DIY (Do it Yourself) Round 2

      The time had come for round 2 of DIY. Last time on DIY, RA Shaun and a few residents made there own Harry Potter wands. Yup thats right! Everyone made his or her own wands and each and every one was different. The best thing about it was that we made them out of paper! This time around RA Shaun had something different in mind. Everyone made Batman themed masks out of paper. It was called OriGotham because it was in a way like origami. The instructions were easy, just cut out the mask, a little tape here and a fold there. 

      I really like how these came out and its perfect for halloween next year or any costume party, it's perrrrrrrrfect Catwoman would say haha. I had fun and I hope the residents did too, hope to see more of Ludlow at the 3rd and final DIY (Do it Yourself).

Here's a link on where to find these mask's

http://fashionnaction.blogspot.com/2012/07/dkr-batman-catwoman-bane-origotham-diy.html

Aaahh!!! Real Graduation

Get it?! Its funny cause its like the title of that popular Nickelodeon show Aaahh!! Real Monsters.


I know, I know.. I'm hilarious, but let's move on.


So a lot of us are graduating in a couple of months, me included, and I am the biggest mixture of excited, sad, scared, anxious, exhausted, and nervous.  I know that there are more negative words there but I think I might be more excited than anything because of all the opportunities I have open to me.

"So, whatre you gonna do after you graduate?"

I hate being asked this and I never have an answer.  Yet I can't help asking other seniors the same exact thing.  I know I know! Im being a hypocrite!
But I've come to realize theres nothing wrong with the question, we're just thinking we have to have a specific answer, the specific college graduate answer. "Oh, I got a job offer from so and so company and I'm moving to so and so place to use all of the things I learned from so and so university/college."

I however dont have those kinds of answers.  I wanna travel the world, I wanna freelance, I wanna work with kids, I wanna paint murals. I dont have a certain one answer for what I wanna do after I graduate because I have too many things that I want to and am capable of doing.

You wanna travel?! 

TRAVEL! 

You wanna stay in the city and make it as an artist?! 

WORK YOUR BUM OFF AND DO IT! 

Wanna move back in with your parents and save some money?! 

DO IT FUCK ALL THEM HATERS! 

You wanna move across the country and just explore?! 

BE MY GUEST! 

Dont let any of your pre-concieved ideas of what you "should" be doing stop you from doing what you really want.  However realize that everything takes a bit of elbow grease and lots of hard work.  Dont expect things to be easy.  Realize that youll have to love them enough that youll be able to work with it when its rough. Dont tell yourself you can't because youre the only one that CAN make anything happen for yourself.

" forget you ever knew the word can't, forget that you know what it means. That word is useless to you, it will take you nowhere. The word can, however, will take you farther than you've fathomed, even in your wildest imaginations. You see, it's only impossible until you do it, and then suddenly you realize it was possible all along. "

So wish away, plan what you wanna do, or dont plan, work hard, make money, and as Mrs. Frizzle says "Take chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy"

And don't forget to dance like Lisa Simpson when getting your diploma... I know I will.

Don't Stress Out!

On Saturday after some quick re-scheduling I held my "Don't Stress Out" event in the community room. I went all out! I covered the table in a nice paper cover, placed all the supplies on the table and provided some healthy juice for all that wanted and played some relaxing music. 

I printed out 'To-Do' lists and 'Calendars' to pass out to residents to help with time management, because a lot of stress comes from not planning your time accordingly. 

 The regular event attendees showed up along with a few RA's and I showed them how to make there own stress balls. Using balloons, flour, rice and scissors we could make decent stress balls. While they set to work I gave some great tips and we talked about some worries some of the freshmen residences had about finals. 

TIPS!

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• Plan each day. Planning your day can help you accomplish more and feel more in control of your life. Write a to-do list, putting the most important tasks at the top. Keep a schedule of your daily activities to minimize conflicts and last-minute rushes.

• Prioritize your tasks. Time-consuming but relatively unimportant tasks can consume a lot of your day. Prioritizing tasks will ensure that you spend your time and energy on those that are truly important to you.

• Say no to nonessential tasks. Consider your goals and schedule before agreeing to take on additional work.

• Delegate. Take a look at your to-do list and consider what you can pass on to someone else.

• Take the time you need to do a quality job. Doing work right the first time may take more time upfront, but errors usually result in time spent making corrections, which takes more time overall.

• Break large, time-consuming tasks into smaller tasks. Work on them a few minutes at a time until you get them all done.

• Practice the 10-minute rule. Work on a dreaded task for 10 minutes each day. Once you get started, you may find you can finish it.

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• Limit distractions. Block out time on your calendar for big projects. During that time, close your door and turn off your phone, pager and email.

