Black Friday has always been a great day to us. It’s the day after Thanksgiving (so that’s over, at least). It’s a day of leftovers, friends, and excellent shopping deals. In years past, we’ve gotten amazing deals on boots, sweaters, sheets, bedding, bags. Really, everything we buy.

This year? Not so much. At. Freaking. All. We did our best. We went out at 6:00am (not entirely intentionally – our dog was awake at 4:30). We went out alone. We went out with each parent. We went out alone AGAIN. What did we end up with? A rather pathetic, technologically focused grouping:

*500gb external harddrive (we almost lost all of our pictures once which resulted in our tears being shed in the Apple store. It wasn’t pretty, and this will make sure that doesn’t happen again)

*Two white towels for the gym

*Bliss stuff for the gym

*Flash drive for Loved One

*Bluetooth headset (we’re embarrassed to admit that we bought it, but it’s become illegal to use handheld cell phones in a state we are often in. It’s not worth our safety, OR a ticket).

And that’s it! We just couldn’t find anything we wanted. But! We know someone out there must’ve gotten good deals. We want to hear about your best find – Black Friday or not, we want to know about the cheapest/awesomest score you’ve ever had. Email us here – be sure to put "deal contest" or something to that effect in the subject line. We almost deleted someone’s last entry, thinking it was Nigerian spam. We’ll publish the winning answer, and the winner will get an as-yet undisclosed present from Etsy, quite possibly featuring bunnies. Oh! Contest deadline is December 6, 5pm EST.

Good luck! Oh, our best find? Probably a Kate Spade Elyce planner for $64. We used it all the time until our dog literally ate it.

We would show you a picture, but apparently KS has stopped making them, and ours has chew marks on it.

-LB

Wherein we discuss all the things we really, really want for Christmas, without really wanting them, if you know what we mean. Like, if we lived in a TV commercial, this is what would make us jump up and down. Er. For the chief engineer behind a website devoted (er, we like to think) to intelligent consumerism, we’re feeling exceptionally un-consumerish these days.

Anyway: We still like jewelry, especially excellent little things that are all clever and subtle, like this. Adina Reyter gold tiny star nnecklace, $245

We could hardly love something more, and we say that as big fans of both the Dire Straits original and the Indigo Girls cover. Man, the Killers are just so great.

We’re pretty sure we could do posts on holiday dresses every day for the next month and still we would not have enough. Because. Holiday parties. There are millions. Er, actually, now that we’re thinking about it, we’ve only been invited to two so far, and they’re both in cities in which we do not currently reside. Harrumph.

Topshop has the most spectacular collection of holiday party dresses we’ve ever seen. In fact, it cracked our stony little heart, because we needed to buy a dress there recently, but one without a single sparkle or sequin (you can imagine: heart breaking) and we left empty-handed. What can we say, we like the sparkly things. This is just one of like thousands. Sequin racer back dress, about $120

This looks much, much less a giant, shiny sausage casing in person. We swear. Frill sleeve belted dress, about $90

Fancy! But sometimes fancy is what you need. Foley + Corinna cocktail dress, $473

We’re usually even more excited about Reiss party dresses, but the more we look at this one, the more enthusiastic about it we become. Maybe someone else will figure out how to purchase this online, from what they call their “online shop.” If you do, please let us know, because we’re baffled.

This almost qualifies as stately from Forever 21, no? F21 Athena dress, $19.80

We love this dress, especially considering the extreme-sale factor. Vivienne Tam dress, was $435, now $187.89

We just saw this on Agency Spy, which is about to become our favorite blog for all things advertising-y. The graffiti reads: “Gee, I wonder why women get raped.”

We’re sufficiently convinced that we’re not linking to any of their stuff today, even if we are still, very conflictedly, really enjoying our new t-shirt. Argh.

Origins is kind of like the quiet, subtle sister of Aveda. It’s always been in the background of our skincare brain, and the few things we’ve tried we’ve really, really liked. We’re complete suckers for the mint gumballs they have, so we always plunk down a quarter when we walk by. When we worked near an Origins store, we remember that being the first we’d ever heard of white tea.

This past weekend, we were walking by our local Origins counter and we smelled ginger (ick), saw gumballs (had a soda) and then, oh! What’s that? A canvas tote? We LOVE canvas totes! We love collecting them, using them for lunch bags, gym bags, grocery bags, ANYTHING. The Origins woman quickly started talking about the bag, and we heard "ten dollars, donated, farmers".

Our mom grew up on a farm, and a Very Dear Friend’s dad is a farmer. We love farms, and we will do anything we can to support them. Once we heard that, we were sold on the tote.

When we got home, we were shocked to see how big it is, and we’re not sure if the text on it is corny or not. We do like that it’s emphatic and not wishy-washy without being bitchy (we’re looking at you, AH).  But $10 for a canvas tote is great, and giving back to farmers (and in this case, organic farm research) is awesome. Did we mention we once heard that plastic grocery bags kill seals? We don’t know how accurate that info is, but we couldn’t handle it. Plus, right now they have free shipping on all orders – so really, everyone wins!

Organic Cotton Tote, $10

-LB

Oooh, we always forget to say thank you. ‘Please,’ too, while we’re at it, but we’re thinking about thank you today. (Amazingly, this is not a post left over from pre-Thanksgiving that we forgot to put up.)

