The “Black Friday” ads for 2007 started to show up a few weeks ago and now that it’s only a little over two weeks away the listings have really started to show up. So for those of you who are interested in this Christmas shopping craze, I’m making a list of sites where you can take a look at the goods well before Thanksgiving Day.

Here’s the list (and it’ll be updated as other sites pop up)…

• Black Friday 2007 - [RSS Feed]
• BlackFriday.info - [RSS Feed]
• Black-Friday.net
• Black Friday Ads - [Mobile Version | RSS Feed]
• Black Friday @ GottaDeal.com - [Mobile Version | RSS Feed]
• DaddyODeals
• DealsPl.us - [RSS Feed]
• DealTaker Official Black Friday 2007 Ads
• TheBlackFriday.com

If you know of any sites that I don’t have listed, please let me know.

Related, Wal-Mart has already started the “deal wars”, so it’s likely that you’ll be able to snag some good sales before the “official” Christmas shopping season.

The kids took in quite a haul last night since the weather was nice and since we took them to my parents neighborhood again this year since people actually give out candy there (including full sized candy bars…and hot dogs)…for some reason most people/households in my neighborhood don’t partake in much of anything that involves decorating, landscaping, mingling, etc.  That’s fine I suppose, but it makes for a boring Halloween through New Years.

(Our first Christmas in our house I lit up the entire roof with Christmas lights…which made it easy for people to find our house (and gave me quite an electric bill)…but lately I’ve just stuck with some “icicle” lights and can tell anyone who hasn’t been to our house to look for the house with Christmas lights…and I’m not exaggerating.)

Anyway, back to Halloween for a moment…

We didn’t get started until around 7 pm (so much for the “official” trick-or-treating hours) and wrapped things up around 8:15 pm or so.  Last year it was so cold that I think the kids might have lasted 45 minutes (probably less), but last night was truly ideal…a little brisk but not too cold, on the brink of raining but not raining, with the wind howling and rustling leaves down the street.  Very ideal indeed.

But Halloween is over and now it’s time to start talking turkeys, pies, football and Christmas and New Years parties.  There are only three weeks until Thanksgiving and eight and a half weeks left in the entire year.  Where, oh where, does the time go?

So when is the 2008 Valentines Day candy going to appear? I’m having a hankering for Sweet Tart Hearts and buying over priced flowers, aren’t you?

OK, I’m being a little sarcastic (maybe not about the candy part), but is it just me or are the retailers truly pushing out the various “holiday” merchandise much quicker than before? I began to see “back-to-school” supplies in early July (presumably to make way for the upcoming “seasonal” items), Halloween costumes and candy in late August (at both Target and Wal-Mart) and Christmas merchandise in mid-September (at Target and I’d assume the same at Wal-Mart and other similar retailers). Then in yesterday’s paper I saw Halloween and Christmas items in the Kohl’s ad on the same page. (Apparently fall/harvest/Thanksgiving is all lumped together with Halloween.)

Being a “marketing type” and knowing that Halloween and Christmas merchandise are both huge money makers for retailers, I can understand why you’d want these items in front of customers as long as possible. But it’s a little creepy looking at graveyards, skeletons, zombies, mummies, witches, werewolves, vampires, bats, rats, spiders and disembodied heads in crystal balls while hearing Bing Crosby singing “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” in the background. But maybe it’s just me…

For those of you wondering how long an uncarved pumpkin will last outside in Indiana, somewhere around Christmas is the “deflate date” given the sort of weather that we’ve had this year. (If temperatures were close to normal, that might be a little longer, as long as it’s not too cold.)

And to answer the “Why did you still have uncarved pumpkins outside at Christmastime?” question…

Short answer: Procrastination that lead to my “creative” oddness (which I don’t think anyone else was into)…and more procrastination.

Longer answer: I never got around to carving the pumpkins at Halloween this year and thought they made nice Thanksgiving decorations. I was certain that they’d be mush or some neighborhoodlums would have done something to them by Thanksgiving, but that didn’t happen. So while sitting out the Christmas decorations I thought, maybe I could carve them for Christmas (like luminaries). And of course, that didn’t take place either.

With some nudging I threw them away this morning, which was a good thing as they started to *finally* become a little mushy. But now that the idea has came and past, maybe others can run with it next year and let the new “red, green & orange” Christmas tradition take on a life of its own.

Christmas is now over and I think that my world is starting to come back into some sort of order now that I had the chance to actually sit and stare at the oodles of new toys that everyone got for the little ones…we’ve managed to get *most* of them out of their packages, which is saying something for me, because, as I stated, I tend to just stare at the things. (While some toys these days are much cooler than what I had as a kid, why have they cheapened some of the old standards like “Blocks”?)

Anyway, I am a little glad to see December coming to a close and 2007 peeking at me from around the corner. While I do like December quite a bit, it does get a little overwhelming towards the end after the umpteenth event that is squeezed in, not to mention all of the traveling. But it is good. My only real complaint is that the older I get, the less it “feels” like Christmastime. Maybe that’s just me though since I have way too much going on “upstairs” and can hardly distinguish one day from the next anymore…maybe I’ll formulate a Cyborg conspiracy later.