The Ultimate Packing List for the Dorms

This post primarily is for college freshmen as this packing list is for the college bound student living in the dorms. Leaving for your first year of college can be very overwhelming. There's so much that you need to buy, but where do you even start.  It's August, your weeks away from leaving the place you've called home for possibly your entire life, and the anxiety is definitely becoming more real.  I can't say I am sharing those same feelings with you right now, but four years I was definitely the girl experiencing all of these things. 

Packing for college can be so overwhelming. There are so many different lists out there of what people say you "need", but it is hard to tell what you need and what you can do with out. Having gone through the same experiences, I'm here to help make your weeks leading up to college and your college transition much easier. I am the oldest child in my family, so when I was entering college we really had no idea what I needed.  This list includes everything you will need with the exception of clothing. The items on this list might sound silly, but I can promise you they are the essentials.  

I suggest doing some browsing before committing to buying anything. Shop around to find the best prices for what you need. I found that Bed, Bath, and Beyond was sometimes more pricy for certain items but cheaper for others. I recommend doing some back to school shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Target, The Christmas Tree Shop, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and Pottery Barn Teen (they have great duvet covers). 

Best of luck shopping!

XOXO

Duvets For The Dorm

It's that time of year when all the college students are in a frenzy to finish gathering everything for their dorm rooms.  When it comes to bedding, everyone has their own way of doing things.  I thought I would share with you what works for me. 

As I was making decisions about how to decorate my dorm, last year, I decided that when it came to my bed I wanted it to be similar to my bed at home.  We all know that the mattress the college provides you with is not comfortable, so I started out shopping for my bed by purchasing an egg crate and a fiberbed.  I bought the fiber bed for $49.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond, and I bought the egg crate for $10 at  Walmart.  Just a little tip for freshman, egg crates are sold pretty much everywhere for different prices but they are all the same, so if you are trying to save a little money just buy one at Walmart or even the dollar store.  I promise you it won't make a difference! 

After purchasing these two things for my bed, it was time for the fun part- my bedding! I looked around for a long time at a bunch of different options.  I ended up, choosing to buy a duvet and a duvet cover, since these are what I used on my bed at home. This was the best choice, because they are easy to wash and you could buy a new duvet cover each year if you really wanted to.   It was difficult to find a twin XL pattern that I liked for a duvet cover, so I bought a regular twin and it fit perfectly on my twin XL bed.  The only thing that really needs to be Twin XL are your sheets.  I ended up buying both of these as well as my sheets at the Pottery Barn Outlet. I ended up spending less than $100 for two sets of Twin XL sheets, a duvet, and a duvet cover.

This is the bedding I ended up with last year.  I chose the gray because it would match with tons of different color combinations.  I ended up matching my duvet cover with two sets of sheets, pink and purple. 

Since I will be commuting this year, I re did my bedroom at home.  Today, I just ordered a new duvet cover for my bed for a great price (20% off plus free shipping).  Here is a sneak peak at my duvet cover. I plan to reveal my finished room in a future blog post, once I finish decorating it completely!

Right now for a limited time, Pottery Barn Teen is offering free shipping on duvet covers.   If you haven't bought your bedding for college yet I highly suggest you check out PB Teen!

Xoxo

-mQs-

The 307 Tour (dorm life)

Hello everyone. Happy Wednesday! This week is over half way over, yay!  This semester is starting to wind down I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, summer is coming. in sixteen days I will be moved out completely, done with all of my finals, and I will have survived my freshman year of college. Since this year is pretty much over I thought I would show you all my dorm, room 307, before I start to pack up.

This is what my room looked like when I first moved in.  Let me tell you I just about cried seeing how small it was. 

Before going to college my mission was to make sure my room at college didn't look like a dorm room. Needless to say, I spent a significant amount of time on  pinterest searching for ideas to make my room look homey.  Well, I think I accomplished this, but I will let you all be the ones to judge this.  

 Each three shelf organizational bin holds our dishes and snacks.  The TV stand is convenient because it serves an organizational purpose as well. With limited space, any extra storage is incredibly helpful.

