A Very Black Friday

Mayhem. When asked how working black friday was, that was my initial reaction. Absolute chaos. Noisy, uncontrollable chaos. Interestingly enough, I work at The Children's Place. Not your first thought when you think of great deals on the wonderful day of buying things at 4 in the morning.

My shift was 4am-1:30pm. Nine and a half excruciating hours of being on my feet, with the exception of a 30 minutes break. Don't get me wrong, I do like my job, and I am more than thankful to have it. But 4am is slightly ridiculous.

Many people doubted Children's Place when I told them we were open at 4am. They thought, "noone would possibly be anxiously awaiting for you to open." Oh but they were. Atleast 10 people were waiting when we open in the wee hours of the morning.

Now, this is my first Black Friday experience. I've never been a part of it, worked it, or had anything to do with it before and I must say, it is definitely as dangerous and exciting as it is cracked up to be.

From a Marketing perspective, it is genius and had become a worldwide known doorbuster event. It intrigues me, as anything with sales does, how people can become so deal-crazy on this one day of the year.

We had everything in the store 30% off before noon which is kinda a big deal. And we made a large sum of money.

A little business history for you, the reason it's called Black Friday is because it is the one day a year that business work hard to be "in the black" as opposed to a lot of businesses being "in the red" or negative in profit. So a lot of company make huge sales and profits on this day after Thanksgiving tradition.

I was anxious to see the outcome of people that would come, but was not excited to leave my family so soon on Thanksgiving break. I got less than two days to spend with them. A short but very sweet visit.

Here is a photo I snapped as I drove past Best Buy around 3:45am.

Sorry it's a little blurry, I was trying to not look creepy.

All in all, it was an interesting experience and I learned that some people are crazy for deals, not that I blame them.

Glad to be done with it, but looking forward to next year.

The Knightmare Before Christmas

Well this Halloween, much different from years in the past, I actually participated. I just want to preface by saying that I am not a fan of the whole gig. Dressing up just isn't my thing I guess. I don't know why, I can't really explain it. However, this year my roommate and I came up with two fantastic costumes. She had an idea to be Miley Cyrus and so I went with obnoxious hit pop sensation, Justin Bieber. I know, I know, I can hear the groans already. However, I must also say that I didn't dress up like him in order to glorify him, it was anything BUT that. I am not a fan of his music or his fame at all, but I figured his hair style and the way he dresses would be a hilarious costume, so I went for it.

Before we get to costumes though, I'll start on Thursday. Julia and I had crazy schedules and so we finally found time on Thursday morning to get pumpkins at a Catholic church down the road. We went and picked out the perfect pumpkins with ideal shape for carving. Here were our results (mine is on left, julia's is on right):

It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. We were kinda rushed because we wanted to enter our apartment complex's pumpkin carving contest (that we didn't win) and we only had a few hours. We proudly display them on our front porch for everyone to admire.

Next, we went through a lot of preparation for our Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber costumes. I've posted both the pictures of us and the pictures we used for inspiration of our pop artists. I spent a whopping $11 plus a few borrowed items for my costume and I believe Julia's total came to around $18. Here's the results:

The look for Miley Cyrus:

And here was mine for Justin Bieber:

And finally we finished up Halloween festivities by making dirt cake! I know it sounds disgusting but it is quite delicious, and bad for you too. Ingredients include Oreos, cream cheese, gummy worms, cool whip, butter, vanilla, and chocolate pudding. Here is the ending result: