I love the holiday season, actually I love the whole of the year!! And starting late August through early January, it is a stream of festivities for our family. Indians have festivals throughout the year and each one is marked with its own set of rituals and celebrations, and of course, foods. That was definitely my favorite part of the festival (watching mom make those special dishes, snacks, and sweets for each festival, being a taster if allowed, and then..mmm).

One other aspect of all festivals – shopping!! Festival sales frenzy hits India as well with major sales during the festival of lights – Diwali. So while family and friends back home in India have likely been frequenting sales a couple of months ago, this is go-time for us here in the US with Black Friday followed by Small Business Saturday and then Cyber Monday, thankfully followed by Giving Tuesday.

Me, I am not one for shopping crowds. I have of late, grown fond of online shopping, so I tend to lean towards the Cyber Monday trend rather than Black Friday. Even before Cyber Monday events began, the most I would venture out on Black Friday would include – 1) drive out around midnight on Thursday, check out the crowds waiting in line outside the stores from the comfort of our warm car, and then drive back home for a hot chocolate and a late-late-night movie with family; and 2) if really inspired to do some shopping, step out after 2 pm or so on Black Friday and make the best of the remains of the sales when the crowds have mostly thinned..

So I do feel good about all those stores that offer Black Friday deals online as well as all online-only stores that do that and I can skip #2 above as well 🙂 Here are a few I plan to use myself and you can check them out too.

Amazon – (“well, duh, obviously” I say to myself) – this is my first go-to store any day of the year for anything from A – Z, as the logo says.  With Prime, it is even more easier – waiting is not painful at all with packages delivered based on Prime shipping options available (same day/one day/two days) for the item. Plus, you get to use all the other wonderful Prime features like Prime Video (our favorite to watch currently is ‘The Lucy Show’ – a family favorite, while I have been binging on Suits). Check out the Prime Monthly option available now – it definitely looks worth checking out (take it from a Prime member – I have been an Amazon customer for as long as I can remember and finally became a Prime member a couple of years ago and am wondering how I took that long to do so!)

15 Stocking Stuffers Under $15
A Holiday Gift Guide for Kids of all Ages

And if you are looking for Black Friday deals on Amazon, there are many to choose from including the one below:

 

One other place I will be shopping at is Mixbook – I went looking for cards to see what is available. I love the card and calendar options and the ease of selecting the layouts that will work for my photos. Below, I selected the Marble option from the holiday cards, uploaded my photo and when it did not fit in with the default layout of the selected option, I clicked on the layouts tab to scroll through and find the one that works for me. We can easily change backgrounds, text options and more. Or you could select the blank canvas option and start off from there.

I played around with couple of others too with this photo (that is another level of difficulty – to pick a photo, hence I started with this ornament photo before making a choice from family photos!) and you can see those below

There are so many choices that it is definitely making it difficult for me to pick one and I might end up ordering the acrylic block – one really beautiful piece of personalized decor in Mixbook’s Home Decor; or end up with all of them 🙂 Mixbook is having great deals Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Black Friday deals are below and look out for my CyberMonday post soon.

Black Friday: 55% off wall art, cards and premium books or 45% off everything else — Code BF17A – good 11/23 – 11/26

Blocks do look cool. and with a 45% Black Friday discount, the price not too bad.. so I am contemplating (the photos are still to be finalized!!)

So, what about you? Are you one who braves the cold and the crowds for the Black Friday sales (and those deals are hard to beat!) or like me – couching your way to shopping success!!?? And for Small Business Saturday, do you have any local small businesses that you plan to go shop at??

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