 This is my bed  and desk.  To the left you can see my motivational wall that I talked about in an earlier post.  For my bed I use an egg crate and a feather bed.  They make a huge difference.  I actually think my bed at school is more comfortable than my bed at home because of these two items.  I have two sets of sheets one is pink the other is blue.  My comforter came from pottery barn.  Most school recommend buying an extra long twin comforter, but I have managed to get away with a normal twin and it is plenty big enough. My duvet cover came from pottery barn as well.  I got all of my bedding on sale last summer at the Pottery Barn outlet. 

 This three shelved organizational bin is so helpful.  I did a pinterest trick for this and mod podged scrap booking paper to the front, so that you can see what is inside of my drawers. 

 My bed is on the left side and jHg's bed is on the right side.  Since our room is so tiny we had to loft our beds.

 These lights add a great touch to the room.  They were $10 at the Christmas Tree Shop.  Jenn and her sister painted our initials. 

 This is my dresser. I try to keep it really organized. 

 Here is another view of our room. As you can see we have a lot of picture collages.

 We are fortunate to have a huge closer.  This is just my side of it!

 Organizational bins are great for college. I use this to hold all of my hair things

 I cut out our names and pasted them on black rectangles, and since my mom is a teacher we were able to get these laminated.  They are hanging over my bed. This was another pinterest inspired aspect of our room.

This hangs to the right of my desk.  It has been so useful!  I made it, thanks to inspiration from pinterest.

So that was the tour of my room.  I hope you enjoyed it!  

xoxo

-mQs-

Snack Attack

Going to college presents many challenges to a first year student, especially when living in a basic dorm room.  One of these many challenges is figuring out what to eat and what snacks to keep in your room. The dining hall supplies you with meals, but lets me honest no college student can endure an entire day without consuming at least one snack.  In fact, it is actually better for you to eat about six times a day (three meals and a snack in between each meal).  Living in your basic dorm room I  have a microwave and a mini fridge, when it comes to cooking utilities.  There is a kitchen in the basement of my dorm, but I think it is dirty and I don't have pots/pans to cook things anyways.  This leaves me with what one would think of as limited eating possibilities.  However, this is not the case.  I have learned that you just have to be creative with what you eat.  You can actually cook a whole bunch in the microwave. My Pinterest Board has some ideas for snacking. 

Food Essentials for the Dorm Room 

1. Fruit: I always keep bananas and apples in my room.  It is important to have fruits and veggies in your diet.

2. Pretzels: I always keep pretzels in my room. Personally I like the Snyder's snaps pretzels.

3. Peanut Butter: This is a good source of protein.  I eat peanut butter with bananas or apples and I dip pretzels in it too.

4. Yogurt: I like the Trader Joe's Yogurt cups.  These are small but mix them with granola and they may a great breakfast.

5. Granola: I enjoy munching on granola right out of the bag, but it is also good in yogurt too. I usually buy the Nature's Promise Maple Cashew Granola.

6. Tortilla Chips: These are great to just grab a handful and snack on. If you have shredded cheese they can be used to make nachos.  They go well with dips like salsa or buffalo chicken dip.  I usually make buffalo chicken dip when I am at home, so that I can put it in a container and bring to college as a snack.

7. Cheese: I like to have both shredded cheese and a block of cheese in my fridge.  This is a great source of calcium.  Paired with crackers or apple slices this is a great snack.

8. Granola bars: These are a great for on the go breakfast or a quick bite before you go to the gym in the morning.  I like the kind bars or quaker chocolate chip granola bars. 

9. Crackers: I usually have the tin crisp triscuits.  They are really yummy with cheese.

10. Something Sweet: I always like to have something sweet after I eat a meal.  While I was home I picked up power berries at Trader Joe's.  These are a good healthy version of something sweet. 

I know this isn't a snack but I just had to include it.  The one item I that is a necessity when it comes to college dorms is a brita.  It is important to consume eight cups of water every day.  Buying bottled water becomes expensive and is not green.  I am not a fan of tap water, so this buy was well worth the $30 I spent to get it. 

