Quick Post: Move In Weekend and Internet Problems

We moved into our new place! Here are a few quick photos, obviously a lot still needs to be done, but it's a start (: Also, we will not be able to get our internet set up until the end of this month, so I won't be able to post for a little while. Don't forget about me!

How to Have a Great 21st Birthday

Hey guys! So as you know I just celebrated my 21st birthday! I had a great night, but I have heard plenty of 21st birthday horror stories. Obviously 21st birthdays, in the United States anyway, often focus on drinking because you are finally at legal drinking age. Here are a few things that helped me have a good night, and a few tips stepping from friends' bad nights. Here's how to make your birthday a success, not a hot mess.

1. IT'S YOUR CHOICE TO DRINK OR NOT TO DRINK
This is tip number one because it's the most important thing I wanted to address. Whether or not you've ever drank any alcohol before, it is your choice if you want to drink on your 21st! People will always pressure you into drinking because let's be honest turning 21 is popularly and publicly about "getting drunk". You have the right to turn down any or all drinks offered to you!

2. DON'T GET TRASHED AT DINNER
When you're planning on drinking, it's important to have some food in your stomach. Drinking on an empty stomach is bad, bad, bad. Trust me. You get more drunk off of your "normal" drinking amount and in my opinion, the hangover is worse. I went to my friend's 21st birthday in January, and one of her friends was already so drunk that he had to leave and go home before they even got to the bars! Knowing this I just ordered one drink with dinner, and ate a good meal to prepare for the night.

3. START SLOW AND DRINK STRATEGICALLY
If you know you will be out until bar close, don't take ten shots in the first hour you are out! If you feel like you are drinking too much too fast split it up with regular soda in between. No one will know you are drinking soda instead of alcohol except for your bartender! Don't be afraid to ask for water, if you are sitting down at a table in a bar you may have to ask for water more than once. Waitresses seem to forget the water and only bring the drinks.

4. GO HOME WHEN YOU WANT TO GO HOME
Have a game plan set before you even start your birthday. Make sure you know exactly where you will be staying that night, who you will be staying with, and who will be sober driving (if you aren't planning to taxi or walk). When you have a plan ahead of time you can be in control and call the shots (not meant to be a drinking pun, haha!). Don't be afraid to go home early. Even if your friends are pressuring you to stay out until bar close only you will know if you can stay awake and stay out late. When you start to feel like you need to lie down, head home!

5. TURNING 21 ISN'T ABOUT THROWING UP OR BLACKING OUT
This one isn't really a tip, but I just wanted to throw this out there. I know when I would tell people my 21st was coming up they would all say things like "Oh you're going to black out" or "you'll be puking for sure". It gets so bad that it almost seems as though throwing up or blacking out are like rights of passage or something. They are not! All of the people I know who did either of these things on their 21st's told me it would have been a better night if only they hadn't done that. Of course there will be parts of the night you can't remember, but don't try to pass out in the middle of town!

It's your 21st birthday, you will probably get drunk, you probably won't remember parts of the night, but you will have a blast!!

Quick Post: Color Story

I've been playing around on colourlovers all day trying to make up some palettes for our new apartment, here's what I've come up with so far!

Living Room

Kitchen / Dining Room

Bathroom

 

 

Bedroom

 

I took the paint colors and colors of key pieces of furniture first and then added to them to make a complete color palette for the room. If you are looking for an east and free way to plan colors for a room I would suggest trying out colourlovers!

The Last Ten Days (part two)

I left off right after our first weekend in the cities and fishing back in Winona. We drove up to the twin cities again last weekend to celebrate John's sister's graduation, his 21st birthday, and my 21st birthday. The drive up seemed way longer this time, since we'd already made it twice! It was a three hour drive total with a few stops for gas and food. We spent Wednesday night at my parents house in Elk River, it was a pretty lazy night, we just caught a new episode of Criminal Minds (another guilty pleasure of mine!) and read some library books before bed.

Thursday we went to John's sisters graduation. She graduated from the University of Minnesota so it was a pretty big (and long!) ceremony. It was interesting and inspiring to see other young people graduating. It reminded me of what I'm striving for right now, it's easy to get caught up in current classes, people, events, etc and forget about what the final outcome of all this school is. She doesn't have a job lined up already, but already has a few interviews coming up! I'm excited for my graduation, and the career I have ahead of me after that. I probably won't be there for another two or three years, but it's good to see that it can be done! We also got to spend a little bit of extra time with John's family. We've only been dating six months now so I am still trying to get to know everyone. I've finally started to feel like I'm becoming a little bit more of a part of his family each time we can go visit though!

Friday was John's 21st birthday! We went out with his family to a super fancy steakhouse in Minneapolis called Murray's to celebrate his birthday and his sister's graduation. I would definitely recommend this place if you are looking to celebrate something big! The food was amazing! It's pretty pricey though so I'm not sure If I'll be able to afford to go there again, but oh my gosh yum! John went to a few bars to celebrate turning 21 with his family, but since I wasn't 21 (until sunday) I couldn't go with him. He had a great time with his sister's and their boyfriends though! I went home to Elk River again for the night to see my family for a bit and figure out mores stuff about moving my furniture 148 miles down to Winona. A very frustrating process by the way!

