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I told Mom that I plan on going old school and buying the Thanksgiving newspaper to properly peruse the Black Friday ads.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been occasionally peeking at leaked Black Friday ads on BlackFriday.com — and I’ve even taken advantage of some early access prices. But it’s easy to miss things when looking at ad scans on a screen.
And honestly, there’s just something satisfying about spreading out the physical ads and being able to look carefully at all of the items on the page.
What I’ve already bought
I’ve gotten a few things at Target, which has been promoting having Black Friday prices since the start of the month.
Despite that claim, I found that the on food storage containers — on sale for $8.99 for a set of 15 containers and their lids — seems to have ended. Maybe it’ll show back up on Black Friday?
The store is also discounting a number of board games. I played Villainous a while ago, which has you playing as a Disney villain. It’s definitely a difficult game, since everyone has their own win condition. But it was a lot of fun.
The game is $20 instead of $34.99, and the expansion pack is $15 instead of $29.99.
There were a couple other very affordable and very well-reviewed games that I decided to give a try. Time will tell if it was a good gamble, but I have faith.
What I’m still debating
I may (?) buy a small Nutribullet-style blender.
In order to get more grains in my diet — and more low-sodium dairy, for that matter — I’m going to try making some fruit smoothies with Greek yogurt and oats. May eventually try to add some flaxseed.
Using and cleaning the blender every day is far from onerous (especially since I have a second blender jar from an old machine that went kaput). Buuuuut there’s a $14.99 deal at Macy’s for one of the small smoothie blenders.
At first I poo-pooed those as unnecessary. Like I said: Two blendar jars. Then I realized:
- The jars are a more reasonable size, so I could be careful about portions.
- The jars are also cups themselves, so I wouldn’t have to get a cup dirty in addition to the jar.
I’m still debating it, so I’ll read the reviews and check the jar sizes. But historically speaking, Mr. Rebates has 10% or even 12% cash back at Macy’s for Black Friday. Also, Macy’s sometimes has a coupon good for an extra 10% or 20% off — though it may not apply to Black Friday deals.
So I’ll decide on Black Friday itself whether to indulge.
* If you don’t already use Mr. Rebates, you’ll get a $5 bonus after the first rebate posts to your account, and cash back rates are mostly higher during holiday shopping. So it’s a great way to get even better deals on holiday shopping!
For anyone unfamiliar with the process, he only difference between regular shopping and cash back shopping is that, instead of going straight to the store’s website, you go to the cash back shopping site and click the store link on there.
What I’m watching for
I’ll keep an eye on other stores’ prices for small smoothie blenders, of course. I’m going to return an Amazon order at Kohl’sWednesday so I have the extra $5 Kohl’s cash if I want something there.
But beyond that, I think I’ll keep an eye out for any super affordable folding table and chair sets. I don’t technically need any, but my game night list got very long very quickly — as in, I’ve accidentally invited 13 to 14 people with seating for 11 or (if I sit on a stool) 12 — so, yeah, one more wouldn’t hurt.
Unfortunately, the closest I’ve seen is a banquet table, no chairs, for $55ish, and I suspect I’ll need to rely on secondary marketplaces for any future additions. But I can at least check the ads.
Other than that, I think I’m more or less set. But perhaps I’ll see a cool gift idea or something that I hadn’t thought to look for. That is, as long as it’s something I’ve already thought about buying before but rejected at the normal price point. I want as few impulse purchases as possible.
Regardless, scouring the ads will be a fun and weirdly satsifying Thanksgiving activity.
So what about you all? What’s on your list? What have you already bought?
I bought one million presents for my daughter! But I won’t say what they are.
Donna Freedman recently posted…Staycation at Abby’s house.
I guess I’ll just have to wait.
What are some other board game recommendations? I just my whole family into sequence and my mom even got a large print board for my grandma so it was bigger for us to see but i would love to introduce another game to the family.
To preface, these are all Amazon affiliate links. So…
For party games:
A very affordable one is Scattegories, where players work off of a list of random things (things that make you smile, sports teams, etc.) and have to come up with answers that start with whatever letter the die landed on: https://amzn.to/3GT6MUx
Next most affordable is Bananagrams (https://amzn.to/3AQDCBp) which is basically a speed version of Scrabble, with everyone building their own set of words (which build off their other words).
Since Cards Against Humanity is entirely too adult for kids, you might like What Do You Meme. The regular version might be a bit adult — I don’t remember — but there’s a family version: https://amzn.to/3H5h3x1
And both CAH and What Do You Meme are warped versions of Apples to Apples, which is far more wholesome: https://amzn.to/3EE9FWk
I love Ransom Notes (https://amzn.to/3VoFDfY). You have a bunch of magnetic poetry words and have to convey whatever a prompt card says: give a eulogy for a boss you clearly hated, the note you hand over when you’re robbing a bank, etc.
Also, You Don’t Know Jack games can be fun, and everyone can play on their own phone. Those have to be downloaded from the App store.
As for more board-game type stuff:
If there are only 4 of you, Ascension can be fun. The version I have is now pretty pricey, it seems. But it looks like there are multiple versions, and I’m betting they’re great too: https://amzn.to/3XLmlUe
Also for 4 players is Blue Lagoon, which we played at the game night. It was fun and fairly easy to pick up (https://amzn.to/3VbEicG)
I really truly love Concept (https://amzn.to/3EImsXF). It’s tricky in the initial few rounds, but once people figure it out, they love it. It’s a board with a bunch of images, and you have a piece of paper showing possible meanings for the images. For example, your cheat sheet will show that for the sword image on the board, the probable meanings are “weapon or war.”
The person whose turn it is picks a card that has 9 potential things to convey — objects, books/movies, sayings, etc. — and have to get your team (or the other players if you want to play cooperatively) to guess it.
There’s a green question mark for the main concept, which often ends up going on the images for book, movie, TV, song or saying. Then there are 4 more pieces shaped like exclamation points to put on images that represent various aspects of the thing you’re trying to convey.
For example, I put the green question mark piece on the sports image, then exclamation pieces on the book image, the movie image, the wind/air image and the one for imaginary/mythical. People guessed Quidditch pretty quickly.
You can even get more detailed with the little cubes that are the same shades as the exclamation point. For example, if I wanted to convey Moby Dick then I could put the main piece on book and exclamation pieces on water and on animal. If that didn’t help, I could take a cube that was the same color as the exclamation point on the “animal” image and put the cube on the image showing “big/tall” so they knew it was a large animal.
Finally, I did play Jurassic Park Danger (https://amzn.to/3EC5L0h) once, which was fun. It’s a cooperative game, so most of the players work together to get off the island while one player is the dinosaur trying to get them. If it’s anything like the game we played, that person will go “rawr” a lot as they move their piece around trying to eat people.
It was fun, but it wasn’t all that big a strain to get off the island. Maybe because we had the maximum number of players, or maybe with practice the dinosaur player can get more skilled at picking people off.
Thanks Abby! Dang I was not expecting a blog size response but thank you. Writing down a list as we speak
I have the magic bullet mini size – it is perfect for my space (condo kitchen not huge), and for my needs – one smoothie at a time, can drink out of the cup you mix with — and comes with an even smaller cup for pulverizing veggies or other things. I use it a lot and have never regretted the $29!
Yeah, the mini-blenders definitely have more value than I’d initially thought. Not having to clean a bulky blender (plus a cup) each time will be lovely. And it’s easier to portion control that way too.
Glad you’re enjoying yours!