Why I Oughta...

At the beginning of the month, I posted a couple of photos of the beginning of Menards Christmas setup at their Bolingbrook store.  The 'Enchanted Forest" is something that I look forward to every year as they always have some new items to check out.  Anybody who has been in a big box store during the holidays the past few years will attest that there is a HUGE market for inflatable outdoor decorations.  I've succumbed to the inflatable trend and we have a couple of BIG ones we put out at Halloween .   But, Menards is also holding strong with the blowmold market.  They put out holiday blowmolds for Halloween - and I've covered them here on the blog before - and looking at the analytics of this site, that's a popular post, so plenty of people are looking for Halloween Blowmolds from Menards.   There's more Halloween blowmolds in this post from 2011 , too.    They also do quite a bit of Christmas blowmolds as part of the...

Almost one year ago to the day, I posted a photo of Menards Christmas Creep showing up at the Melrose Park location .  I remarked last year that they had most of their Christmas stuff up, but not the full 'Enchanted Forest' and I was surprised.  This year?  I'm no longer going to the Melrose Park location, but instead now head to Bolingbrook most often.  And that has the old store layout.  And that means that they still have the Halloween stuff up in the seasonal section, but they've converted a lot of the patio furniture area into Christmas decorations that you see above.   It is mostly lights, but there are a few blowmolds scattered around.  No inflatables, though.  I only had the King of the Ball Tossers with me and had him strapped into the cart, so there wasn't running around the aisles like there was last year .  Here's some photos of Menards Christmas last year . Here's a post from Menards Christmas 2015 .  ...

Last year, it was the kaleidoscope effects inside the inflatables.  This year, there's something new:  fuzzy material like on this inflatable Teddy Bear that they're selling at Menards inside of the Enchanted Forest that they've set up for Christmas.  This one is retailing for $99.99, but is the only one that has this fuzz on it.  I really liked it and the Bird was all over this one.  She kept saying "he's so cuuuuute!" Have to wonder how this will stand up to the elements?  We seem to be able to get about four to five years out of our inflatables, depending on their size.  Between the motors running out (we sometimes use times, but a lot of time, we just keep them up all day and night long!) or the sun's UV rays fading the colors right out, we seem to be able to amortize the cost across four seasons at a minimum.  Looking at it that way, this one costs about $25/season.   The first year of inflatables like this never seem to last...