Heading back to school with a bang!

(Our kitchen chalkboard is a crowd favorite. Loved waking up to all these silly notes.)

To kick off the beginning of the fall semester, Phaedra and I threw a back to school party. Marking it the first major bash our little apartment experienced. Despite a few chaotic moments, the night was amazing and whether good or bad it was definitely one to remember. I blame the hard lemonade recipe a friend gave us. I was surprised at how in order the apartment was post party. I think cleaning as the party is in flow keeps the workload for post night much smaller. We had out clearly visible places for our guests to dispose of their trash as they saw fit, that helped tremendously.

(Phaedra and I on our balcony.)

We also put a drink cap on for the night so at one point we weren't having to worry ourselves with constantly cleaning. In addition to the drink cap keeping down on trash it also keep down on things getting to out of hand. Before the party even got started by way of enforcing a cap we encouraged BYOB. You never want to wakeup to find $40 dollars worth of alcohol down the drain in one night.

 (Jacki, me, and Em in my room.)

 (The much missed Mike who's finally returned from studying abroad and Phaedra.)

(What too much fun looks like.)

Since we live off campus now we don't live with a major friend group anymore and with our differing schedules during the week it's hard to see one another so the party was a great place to catch up. We had a good time and most importantly all of our attendees did too.

~Turtle & Bunny!

Oh the anticipation!

(Sinatra lounges on my bed when I'm gone.)

With the start of the semester this coming Monday, Phaedra and we can barely contain our excitement and anticipation for what's to come! We can't wait to see our friends, start classes, and we both will be starting new jobs this semester as well. Before we can get to all of that we both have to survive this week. We are frightfully busy this week. By the time we get home the last thing on our mind is updating our blog and we apologize for that. Don't worry this won't become a habit. Curious as to what has kept us away? Well, I started training for my section editor position of my school's newspaper. It's been a lot of fun. I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing. While I'm mastering programs like photoshop and Indesign, Phaedra has been training and preparing for her new position as a peer mentor. We both start our days around 8am and end our days around 8pm.

In the morning we both wakeup, she puts on a pot of tea, while I make coffee and moan and complain over what to wear. Then we return to end up talking for nearly three hours about our days. It's been blissful. More to come very soon!

~Turtle

P.S. expect a lot of exciting changes around here!

SATURDAY DIME: Party Planning!

(Our friends Reanna, Brittni, and Jacki at Brittni's 21st party.)

It's official! Phaedra and I are officially living at our apartment full time now. Upon settling in and putting those finish decorating touches in certain rooms, we had to stop and plan one of the most important functions of our apartment...PARTIES! Now, we love themed parties, and our friends really do too...or they at least humor us and go along with it. So, we sat down and comprised a list of ten ideas we hope to execute over the course of the school year.

1. Back to School/Open Apartment: The weekend of every semester is always a lot of fun, so we figured we'd start the year off with an awesome back to school get together. And to show off the new digs to our friends.
2. Halloween Costume Party: I'll take any excuse to be in a costume!
3. Black Dress party: Little black dress parties always seem so sexy and classy. 
4. Murder Mystery: Phaedra is a pro at these and we have a lot of friends who would be way into playing a character all night. 
5. A mustache party: We want to throw a party that is so hipstery it's ridiculous, just for kicks! 
6. Moving drinking game party: Nothing can top sitting around watching an old comedy or bad horror film and drinking along to it. It's so much to yell at the screen together, laugh, and just be merry! 
7. Board game party: Sometimes just staying in popping open wine and playing a board game does the trick.
8. Drinking game party: Basically you take birthday party ice breaker games and add beer. 
9. Arts and crafts party: Who doesn't love sitting around making fabric flowers and friendship bracelets?! 
10. Christmas party: It'll be nice to end the semester with a fun Christmas party!

Can't to start posting as we plan!  

~Turtle 

WENSDOM: Home sick?

With summer coming to a close I know some our readers will be headed to college for the first time! It's going to be an exciting time. Amongst all the excitement is going to be a mixture of overwhelming feelings in every variety. I think one of the biggest feelings freshmen fall victim to is homesickness. I know I did in the worst way. I did the dreaded thing you should never do...I went home for a weekend within the first full month. Looking back on my last two years of college I really wouldn't advise doing that. Stick it out for a full month. College moves pretty fast you'll find, you don't want to get left behind and not being around for it is a huge way to find yourself wading around and lonely. It's when we're lonely feeling that feelings of things like homesickness can prey on us. 

To keep the edge off homesickness I would advise calling home weekly to one or two people, texting your friends from high school regularly. Make Skype dates with people. Even go as far to send family and friends letters and cards and have them send you mail in return. The best thing you can do in that first month is to meet people! Establishing friends will not only impact your feelings of loneliness but can also impact your success. If you find a group of people on your campus you care about, you'll start to care about your school, and you'll start to care about staying at your school and doing what you need to do to stay with them. When meeting people don't get discouraged if you find a lot of misses at first, keep an open mind, and don't put all your eggs in one basket.  

Don't worry though, everyone gets homesick, no matter how well they seem to handle it. Everyone from the most intimidating senior to the shy girl in the back of your class. Everyone powers through it. Good luck and have fun!

~Turtle