First, we want to say: holiday gift cards purchased in boxes. So much easier than making them ourselves. (Even though that it is exactly what we’re going to do. Hopefully, we will improve on our tally from last year, which topped out at three.) Usually we look to our ever-favorites Snow & Graham, but today we’re punishing them for not having finished their website by now. (We wait. And we wait.) So in honor of our last week in San Francisco, at least for a while, we head instead to Paper Source. Mmm, maybe they are not quite as cute as the ones we will make (er, so we say, anyway), but they are quite cute. Actually, we’d like them a lot better without that text (“Merry Wonderland” to us is just like saying, “I was going to say ‘Christmas,’ but then I got all freaked out about it”) but still, pretty design, no?

Merry Wonderland cards, $14

And then, for all those presents we are about to get:

Like, hmm. So we will say thank you to Lil’ Bunny, for taking care of all our shit. She rocks!

Paper Source thank you cards, $15.50

In today’s Reader Mail:

Hi BS,

I am a 20-something creative career girl in love with over the knee socks (I claim it comes from too much Gossip Girl viewing). Is there a work-appropriate way to wear OTK’s without look too school-girly? My office work attire is creative/pretty much anything goes, but I don’t want to look too young or un-professional.

Thanks!
Sarah

Oh, the knee sock. We remember the last time we wore knee socks, and the way our friend B. told us not to. To this day, we’re not entirely sure why, but the fact that he did put us off them forever. We remember that same night our friend K. told us he liked them—

Okay. So the funny thing is that while we were typing this, our friend B. called, and we finally asked him, after six years, if he told us to stop wearing knee socks because they made our knees look fat, which has long been our assumption. He just said we were being stupid, and in fact, rather than fat, they made us look “slutty.” That, for some reason, doesn’t bother us one bit.

This is all sort of morally cloudy for us. In any case, as far as work appropriate goes, we are the last people on the fucking planet to ask, as we’ve gone on record as backing rompers as suitable office party wear. Last week we had to attend an exceptionally business-y business function, which meant buying a dress we could not afford, and we were so depressed about buying a dress for this function, which means buying a dress we would never have picked out independently, that we started crying in Topshop and sent off all these angry texts about how we hate wearing pants, which in that case was code for any sort of clothing one would wear to a business function rather than, say, a party which encouraged the wearing of things with sequins.

Anyway: We are pro, pro, pro OTK knee socks. We much prefer them in the image above, especially next to the shorts and colored tights. (We love colored tights, and we love shorts, but somehow not together.) But as for work appropriate: We leave that to everyone else? We’re thinking it obviously depends on the work vibe at your office, and we can say with confidence that we would wear them tomorrow if we were still working at the fashion magazine we used to work at, because everyone there just wore what they felt like, and because no one seemed to mind too much if they got fired, which basically no one ever did. But a job you like? We leave it to everyone else to comment. We’re totally interested in the answer, by the way.

Our favorite OTKs:

Topshop over-knee socks, about $14

And then the super-luxe ones. We’ve been looking, ineffectually, for these at a US online boutique, but we’re still at it:

Wolford overknees, $22

Hurrah! Another successful contest! Thanks to everyone who entered – here are our 3 winners. Special thanks to Champion for providing us with excellent prizes – if you didn’t win, you can buy your own Super Hood here!

Without further adieu, here are our winning stories! Oh – slight delay. We feel we should make it known that we’ve changed some identifying details, but to the best of our knowledge, the stories are true.

Winning Story: Blue
Two
years ago had to be the most horrible holiday!  In November, 2005 I
went into the ER because I had been having serious pain in my back (I’m
talking about pain that forced me to quit my job) and over the course
of three days, I lost all feeling from the waist-down, and couldn’t
move my legs.  Once I arrived in the ER, the doctors ordered an MRI and
found I had a tumor on my spine and it was probably cancer.  I spent 8
days in the hospital and went through several tests and biopsies.  The
doctors couldn’t seem to get the right information to diagnose me…until
right before Thanksgiving.  The week before Thanksgiving, I was told I
had stage-4 non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and started chemo treatments.  Of
course my family still wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving, and my
grandmother cooked all the traditional favorites.  Since I still
couldn’t move my legs, she brought me a plate of turkey, sweet
potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc. in bed.  It was so horrible.
I couldn’t eat it.  I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t do it.  My
grandmother cried, I cried, it was bad.

Two years later, I am in remission.  I feel so much better, and my appetite
is back.  I am thankful that I am healthy, but Thanksgiving will always
carry that memory for me.

If absolutely nothing else, this story has made us feel better about taking note of when our body feels funny or weird, and that we are never going to NOT make a doctor’s appointment for fear of seeming foolish. We actually have an appointment today.

Winning Story: Red
One Thanksgiving, my family went to my aunt’s house for the traditional
turkey dinner. Knowing how gullible my aunt is, my mom decided to play
a trick. She told my aunt that she needed something from the store.
When my aunt left, my mom took the turkey out of the oven, removed the
stuffing, stuffed in Cornish hen, inserted it into the turkey, and
re-stuffed the turkey. She then placed the turkey back in the oven.
When it was time for dinner, my aunt pulled the turkey out of the oven
and proceeded to remove the stuffing. When her serving spoon hit
something, she reached in and pulled out the little bird. With a look
of total shock on her face, my mother exclaimed: "Patricia, how could
you cook a pregnant bird!" At the reality of this horrifying news, my aunt started to freak out! It took the family two hours to convince her
that turkeys lay eggs!!!!

We loved this story so much that we immediately retold it to a couple people, including our Loved One. Who, in turn, attempted to tell it at our own Thanksgiving.  And then kind of mangled it and we had to clarify around a mouth full of stuffing. We like this story so much because we can just so see it happening in our family.

Winning Story: Pink
Our pink winner was kind enough to send in two stories of her worst holiday.

Contest winners will be announced at 3pm EST today! We promise!

-LB