as bad as a ride at Disney (not joking!). My sister asked some people in line how long they had been waiting and they said about an hour a half and the line wasn't as long as it was when they started and they still had about another loop to go through before they could even go in. So we stood in line for about 10-15 minutes, didn't move at all and so we decided that we had to leave because we didn't really have time to be wasting waiting in line. 

I didn't end up buying that much but I am still very happy that I went and was able to enjoy the Black Friday shopping tradition that my mom and sister and I have created over the last few years. Even though it wasn't our normal tradition, it was still fun getting to go shopping with them!

It was definitely a Black Friday I will remember because of how crazy the trip was haha. I hope everyone's Black Friday/Weekend and Cyber Monday shopping trips went well and that they got what they wanted/needed! 

Sorry for such a long post! I hope you guys enjoy it and I hope everyone has a fabulous December! 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends!

 XO, Steph