• Get plenty of sleep, eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly. A healthy lifestyle can improve your focus and concentration, which will help improve your efficiency so that you can complete your work in less time.

• Take a break when needed. Too much stress can derail your attempts at getting organized. When you need a break, take one. Take a walk. Do some quick stretches at your workstation. Take a day of vacation to rest and re-energize.

SVA 2nd Annual Kickball Classic!

          

The 2^nd Annual SVA Kickball Classic was held on Sunday March 24^th. Residents from Ludlow joined RA Brent and headed over to the softball fields at the East River Park.  We met up with residents from all the other Residence halls at SVA and had an awesome game of Kickball!  We split in to two teams and battled through a bunch of super exciting innings of game play!  Everyone that showed up and endured the chilly temperatures had a great time hanging out, playing ball, and getting to know people from other buildings at our school!  In the end, the score was 10 – 4 and every single person from Ludlow played like a boss!  Way to represent Ludlow guys!

Chillin out after the game!

Ludbloods heading out to represent 

What you know about welcome mat bases? #thanks b&b 

Putting the Teams Together 

Saving Lost Animals! #animal activists

SIDE NOTE!  Apart from playing Kickball, Two residents from Ludlow came across a lost Parrot! They ended up bringing the helpless bird to a Pet Store during the kickball game, and using the tag attached to its foot, helped find the owners of this lost pet! Way to have good morals people! 

Tech Decks.... Hell Yeah!

Do you remember playing with Tech Decks back in the day? Those things were flipping awesome! They made ramps, half pipes, and rails so that you could channel you inner tony-hawk with your fingers. 

Things I learned online while not writing my papers...

Inner monologue:
"I have a project. I have a project I have to do. I have a project I need to do. It's not necessarily a project that I want to do. All I know is that I want my project to be done..."
-Levni Yilmaz, Tales of Mere Existence

With three papers and several cover letters to write in the next week a a fair amount of digital procrastination was bound to occur. Here is a brief compilation of things that I have learned while not working on my schoolwork. While I wouldn't recommend actually clicking on any of these things until your work is done it is likely that because you are on this page you are in the same boat. At least then we will not be working on our papers together.

• Godzilla's inner life if beautiful and complex. He is perhaps one of the most misunderstood creatures in the monster genre. This I have gathered from careful reading of godzilla haikus. For example, "Do you not yet see? The city is your prison, I grant you freedom."
• The popular comic strip Calvin and Hobbes is in fact named after theologian John Calvin and philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
• You can learn WordPress in under 30 minutes and develop your very own blog for free. This is one that I started at my internship site. http://artclubhhsite.wordpress.com/
• Anything is made instantly funnier when presented by hand-drawn chickens on post-it notes.
• Odd compliments can be either strangely endearing or disturbing and creepy.
• Even adults enjoy playing in the sand. You can do so online, for free, for hours.

If you find yourself actually needing to be work done you may want to try a free app called Concentrate which you can use to block websites such as YouTube, Pinterest, Netflix, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. for the length of time you designate. I will be setting mine for the next several hours as soon as I press publish.

F*ck Art - Museum of Sex

This past Saturday, a few of us headed to the awesome museum of Sex! Lets just say, it was interesting! We all got some fun, and kind of ridiculous photos! We were entertained, and sometimes educated as we explored the floors of the museum. If you haven't been, it is totally worth checking out sometime! The museum of Sex had a special exhibition going on this Saturday called F*ck Art, featuring some awesome street art. Anthony is in a picture with some of the street art. Lol we had to....

 If you didn't make it, find a time to go! And bring a friend because otherwise you might feel a little, um, awkward.

Monopoly FIght to the Death

Feb 20^th was a crazy night for several Ludlowians!

The frist ever: Monopoloy Fight to the Death was hosted in the common room and it surely was a long and tough battle to the end. The event started at 8pm and didn’t end till midnight. Houses were being built left and right, people were going to jail, and some lucky gamers were blessed with free parking mula. 

One by one players were going bankrupt and had to leave the game. In the end RA Adam ended up coming out as the triumphant winner and Beth came in second by just one dollar! 

It was an intense game but everyone had fun being competitive and re-kindling their joy for this classic game.

The old English countryside

The English countryside is known for its' rolling hills and green fields but we also have beautiful beaches and castles. I was over in the North of England for spring break and drove up to this small village called Craster. It has around three hundred people living there and is tiny! There is a little harbour and no supermarket or phone reception. However the houses were so quaint and the people very kind. Craster is known as the village closest to Dunstanburgh Castle. You have to walk this stretch of grass in order to get there with the shore on the right. 