My fellow bloggers what do you consider as essentials for dorm room food, is there anything you can't go without?

xoxo

-mQs-

Motivation Wall

As you read in my previous post I had a Friday night in last night to relax.  I decided to just take a break from everything and do some crafts.  I just felt like some creativity would be beneficial to my mental health.  It helps relieve some stress.  What better inspiration for crafting than Pinterest. 

After going on a pinning spree I came across this Motivational Wall Pin.  After the week I just had I needed some positivity and motivation in my life, so I decided to make my own.  This is the one that I made.  It took some time to find the quotes, and make it the way that I liked.  It is still a work of progress.  I like it because it just gives me some motivation and inspiration when I need it. 

This is one of my favorite quotes that I made. I think it is so cute and such a great saying.

xoxo

-mQs-

Organizing Tee Shirts

Organizing tee shirts can be the hardest thing, especially when your space is limited.  When I came to college I didn't bring half of the amount of tee  shirts I had.  Over the years of playing sports, attending camps, attending events, etc. I have accumulated a significant amount of tee shirts. I claim to wear them all, but we all know I have favorites.  So naturally it only made sense to bring the ones that I wear more often.  Coming to college, my tee shirt collection seems to have grown.  There are always tee shirts given out for free or sold for a minimal price, hard to resist.  With the limited storage in a dorm, it is difficult to store all of these shirts.  So I decided to go on pinterest and look up organization ideas. I came across the Perfect Pin. It gave a description of how to fold tee shirts so that more of them fit into one drawer.  

This was the picture I found on pinterest.

As you have read, I am obsessed with being organized so I'm all about this!

This is my version of organizing the tee shirts. It didn't even take much more time to fold than my normal way.

When I was finished I was able to fit forty tee shirts in my dresser drawer and only take up half of the space.  This is such a clever technique.  I highly recommend it!

xoxo

-mQs-

Mother Daughter Date

Since I go back to school this Sunday sQs decided to take the day off of work yesterday, Thursday, so that she could spend the day with me.  We are extremely close, she is pretty much my best friend. She is my rock through everything.  I'm glad my college is less than an hour an a half from home because it allows her to come down and visit me frequently, which I love. 

So... what better mother daughter date than eating in a french cafe, vintage shopping, and browsing at the outlets. 

Brunch

We started out our day with brunch at Rachel's Creperie.  My mom had been here before with her sorority sister who lives in downtown Lancaster.  She knew I would love the cafe so, for once in our life,  deciding where to eat was a no brainer.

Fact: I'm a foodie.

I absolutely love food. No I am not picky, I just like to eat quality food and delicious tasting food.

Supposedly the head chef was trained in France, so cool!

For my main meal, pictured above, I had the Turkey Cordon Bleu.

 (Turkey, Ham, Brie Cheese, and Honey Dijon Dressing) 

For desert we split just a simple Crepe with nutella

Fact: I am obsessed with France especially Paris.

I took three years of french in high school. Since then I just have had this fascination with the country: the fashion, the food, the language, the houses, the museums, the Eiffel tower, & so much more.

 

The entire cafe was painted a golden color with black and white photographs taken in France. The tables were small bistro tables. On each table top was a mod podged collage of something French. On our table was things related to the story Madeline.  As a little girl this was one of my favorite stories, see even as a child was infatuated with France. 

I know this lamp is random for this post but I just got it last week and felt the need to share it.  sQs and I picked it up at target.  It's the newest edition to my dorm decor at WAC.

Vintage Shopping

After brunch we headed across the street to some neat vintage shops.  My favorite was called Building Character.  It was this big warehouse filled with mini shops.  

According to their website "It's a place that has used fashionable clothing and accessories, handmade jewelry and metal craft, antiques and collectibles, custom greeting cards and handcrafted ornaments by local craftspeople, most of whom employ green practices and recycling methods to create their inventory"

Outlets

Our final stop of the day was at the tanger outlets.

xoxo

-mQs-