Saturday was another pretty lazy day. We went around to a couple art a whirl events around north east Minneapolis. We got to ride bikes around, which is something we can't do in Winona because we don't have our own bikes yet, so that was very very nice! Biking in nice weather is something both John and I enjoy, we are hoping to get some of our own bikes after move in. On Sunday (my birthday finally!) I spent the day with a couple girl friends from high school walking around town catching up and then getting ready for my party! We went out to Chino Latinos with a big group and it was amazing! This is another Minneapolis restaurant I strongly recommend, less expensive than Murray's too! A smaller group of us went out to a couple bars around dinky town to celebrate afterwards. I'll be making another separate post about my birthday too so stay tuned for that!

Hopefully these last two posts have caught everyone up on my crazy busy life!

The Last Ten Days (part one)

Hey! I haven't been able to post in a while because my life has been crazy busy! After finals were over and I was all moved into John's room, we took a trip to the twin cities for the weekend to see a concert and hang out with some friends. We came back to Winona for a few days and then went up to the cities again to celebrate John's 21st birthday, his sister's graduation, and my 21st birthday all rolled into one weekend!

On our first drive up to Minneapolis we made a few pit stops along the way in Red Wing and by Lake Pepin to explore and take some pictures. We are so used to just zooming through these places to get back to our home towns quick, it was so nice to take it slow and look around. If you live in Minnesota and have never been through Red Wing, Lake Pepin, or Winona I definitely recommend visiting or driving through. The bluffs and river are beautiful, I feel like I'm on a mini vacation every time I take the time to actually look around instead of getting stuck focusing on all the stressful things going on right now.

When we got to the city we spent some times with friends and went to a
Metz concert at the whole. It's a small venue in the University of Minnesota student center, it was cool to see a band that close up. Every concert I've been to before has been in a bigger venue like Excel Center or Target Center. Metz is a band that John really likes, but I had not really heard of them before. They were good and played a fun show! Being in that small of a venue made me super excited for June when I get to see Fall Out Boy (my guilty pleasure, one of my favorites from high school playing a reunion tour!) at Myth, another fairly small venue. Seeing them at the bigger arenas was good, but being that close to them will be amazing!

We came back to Winona for a few days, we are both in between jobs so we need to stay around Winona as much as possible in case of more interviews, hiring, orientations, etc. It wasn't the best to come back (a three hour drive one way!) to only be in town for three days, but John got some really exciting news! He has an interview with Plasticomp a big company in his field, composite materials engineering.The interview will be on Wednesday this week, it's an amazing opportunity for him because he would be getting his foot in the door, gaining experience in his major, and making a lot more than $7.50 and hour! I'll be sure to let you guys know how that goes! We also had some down time to go to the beach and go fishing, I caught my first fish ever! Being a Minnesotan you'd think I'd have been fishing my whole life but this was the second time I've been out and the first time I caught my own fish! We threw it back in of course (:

Part two will include John's sister's graduation, John's 21st, my 21st, and more about the last weekend!

Moving into John's room

I posted about my crazy living situation here. Here's a little update on how things are going. After moving out of the dorm, I moved into John's current house. We're still trying to get all the little stuff organized, but for the most part I am all moved in! When we had all the boxes and furniture piled into his room at first I was pretty doubtful that we would get it all to fit in a liveable way, but I think we did it!
It's still pretty "college boy" looking for a bedroom, but it's nice to be able to hang out in here and have a little place of my own in the house. I also love that we kept the keurig in here instead of downstairs in the kitchen! It's the best thing in the world to hop right out of bed and make coffee. I have so much art supplies and papers that we ended up having to build upwards with all of it so the corner of the room looks a little weird with the shelf and everything piled up on top of it! but it will work for the next three weeks (:

 We're still working on tidying it up a little bit more, but we're so busy this month that I'm not sure if everything will get unpacked. The best thing about the room is that you can go out the widow by the bed and get onto the roof. It's so nice to lay out in the sun up there, you feel so close to the sidewalk and busy street but no one ever looks up at you. Overall it's a nice little temporary room, I cannot wait to be able to bring everything into the new place and decorate!

I'll be posting about our busy weekend trip up to the cities soon (: stay tuned for that!

Quick Post: Goodbye Dorm!

I posted about my current living situation here, I finally finished moving all of my junk out of my tiny single dorm! It looks so empty and plain now that it doesn't even feel like the same room I lived in all room. I am so so so happy to finally be done with dorming. (hopefully!) Cleaning and moving took forever to finish but I'm excited to show you what we did to John's room to make it livable for us during the next three weeks (:

The one thing I will miss about my dorm is the amazing view I had from my window. It looks out into the back yard of the building to a quite little band of trees with a stream flowing by. It looked especially pretty in the fall when all the leaves would rain down from the trees when the wind blew. An amazing view for sure, one of the perks to going to college in a small Minnesota town. Even though I'll miss seeing this little slice of nature out my window everyday I'm excited to see the new views from my apartment windows in June! (: