Best Black Friday Shopping Deals

It's one of my favorite times of year, I love the hustle and bustle of the holidays in the air! Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season with time spent with family and friends, and the ability t reflect on all that we are thankful for in our lives. Another one of the fun things about Thanksgiving weekend is all of the great shopping deals that are usually out for Black Friday through Cyber Monday! 2017 is no exception, there are already some AWESOME deals on some of my favorite sites! Here are some that I'm planning on ordering from - or have placed an order already!

Best Black Friday Accessory Deals

Ok, let's level. I've already purchased from some of these deals - they're so good! At ToryBurch.com through the weekend, you can get 30% off of $250 or more with the code 'THANKS'. There are some exclusions, but it's such a great deal!! I purchased two pairs of the Minnie flats that I had been planning on getting for work anyways, and got 30% off - win, win!

Another site I had been looking at to purchase things at soon, is having an awesome deal as well! Pandora Jewelry is having a "Buy Two, Get One Free" sale, which includes most items. (Except for the Disney items sadly! I definitely could have used it on those!) I've been looking at a few rose gold pieces that I thought would be lovely to wear for the holidays and now I can save a bundle on them!

Best Black Friday Clothing Deals

This is another great one for work, because I had recently picked up a few pairs of dress pants from the GAP - and really loved them! I had intended on purchasing a few more pairs, and this morning a 50% off deal started on their website! No exclusions, and use code 'BLKFRIDAY'

Best Black Friday Deals for Moms

One of my favorite sites, particularly for Cyber Monday, is Amazon! They have Lightening Deals that I keep an eye on throughout the weekend. I love the feature that tells you how much time before you can buy as an Amazon Prime member and that I can find everything from socks to suitcases on one site. I also love that this year they have a new feature that as an influencer I can share a list of all of my favorite items to purchase from Amazon. Check out my Amazon Shopping list HERE (affiliate link) and see what we are loving right now!

Disney of course is always on my shopping list, and the new ShopDisney.com site is great because it seems to have a wider variety of items than the Disney Store site had in previous years. I love the Disney Parks merchandise and that I can order my favorite Disney Parks shampoo and conditioner right from the site. This year, they have items on sale - but I will be watching the site throughout the weekend in case any short term codes pop up!

American Girl is offering free shipping off of $100 with code 'NOVSHIP' and they usually have a Cyber Monday sale that you should log in around 6am Central time to see what deals are available!

Sephora usually always has some awesome deals in store, and I always check their site early on Cyber Monday, to see what deals may be online.

I'll be sure to update the list if I come across other awesome deals that I decide to take part in! Happy shopping!

** This is not a sponsored post. Some links may be affiliate links as marked. All opinions are my own.

Our Big Moving Adventure! Relocation to Huntsville, AL

Welcome Home!! We have arrived to our new house after a big moving adventure!

Whew! What a whirlwind the past month has been! I've finally caught my breath enough to come up to the surface and attempt to get back on track with my online publishing, although I am very proud of myself that I've managed to consistently upload on Being Mommy with Style YouTube Channel during the move - I've finally gotten to a point where I can start doing some housekeeping in other areas too... Namely getting updated here on the blog and other social media places like Facebook, Twitter, and my additional YouTube channels! (Lots of plans in store for my additional channels over the coming months, so stay tuned for that as well!)

Lots of boxes to unpack!!

Our relocation started this May from our previous location in Michigan, and we are now settling into our new house in Alabama at the end of July, so it has been a few month process to get to this point. This all started in early April, when my husband was approached about a new job with a new company - and the rest as they say - is history. He took the position and I stayed with the girls in Michigan to finish out the school year which ended in mid-June, with Natalie having preschool camps until the end of June, then our house was packed up and our things moved to Alabama at the beginning of July.

Goodbye, old house!

The girls and I road tripped down to Alabama on our own, taking a few days to stop off at my mom and step dad's house in southern Illinois. We had a fun time making the road trip an adventure along the way, and stopped to see some landmarks like the World's Largest Rocking Chair in Casey, Illinois.

When we arrived into Alabama, the girls and I were able to see our new house for the FIRST TIME! Yet another time, my husband and I purchased a home without me seeing it in person before we bought it. This sounds like a scary prospect (well, let's be honest - it kind of is) but due to timing of needing to get into a house and the technology age we live in, it's worked out well for him to be able to show me his top picks on FaceTime and we've chosen which house to purchase that way. Check out us seeing the house for the first time in this vlog:

Then for the following weeks, it's been all about getting settled into the new house, getting things unpacked, seeing the new area, and doing those trivial adult things - like getting an Alabama license!

Tax free weekend was also a first for us! Alabama has a tax free weekend prior to school starting where there are no state taxes on things like clothing and school related supplies, so we enjoyed stocking up on things the girls needed for school over tax free weekend!

Tax Free Weekend school supplies!

As we've unpacked and gotten things up on walls, formed rooms to look familiar with all of our furniture and decor items, the house is starting to feel more like home and the girls have settled in great! We're looking forward to starting a new school year at their school VERY soon! School in Alabama starts a month before Michigan starts, so they will be in school at the beginning of August here!

We have taken the time to start exploring the new area before they start school and I wanted them to see some of the fun things there are to do here, so we spent a weekend at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center checking that out, and also went to a fun kid's day at the Huntsville Botanical Garden, both of which we purchased memberships so our family can enjoy them year round!

The hope behind doing this move, was creating more family time with my husband taking a job that he would have to be at work less, more financial stability and meeting savings goals faster with the lower cost of living in the new area, and being closer to activities that we love to do (hello, Walt Disney World!) so that we can start traveling more in the future. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future brings and hoping that we can meet these goals by making this huge life change. I'll be sure to update along on YouTube, so make sure to subscribe there if you haven't already - and we have a number exciting trips and events planned already that I'm looking forward to sharing about soon!

Until then, I'll be over here putting more pictures up on walls and getting all of the excess cardboard boxes out of my house!

Check out all of the moving videos on this one handy playlist!

** This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

Our Week Long Spring Break Road Trip Adventure

A majority of families tend to take a week or less of vacation according to a recent survey by Alamo Rent A Car. I thought the results of their 2017 Family Vacation Survey were interesting and a number of them reflected our own personal vacation choices as well! We typically take a week or less of vacation ourselves, and then opt to take a few vacations over the course of the year, a week-long vacation is also what we did for Spring Break this year.

Spring Break is the perfect time to get away as the weather is warming up and this year we decided to hit the road to go on the first road trip we had done with the girls in a long while! We visited my mom and stepdad in southern Illinois which was around a 9 hour drive from our house. Before the trip, I had looked into plane flight prices, but the costs for flights were high since it was Spring Break week and we would have needed to drive an additional 2 hours travel time from St. Louis airport to get to where my mom's house is located... so we opted instead to hit the road and go on a 9 hour road trip journey to southern Illinois!

All packed and ready to go! 

Hitting the Road

We left Michigan on Friday night after the girls were done with school and my husband was off of work, and split the trip into two parts, stopping just north of Indianapolis to spend the night at a hotel before making our way into Illinois the following morning. I had a number of entertainment items on hand for the girls, in addition to our car DVD players and iPad activities, which worked great for them to have something to do in the car!

Road Trip Boredum Busters

Check out our Kid's Road Trip Boredom Busters Road Trip Entertainment in this video:

Sights around southern Illinois

The girls had a great time visiting with family, checking out local playgrounds, and seeing some local foliage we don't have in Michigan!

It was a relaxing Spring Break and we even took time to have professional photos done of the girls while we were there! We had a great time exploring and taking time out for play as well.

A week long family vacation

Since we spent a part of two days traveling on both the trip down to Illinois and back to Michigan, it did take a day off of our vacation time we could spend with family while there, but we still had lots of fun and it made the driving less tiring for the adults! All total, our trip was 7 days, and we arrived home on a Thursday afternoon in Michigan after splitting the return lag again on a Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, so that my husband could be back in the office on Friday morning.

Traveling all day is tiring!

As I have talked about in previous vacation videos, our family prefers to take a week or less of vacation on our own vacations. This time length works well for our family to be able to get vacation time off from my husband's work for our family to get away, yet not miss too much that goes on at work while he is away.  Also, with the kid's school schedules it usually tends to be easiest to take shorter vacations as well. It was interesting to find out that a majority of respondents to the 2017 Alamo Rent A Car Family Vacation Survey also prefer to take a week or less of vacation at a time.

In fact, of those who responded to the Alamo Rent A Car Family Vacation Survey, 36% of families take an average of three to five days of vacation at a time, while 38% of families take a six to seven day vacation. Married households and households with an annual income above $75K are also significantly more likely to take a six to seven day vacation.

For many families a week tends to be the optimal time length for vacations, as I've seen reflected in our own family life. I feel like a week is the longest we can be away from our "regular" lives, my husband's work, school commitments, my regular YouTube editing routine, without it being difficult to get caught up after returning from vacation. We also like being able to take vacations throughout the year, and because of the amount of vacation time my husband is allotted, it makes more sense for us to take a few week long vacations as opposed to one single long vacation.

