Black Friday Shopping at its Finest

We thought it was so successful last year that we'd do it again this year! Last year, we started and finished our Christmas shopping on Black Friday and this year, our intentions were the same. It's really nice to avoid the malls and stores in December.

We left our place on Thursday evening after Aleksy got home from work. I took the day off to sleep in, preparing for being up all night. We arrived on Thursday evening around 8-9pm. We had some supper first at the Toby Keith's bar & grill in Great Lakes Crossing then started the shopping.

Aleksy loves him some American football. Our shopping successes started pretty mch at the very first store we went to. We shopped in the mall from 9pm to about 5am, then headed to KOHLS and Dicks Sports for some more finds.

 After shopping all night at Great Lakes Crossing, approximately 3-4 coffees each + energy drinks, some stops at miscellaneous stores outside of the mall (Toys R Us, Kohls), we stopped for some breakfast at IHOP. This was at around 9:30am, after a brief "nap" in the car for about 30 min. On the black Friday weekend it was -10 Celsius so I couldn't sleep in a turned off car without turning into an ice cube.

This was both Aleksy and my very first time at IHOP. We tried to go last year while Black Friday shopping, but the line up was crazy so we went to Denny's. There was still a line up this time, but it was only about a 15 min wait.

So at the table, there are 4 different kinds of syrup to choose on your pancakes: original, butter pecan, blueberry, and strawberry. We sampled them each on a spoon, and they were all seriously delic. I like the strawberry one best, its like an ice cream topping for your pancake. And we discovered the best part: no matter what you order, it comes with pancakes. Aleksy got a steak omelette and it came with pancakes. Good thing we get our fat on and don't count our calories in the States (there's way too much delicious food in the States to pay attention to that).

We've stayed in Auburn Hills three times now, at 3 different hotels. They all are on the same street and seem to have the same amenities. This year we stayed at the Quality Inn which was decent. It came with free continental breakfast which is always a selling feature for us. We got to the hotel at about 1:30pm on Friday and our room wasn't ready so we had to waste some time for about an hour having some drinks and pretzels in the car. We checked in about 2:30pm and slept until the next day with a brief wake-up for some supper from Buschemi's (pizza and subs which we ate in our room) from 8pm-10pm.

And the purchases: Lots of toys for all the kids in our lives, clothes for the teenagers, and some things for ourselves (clothes and running shoes). The best purchases were prob our shoes. We each got Nike's for about $50 each. And the Disney store had some amazing deals. Everything in the store was 30% off, with lots of particular item sales!

And we have about 5 people who have December birthdays, so we bought for all December birthdays!

The only stop that we made on Saturday: the day we left was to Wal Mart. Since my co-worker and I went to the States in the summer and she introduced me to her ritual of buying stuff they don't sell in Canada, I have been doing the same. The States has all the best junk food (and salad dressing!). This PB and Chocolate Chex Mix was seriously delicious. We also bought brownie marshmallows, cinnamon sugar pringles, and cheeseburger pringles.

We had no issues at the border with our $600 worth of purchases and case of beer and bottle of wine.