$55 for 3 Weeks of Good Food

So, my friends and I finally got tired of eating cafeteria food and then being hungry again in 30 minutes. So, we came up with a plan that I will share with you! First thing is first is you will need at least a slow cooker for these recipes!

So there are 3 of us and we are splitting the bill. Each of us is paying only $55 for 3 weeks work of food! As we find more recipes I will add them here!

Firstly, the thing that we found was most helpful was to buy and assemble all of the food at home. Then, we froze it and transported it back to school. We have a limited amount of space and resources at school, so making it at home was so much easier.

I am not sure about everyone else, but we are not allowed to have anything that has an exposed heating element. Therefore, we cannot have: toasters, toaster ovens, small ovens, and all kinds of other things. We we can have a slow cooker, hot plates, and electric skillets. I tried to have as many of the recipes as possible have similar ingredients so that we could buy in bulk. As much of the food as possible came from Sam's Club. The rest we bought as many grocery store brand food items as possible and we bought meat in bulk. Furthermore, we ate as much of the food as possible, so we had plenty of leftover days! So on to the recipes! None of these recipes were mine, but I found it almost impossible to find food grouped in a way that I would not have to look through hundreds to find "college food."

Slow Cooker Only

Easy Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Barbeque Chicken

Taco Chicken Bowl- very, very good and can be halfed

Teryaki Chicken- halfed with leftovers

Teriyaki Pork Chops- Will be leftovers!

Honey Garlic Chicken

Chicken Broccoli Alfredo- if you have a hot plate you can add pasta!

If You Can Buy Beer

Crock-Pot Chili- very good, I would recommend halfing or even third-ing the recipe because it makes a lot!

Skillet Only

Chicken Fajitas- fast, easy, and delicious!

Apps I Love for College

I pretty much love apps, especially for school. I am going to share with you my favorite apps that I use for college. Most of them are free which honestly makes them that much better!

iStudiez Pro- $2.99

This right here is my go to app. I refuse to spend money on apps, but this one was worth every penny! Because: 

1. It allows you to see a monthly/weekly/yearly view of your class schedule plus vacations
2. It reminds you when class is about to start and when homework/exams are due
3. It is very easy to use
4. It keeps track of professors, their office hours, their email addresses, everything you tell it
5. It can keep track of your grades and calculate your GPA

Ibotta

This app is the easiest way to save money on groceries without doing any work. It alerts you when they have new deals, you look through them, pick the ones you like, scan the receipt, and they deposit money into your Pay Pal account. It is super easy and has saved me money.

                                                                         StudyBlue

This allows you to create and share flashcards. It keeps track of your right and wrong answers and shows your progress in learning the flashcards. You can use it either on your computer or your smart phone which was nice because it is so much easier to type on a computer! The coolest thing though is, if your school is big enough, you can access other people's flash cards for the exact same professor and/or class and study from theirs too!

CampusDish

I have a love/hate relationship with this app, but I think it is mostly my college's fault. This app is pretty simple to use and useful if your college uses Aramark. It shows you the days breakfast/lunch/dinner menu for that day for how ever many eating establishments on campus. Here is how it can suck though and why it's my colleges fault: it is never right. I am going to assume that if you go to a much bigger college than I do, they will actually update the app every once in a while. It is incredibly useful, though, for finding out if it is worth walking to the dining hall or if you should just head to McDonald's! :)

BlackBoard

I like this app, but I find it a little user-unfriendly.I very much like that it comes up with alerts and notifications when a professor updates the grades or adds course content or an announcement. I like that even if I am not at my computer the app won't allow me to forget about things that I should be doing. If your school uses blackboard I definitely would recommend getting this app and at least trying it out because it is free and is pretty useful in terms of constantly keeping track of your classes.

Purex Laundry Help

I like this app for a couple of reasons.It has a laundry timer that reminds me that I need to actually go move my laundry around (I usually forget). It also has a pretty big database of stain removal techniques which has proved to be very helpful. However, the weakness of it is is that they recommend using a specific product of theirs instead of offering a "home remedy." For example, for an ink stain, instead of telling you that hand sanitizer will remove it from cotton, they recommend that you go buy a specific product of theirs and that is it. Most of them though are not like that and are very helpful in terms of removing stains.

