Another Type of Black Friday

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I definitely did. I spent the day at my mom’s with my family as usual. The only thing different about this year was I didn’t get to look at all the Black Friday sales flyers.  I usually like to carefully examine each one. Circle everything that I want (this comes from my days as a child circling practically everything in that huge Sears catalog).  Then determine my plan of attack- how I will get to 10 different stores for 10 different things all between 4 and 5am.  Of course, then I go home with my belly stuffed, set my alarm, go to sleep and decide at 3am that I really don’t need to spend my money on all that stuff anyway!

This has been working VERY well for me for the last 10 years.  Feel free to use my method any time!

I definitely enjoy shopping, but not with a lot of people around me and certainly not in ANY kind of rush. It takes me at least 20 minutes to decide if I am going to buy Jiffy or Peter Pan Peanut Butter. You can only imagine how long I ponder serious purchases, like black or brown boots, the purple or red sweater, or the orange or red sparkly nail polish.  So I do my best to shop on days when most people are at work or from the comfort of my laptop, online. Of course then, I end up with a ton of things that are too small, too big, or just don’t look right. Ah, women problems.

The more I thought about Black Friday, I naturally kept thinking about wearing black for melanoma.  Then I thought about all the wonderful products I’ve wanted to buy to promote melanoma awareness. Many of the products are made by fellow warriors or caregivers, with all or a portion of the proceeds going towards research or education.

I thought skin cancer awareness deserved its own Black Friday ad, so small that it may be, since I couldn’t find one online, I made one for you. 

PracticeSafeSun with UV Beads - Friendship bracelets with UV beads. The colors of the beads are activated when exposed to UV rays.

PracticeSafeSun with UV Beads

A necklace from Respect the Rays-  They are even willing to do custom designs.

Respect the Rays

There's everything from t-shirts to wine charms at the shop for the Melanoma Education Initiative.

Melanoma Education Initiative

If you are particularly fond of the SPF shirt I am modeling in the picture below, check out Melanoma Girl's site.  I think this is a great way to show you are loving the skin you're in, and also to show young girls pale is beautiful. 

Melanoma Girl's SPF t-shirt

Then there is the beautiful baby Addison, who is fighting melanoma. 

 Both mother and daughter, Briana and Addison, were diagnosed with Metastasized Malignant Melanoma. Briana, who was 33 years old, passed away February 12th, 2012. Addison is now 16 months old. This is the first known case of the transfer of Cancer from mother to daughter during pregnancy in AZ, and ninth worldwide. 

You can make a purchase from Origami Owl to benefit Addison's Army Against Melanoma. Act quick on this one! There is only a little over a week left to help her with this fundraiser.

Finally, there is the St. Jude's gift shop, where proceeds go to help children  with cancer and other catastrophic diseases making sure families never have to worry about paying a dime. 

This is just a handful of the wonderful people I have met who are doing great things to help others with melanoma and cancer. I hope they don't mind me "borrowing" their pictures to advertise for them.  There's a lot more out there, if you are willing to look.  

Happy shopping today and for the remainder of the season! If you're going to give a gift, why not make it a gift to more than one person?

As usual, thank you for reading. Until next time, practice safe sun!