Shop indie! Shop handmade!

Black Friday cartoon from the archives of Natalie Dee

My big plans for the holiday weekend involve 24-hour pajama wearing and not leaving the house until Monday morning when I have to go back to work. And eating a lot.  Happily - I can do all that and get some holiday shopping done - because it's 2009 and I have a computer. Woot! And I'm shopping indie and handmade as much as I can.

Lots of Etsy sellers are having big sales. I listed some of my favorite shops for kids and their specials for this weekend here. Etsy also has a lovely curated list of shops offering free shipping here. And I don't think it's lovely just because I made the list. :-) If you're in the mood to power-surf, you can look at all the shops offering free shipping or all the shops with other holiday specials. The lists are really big, but you can sort by category once you're there.

Don't forget books too! You can shop your favorite indie bookseller through IndieBound.

While you're doing all that surfing, you'll probably run across some things you'd like for yourself. A certain huge online bookseller (bearing the name of a very long river) has a new feature on their wishlist that allows you to add anything online to your wishlist. That's right - anything. Etsy items, items from little mom and pop online stores, even (ahem) books from IndieBound. So you can add a book to your wishlist through that huge online store's nifty feature, but the link directs the shopper to IndieBound. Yes - I tested it to make sure and my wished-for book hasn't been removed from the list yet. I'm so sneaky.

Happy holiday weekend everyone! Enjoy your leftovers!