It was wonderful to get away on our Spring Break Road Trip Adventure and get recharged for a few days! I'm looking forward to our next family getaway! Learn more about the Alamo Rent A Car Family Vacation Survey results and be sure to check out Alamo Rent A Car's Scenic Route for tips, tricks, and inspiration to plan your next family vacation!

Sources: 2017 Alamo Rent A Car Family Vacation Survey

Weekly Meal Plan + Grocery Haul!

If you've been following along on YouTube for a while, you'll notice that a video that used to come standard on my channel has been missing since the beginning of the year. At the beginning of 2017, I announced that I was going to be doing "More of This, Less of That" - with part of the less being grocery hauls, which previous to that I had frequently released each Monday of a haul purchased on Sunday.

Grocery Haul items from COSTCO - These will last a few weeks.

I had a number of reasons for discontinuing these videos (or at least doing them LESS)... personal reasons of they just weren't personally my favorite videos to watch or edit. Fun Fact - grocery hauls are literally the ONLY type of video of mine I've fallen ASLEEP trying to edit. Fallen asleep, people. It isn't a type of video that I watch from other creators, and although I understand the appeal (ideas! chit chat! mom life!)... it just hasn't been my favorite.

Top that off with the business decision to lessen them because grocery hauls are the top of video on YouTube that have a cult following, they quickly gain views - mine usually went to 3000-4000 views within the first day - but for me anyways... after that initial audience. They fall flat. They plateau. They are not a highly searchable video for me, nor are they a video that people had been finding my channel according to my channel analytics in 2016. I made the business decision that since they weren't some of my favorite videos anyways, and some of my favorites WERE highly searchable videos that were getting their initial views and then growing immensely in months to follow. (Check out this American Girl video if you don't believe me, initial views were at 4000, it is currently around 16,000 views at the time of writing this post. Or this Target Come Shop with Me video, that also started out around 4000 and is currently at around 25,000 views.) I planned to lessen the amount of the "plateau videos" on my channel to be able to focus more on the ones that create more growth.

However, one thing I have always tried to do on my channel is listen to my audience. Your requests and feedback... and some people really didn't like that I had stopped doing the grocery hauls and weekly meal plans... I mean, REALLY didn't like it!

After giving it some thought, I think I've come up with a plan that *may* (Key word, may) work for all of us!

I posted an abbreviated grocery haul on Instagram Stories today! No editing for me, you still get to see food from me. I've been trying to use IG Stories more lately, so make sure to follow me on my Instagram if you don't already. It's my favorite social media platform besides YouTube!

Then, here on the blog - which I've made a goal this year to create more content, richer content, and some content that differs from what is going on my YouTube channel - I can give you a quick write up of our meal plan for the week, share our grocery haul, and if you want to see any meals that I make I can follow those up in a future post. (And possibly a video if needed.)

I feel like this solution may work out well for everyone... so let's give it a go! I'll try this for the next few weeks and then get your feedback to see what you think!

Here's this week's Meal Plan (2/19/17 - 2/25/17):

Sunday: Caesar Salad Appetizer, Meatballs with Mashed Potatoes Entree
Monday: Pulled Pork Sandwiches with beans as a side
Tuesday: Sloppy Joe Sandwiches with green beans as a side
Wednesday: Crock Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup
Thursday: Ham Steaks with vegetable salad
Friday: Pizza (A Friday night staple, as you know if you've followed our meal plans previously)
Saturday: Saturdays are commonly what I like to consider or call, "Kid's Choice Night!" - we frequently eat "kid's food" this night like chicken nuggets, mac'n'cheese, and the like.

As always, I run my meal plans from Sunday to Saturday since that is how I write them on our meal planning board in our kitchen and my grocery shopping day is Sunday.

Here's this week's grocery haul!

A few of the meals I have planned for this week are crock pot meals, and I also picked up items for lunches and snacks. The Kroger brand Carbmaster yogurts is one of our staple items, we prefer the taste and consistency of this particular type of yogurt and the kids and I love the "Cinnamon Roll" flavor! My husband's favorite is strawberry!

Here are a number of items I'm planning to use in crock pot meals! I can some of our meals throughout the week as well if you guys would like to see those.

Overall, I feel like this might be a workable solution for us all! I'm sitting here writing this blog post in-between unloading the groceries and getting dinner started, and I feel like other than seeing my bright, shining face (lol!) the information you get should be relatively the same.

I will check in a few weeks to see what you think!

** This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.