To say that was a bust is putting it mildly. We ended up with very few things on our list, and not for lack of trying.

On Tuesday we went to Target after the kids had gone to bed to take advantage of their Pajama day sale. Domingo got his peanuts themed pajama pants. I turned out to be a size xs (only because I’m short), which they didn’t have in stock in the color I wanted. No problem, I thought, I’ll buy online. Only they weren’t available online. When I tried to add them to my cart I got a “visit store to purchase” error message. The website happily told me they were in stock at both the Target I was just at, and another one not too far from us. It was wrong on both accounts.

We weren’t intending to go out on Black Friday, but I needed a few last minute items for Alexis’ party on Saturday, and we had managed to finish off the last of the bread before lunch. So off we trode. I was hopping to hit the $75 mark for the 20% off a future visit coupon. In order to get the coupon the $75 needed to be in a single transaction, either in store or online. We would have hit the mark, but the coffee maker Domingo wanted was out of stock at that target, despite the website claiming that, like the pjs, it too was in stock.

At this point I tracked down a sales associate and asked about the coffee pot. I showed her the mobile app on my phone listed the pot as in stock and asked if maybe it was misplaced or they had more in the back. She said more than likely they were out of stock and that website was just slow at keeping up with inventory. She checked their inventory system anyway. The website was in deed incorrect.

We came up $5 short that visit.

I found the coffee maker on Target’s website and tried desperately to find other items (those darn pjs again!) so we could hit the $75 mark. I searched for doll houses (Santa’s planned present to Nicole), ride-on toys (Santa’s planned present to Alexis), kids clothes, Christmas ornaments. The kids clothes also required me to “visit store to purchase”, but the ornaments were shown as “not available” online. I have no idea what the difference is between those two distinctions. Neither was available for store pick, regardless. As for the toys, they were full price and I knew I could do way better elsewhere. So I didn’t meet the $75 threshold that time either either.

Friday evening I went to Target, again, this time for a full grocery run. (4 person household + 4 house guests, we can go through groceries lighting fast.) I ended up $5 shy again. Normally at this point I would have grabbed a chicken breast to put in the freezer for a future dinner, but the customer behind me did not seem to be in a particularly patient mood so instead I grabbed a handful of candies from the check out line. Assuming we use the coupon on a $25 purchase, the candy will have paid for themselves.

I intended to go Christmas ornament shopping on Saturday, but at this point I had been to target a ridiculous number of times. I had visited the Christmas section to see what was available each visit and had very little faith that any one target would have the all the ornaments I wanted. If I wasn’t able to combine them into a single purchase I’d be out of luck. Again.

Basically I can sum up the first half of Black Friday experience as “Target dissapointed.”

The second disappointment was the cutting machine. After doing some research I realized the Silhouette brand of cutting machines matched my needs a little better than the Cricut brand. That was a hard realization as the circulars were showing better sales for Cricut machines. In the days leading up to the Thanksgiving, I had three opportunities to get a Black Friday deal on a Cricut machine while shopping in my PJs from my couch. Oh how I wanted that machine to be the one that would work for me.

Wednesday morning my sister and her husband came to town. With the house full of small kids and new house guests it wasn’t until 10pm I was finally had a chance to sit down to check email. That’s when I saw it, the email from 16 hours earlier. Amazon’s Deal of the Day: the Silhouette Cameo with the bonus started bundle. It was far better than any Black Friday deal for either machine I had seen so far. The best deal that I’ve seen ever on a cutting machine. My heart dropped. It was too late. They were sold out.

I was really bummed about missing that deal. Domingo tried to cheer me up. He assured me that he had seen Amazon repeat their deals of the day before. In his experience deals get recycled every three days or so. I set up an email alert so I would be ready, then started poking around the internet to confirm his observation. I stumbled upon a facebook conversation in a crafting forum I had never heard before. In the comments section someone mentioned that Jet beat Amazon’s Deal of the Day price. While the prices had gone up, Jet’s price was still significantly cheaper than Amazon’s current price, and only $4 more expensive than the Deal of the Day price. I’d rather pay the extra $4 than risk missing out again.

For those keeping track at home, of our wish list we only purchased pj bottoms for Domingo, a new coffee pot, and my cutting machine.

Posted in Shopping | Tags: Black Friday