Good morning! I’m up so super early so I though I would going to do a post about all the retail stores that are closing… and then I JUST got this email that ties all together.
So check out this list of stores closing around the country and beware if you buy gift cards to these places that may not be used before the stores themselves close.

Everyone knows I am very liberal when it comes to my political views but I definitely believe the retail sector of the world drives a majority of our economy. (Nothing new there really…) I have always worked in some sort of retail whether it’s been actual sales or in marketing – my paycheck depends on YOU buying stuff I promote in some form. I do think our markets are extremely saturated and that consumers are getting confused more easily these days and so they just give up. I know I do that – just the other day I had a minor freak out in Walmart because there were 93 types of toothpaste and I can never remember which type I buy so I had to look at each one. It was disastrous.
Anyway, not just with items but also with the stores too, for instance we have 4 Gap stores here – we don’t need that… promise. I don’t think our local economy is the peril that the rest of the country is facing – after all, we are in the heart of Walmart world. That being said – I do like to shop at local stores and eat at local resturants and it’s always sad when a locally owned establishment has to close up shop.

But back to the point, here is the list of stores closing nation wide.

I wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards
around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be
honored after the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after
Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though
the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them
from doing this. On the contrary, it is referred to as ‘Bankruptcy
Planning). Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be
cautious about.
Here’s the link http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/storeclosings.asp

· Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
· Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
· Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
· Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
· Cache will close all stores
· Talbots closing down specialty stores
· J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbot’s)
· Pacific Sun wear (also owned by Talbot’s)
· GAP closing 85 stores
· Footlocker closing 140 store s mo re to close after January
· Wickes Furniture closing down
· Levitz closing down remaining stores
· Bombay closing remaining stores
· Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
· Whitehall closing all stores
· Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
· Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
· Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
· Macys to close 9 stores after January
· Linens and Things closing all stores
· Movie Galley Closing all stores
· Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
· Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
· JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
· Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
· Wilson Leather closing down all stores
· Sharper Image closing down all stores
· K B Toys closing 356 stores
· Loews to close down some stores
· Dillard’s to close some stores

I have a pretty odd family and we do some strange things often times but we do have some fun family traditions that I thought I would share…

Ever since I was very little, all the kids in the family got their own little pot of dressing. Mainly because some of the grand kids didn’t like all the ingredients so Nana would always make each of ours individually. So now, my mom makes special pots for all of us since she has taken over cooking for the entire family. So even though we are all grown, we still get our very own pot of dressing. She also makes special dishes for each of us, for instance, she makes flake mashed potatoes for Aaron because that’s what he likes. She makes spiced sweet potatoes for me. She makes two kinds of gravy because Zack doesn’t like what the rest of us like. She makes 3 kinds of rolls to appease everyone and she always makes deviled eggs for my sister because for some reason that’s what she likes. She also would always make about 5 different kind of pies so that everyone could have way too much dessert. However, Katie is in Chili this year so no deviled eggs – actually not much of anything… our family is all going separate ways and so I am kinda sad because lots of our traditions will not take place this year.

We normally always have our big Thanksgiving meal on Wednesday night. This is for many reasons, while my sister was in school most of her friends would go home for a long weekend but some would stay so my mom would host a ton of people for Thanksgiving Eve.
It became an event for my friends as well as they were all making their own family traditions here in NWA, they still enjoyed a big home cooked meal, especially since most of them couldn’t cook – their husbands loved my mom because of that!
It was also handy for me because while I was working for the evil empire, I always had to go into the office on Black Friday to watch sales come in – really? Do lots of people buy private label food on the day after Thanksgiving? Yeah, I didn’t think so…

Another tradition is to watch Letterman on Thanksgiving because Dave always has his mother on satellite and they play “guess the pie” – I know it’s silly but it’s fun.

What are some of your traditions for Thanksgiving?

I’m headed to Charlotte today for some focus groups! I get to be the gal behind the double sided mirror watching people watch my commercials and noting every single detail. Jealous?

Double sided mirrors are creepy! When I was in college, I worked at a tanning salon that shared a space with a movie rental place and there was an “adult room” that had a double sided mirror in it. You could see in said “adult” room from the managers office. When ever someone ventured in to look at various oddities, one of the movie store employees would have to go “supervise.” Some of the stuff that was escorted out of the adult room, well you can only imagine – but hurry erase that from your mind because it’s gross. There was also the occasional token wierdo wanna-be porn star couple that would ask if a) they could tan together and b) if they could watch their adult movies while tanning — double ewwww and very bad for the eyes.

Anyway, so I’m headed to Charlotte which as we all know (or at least common, no child left behind geography tells us so) is EAST of Arkansas, yet I have to fly to Dallas first (WEST of Arkansas). There used to be a direct flight to Charlotte, but I guess someone finally realized that not too many people go straight to Charlotte from Walmart, JB Hunt and Tyson. Oh well. Can we have the direct to Vegas and Miami back please? So I’ll wave at Presley when we fly back over.

I do hope to get some awesome people watching pictures in Dallas – always a good hub for that! I need to figure out how to update the blog from my blackberry? Anyone know how to do that?

Have a fun rest of your week!!!
FYI only 41 days until Christmas!
ps Happy Birthday to Kenny! Look for an awesome Kenny montage coming soon, if I can dig up the appropriate inappropriate picture, and I’m pretty sure I can!

Wearing Mascara is one of the random blogs I read – she’s HI-LARIOUS!

She just hit a milestone of 100 posts and is giving away some fun Sephora finds… check out her blog and you may just win a great prize!!!

Check it out HERE: Wearing Mascara 100th Post Giveaway

It’s 11:11 again on 11/11 – rewish… and go!

I sure hope everyone made a BIG wish!!!
I know I did, well more like a few little ones, that I’m sure will all add up somewhere down the road!
Happy WISHING day!!!

Ok, so that may be a bit harsh, overly dramatic and probably greatly offends my uber-hippie parents. But have you met me (or at least read my blog)! But seriously, I’m so over winter and it ain’t even really winter yet for more than a month! GROSS! I hate the cold, I hate the rain.

There really is nothing that is good about this weather! It hurts my skin, it dries out my contacts, my dog even hates it! It adds to the fact that I’m going to potentially gain back the weight I have lost because I come home and immediately put on fuzzy sweat pants which of course have elastic waist bands – if you’re trying to lose weight – get rid of all elastic waist bands NOW, they help you not, it’s a false sense of hope – no one ever says “yeah, but I can totally still fit into my sweatpants I wore in college on Sundays when I was trying to find the remains of my liver swimming in the Vodka bottle and inhale as much taco bell as possible” – Have you gotten rid of your sweats yet? I’m also pretty sure it contributes to my future in skin cancer. I get so cold and miserable, that at lunch sometimes I go and nap in the tanning bed – best 20 minutes of the day for sure!

I’ll let winter hang out during the Christmas season – it’s nice for about 2 weeks, cozy and what not and then it should be back to Patio Weather! The cooler weather is nice for the occasional tailgate and football game – but home football games are over here in Arkansas so there goes that theory!

But until this happens – winter can kiss my toasty tanning bed ass!