Retail Me Not

This app also makes saving money easy, but this app extends way beyond groceries! This app has many, many stores in its database, and can tell you near by stores. Then it will find you, if available, coupons that you can either use in-store or online (and they are in separate sections). They have clothing store, restaurant, automotive, etc and I have rarely been disappointed by the app. Its weakness is that a lot of these coupons are user submitted and do not get cleaned up, so some of them do not work. The easiest way around that though is to look at the ratings and if it is no longer green, do not bother because it probably has expired.

Kindle

I recommend this app solely for the fact that if you do not want/like/can't have used books many, many textbooks are offered on the kindle app for less than the cost of buying a brand new book. The app allows you to highlight and take notes in the virtual book and can define words for you without leaving the app. It is worth a shot to look and see if the kindle edition is cheaper or more pleasing than buying a new or used book.

Simpson's Tapped Out

I included this app solely because I have a lot of fun with it. It really does not require any real money to play or even neighbors. It is an app that you can play by yourself, without trying to find neighbors, and not spend any of your real money. Spending real money only gets you "vanity" items or quickens collection times. It is a fun game that you can play by yourself without having to rely on other people to help you succeed. Furthermore, the characters are witty and funny.

Your Credit Card's App

It is pretty useful if you have a credit card, to get their app, too. This way you can look at your statement whenever you want. It will also let you know about rewards. It will send you notifications and alerts when your minimum payment is close to being due which is very helpful if you are prone to forget things like that!

Do you have better ones? I really would love to hear about it in the comments. I am always very happy to find useful and easy to use apps!

DIY Nautical Rope Rug

So I saw this rope rug tutorial on Pinterest and I decided that I had to make it. I found her tutorial a little confusing so I will share with you what I did, and the wisdom I gained from doing it wrong.
I used:

• 160 feet of 1/2" thick twisted nylon rope (I bought almost 180 feet)- $23 at a salvage/surplus store

• A piece of newspaper 

• A permanent marker 

• Scissors 

• Knife 

• Lighter 

• Super glue 

• Duct tape

Here is how it started. I drew the rectangle as directed:

Here is the braiding She recommended practicing on a thinner piece of rope, but I found it to be harder than with the big piece :

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2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6. 

That is the very first pass through of the rope. That is the general idea of what it looked like. All 180 feet of that rope is pretty heavy and it probably took around two hours to get to this point because I had to pull it through every single turn. Your arm will probably get tired. The website I got the tutorial from suggested gloves. I did not use any, but I did have several small paper cut like cuts on my hands and rope burn, so gloves probably would not hurt. Also, it is helpful to tape the general shape down until it gets a little more stable.

Then you go through every single section again: 

Here it is 4 of 8 passes through:

 Listen to the voice of experience here: Make sure on every single pass that you do not accidentally pass the rope under a previous section like I did here. 

It will save probably 5-10 hours worth of time, depending on when you notice (I noticed at the end) because you won't have to do things like this:

If you do have to do something like this, here is some advice: 

1. Pick a starting section and flatten all of those ropes out
2. Keep following the sections in pattern making sure to push the mistake the way you are going.
3. Keep going. It may take several passes through.
4. You will have to keep going until the twist makes it to an end and you can fix it from there.

 Here it is finished except for gluing. Cut off the excess rope and burn the ends so they don't fray. I forgot to take a picture of it "finished" finished. Once you get here take super glue and liberally coat the sections on the outside where the ropes overlap. The website I got the tutorial from wanted the middle glued too, however, I found that the rope was too tight to get under, the glue didn't stick well there anyway, and it held its shape in the middle pretty well. This rug appears to be pretty stable as it was shipped almost 3,000 miles as a Christmas present and looked none the worse. It is very, very heavy though. All in all it took, what I am going to estimate to be, about 20 hours (including the time I had to fix the mess up) to make. It only cost about $23 dollars for the rope, and the rest I had on hand. I thought that it was well worth the time. All in all it is not uncomfortable to stand on and appears as though it would hold up well.

If you do decide to make this, I have some hints:

1. Keep the rope very loose. Do not feel like you need to tighten it to keep it the size of the newspaper, it will make getting through much easier.
2. It is a lot easier to tighten the rope than it is to loosen it so you can keep weaving. 
3. Get very, very strong glue. The kind I had did not want to stick to the rope. 
4. Put a piece of brightly colored tape on the end of the rope you will be pulling through. When you have over 100 feet of rope in a pile, it makes it much easier to find the end of the rope if it is colored. 
5. A utility knife would probably be easier than what I had to cut the end of the rope. 
6. I cannot stress enough to go slow and make sure the rope does not get twisted and in the wrong place.

Did you try it? I would love to see pictures!