The beach had all these rockpools with crabs inside. I used to love going crabbing when I was younger and try and catch them with bacon. I grew up next to the beach in Brighton so getting to smell those familiar scents and feel the sea breeze brought back lots of memories and felt amazing. 

We went on quite a misty day, which is most days in England, and the castle in the distance looked very mystical and elusive. I don't think I will ever get sick of the nature and surprises that the English countryside has to offer. We have lots of other beautiful places too if anyone wants to find out others let me know!

Life Lessons from Monty Python

Ludlow residents gathered in the community room for the March installment of the First Friday Film and Food series. Legendary comedy troupe Monty Python taught everyone a few key lessons about life and death:

• At dinner parties you should avoid the salmon mousse.
• The universe is expanding.
• People aren't wearing enough hats.
• The soul must be developed through a course of spiritual events over the lifetime.
• SVA students are not the only ones with strong sentiments about the value of bodily fluids.
• Pay attention to your limits, sometimes a wafer thin mint is more than you can handle.

But what is the meaning of life? [Spoiler Alert} "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."

Join us next month for the semester's final installment of First Friday Film and Food. On April 5th we will be watching Saturday Night Fever. Before the film put on your platform shoes and hustle over to the community room for some disco dancing and a costume contest. Dress to impress, prizes will be awarded.

ONE LINE A DAY: A FIVE YEAR MEMORY BOOK

I stumbled upon this on Amazon while I was on the hunt for a brand new journal and I simply couldn't resist but to buy it. It is basically how it is described; you get to record a brief thoughts or inspirations for a day and you get to keep this book for five years, hence the five year memory book. Unlike the usual journal/diary, this memory book has 365 daily entries appear five times on each page, allowing us to revisit previous thoughts and memories over five years as we return to each page to record our thoughts and inspirations. The space for each year is very much limited so we are forced to be concise and record the essence of our thoughts of a day. After a year, you eventually then come back on the same page and get to read the entry you wrote exactly a year before from today. It is almost like a time capsule, but even better since we don't have to go through the trouble of burying it in a ground and unearthing it later to see the content. I have been keeping this memory book for months now and I can't wait to meet me from a year ago, two years ago, and eventually me from five years ago in order to see the changes and  the growth I would have in the next five years!!

Ice Cream!

Making ice creammm

Thanks to Lina, Jody and Irving who showed up to Monday's: Make it and Eat it event.

If you currently aren't obsessed with Pintrest then get on it! Theres no better time than now to become obsessed with a new pointless website that lets you save certain recipes and crafts you know you'll never complete.




UNTIL NOW!  Every Make it and Eat it we will be making and eating (so funny) a super easy and delicious sounding recipe from Pintrest!

This week we tackled the super easy no carb no sugar ice cream.  How do you make that you ask??
Well if you had come to my event (ahem ahem) youd know... but I'll let you know anyway.

The recipe calls for: 

3/4 cup water
1 1/4 cup heavy cream
one .30 oz sugar free falvored gelatin

Bring water to a boil and stir in flavored gelatin packet. Stir the gelatin while boiling for 30-60 seconds or until completely dissolved. Pour the hot mixture straight into your square storage dish.Add cream to the hot mixture and stir until the mixture has a lightened, milky tone throughout.  Refrigerate mixture for at least two hours. Be sure to keep uncovered.  Once the dessert has set firm, cover with lid and set in freezer at least one hour before serving. Remove from freezer, add some Ready Whip and enjoy every second of the yumminess!

I was very excited for this recipe because it was gonna be my first pin on pintrest that was brought to life.  However I was MEGA let down.  The "ice cream" just became this really cold thing with the consistency of jello.  :(  Some Brave Kings College boys volunteered to be my taste testers (so brave) and they found it gross, but kept on eating.  

BUT WE WONT LET THIS ONE FAILURE KEEP US DOWN! 

We will persevere!!

Join us next time MARCH 18TH  

Share some of your own favorite Pintrest recipes on the Facebook or on here! :) 

  

Ludlow Pool Sharks Strikes Again!

This past Sunday Ludlow Residents came out for the third ludlow tournament!  Five teams battled for the ultimate glory of being this months pool champ!  In the end Lukas Galantay and Brent Philhower claimed the title.  Other then the continuous pool battles, we all got to hang out and eat some snacks!

TEA TIME: Donuts!

After Blizzard Nemo came to town what everyone needed was a warm cup of tea! As Valentine's day was fast approaching I decided to get some lovey-dovey donuts to accompany our warm beverages.

It was really nice to meet some new people and get to know everyone more intimately this time. We had a very relaxed atmosphere which is just what I love when drinking my tea. Tea Time is becoming something I look forward to each month and I hope it is for you guys too!