41 Things more important than your GPA in college.

It's the end of the term and grades are coming out.

Joy.

This term I really enjoyed most of my classes.

I really felt like I learned a lot.

I tried my hardest.

And yet, I still have this sense of panic when grades are being released.

Why?

If I did my best and learned a lot isn't that enough?

Don't get my wrong grades are important.

But not the most important.

I took a final this term in a class I loved.

I learned so much about the subject matter.

Studied my butt off.

Sat down to take the exam...

And blanked.

It just seems so silly to me to put so much pressure on one test.

College is about so much more than that.

So with out further ado here are 41 Things That Are More Important Than Your GPA In College.

1. Finding Yourself.
2. Finding a major you enjoy
3.Making friends you actually like.
4. Interning.
5. Volunteering your time.
6. Taking a class on something you know nothing about.
7. Learning how to pay bills.
8. Figuring out where the money is going to come from to pay your bills.
9. Learning to live with people besides your family.
10. Learning what you like to do.
11. Learning how much alcohol you can handle
12. Learning how much alcohol you can't handle.
13. Finding a passion you didn't know you had.
14. Opening your eyes to the world around you.
15. Realizing you actually really like your parents.
16. Discovering the value of a dollar.
17. Learning what a deadline means.
18. Making deadlines.
19. Doing something stupid and having a good story.
20. Learning to keep in touch with people while your in a different place.
21. Traveling
22. Taking a class you absolutely hate.
23. Failing miserably at something.
24. But getting up the next day and trying again.
25. Learning to do your own chores.
26. Managing Stress

27. Eating healthy

27. Exercising when you don't eat healthy.

28. Starting to figure out what you want out of life.

29. Changing your mind about things.

30. Forming your own opinion and thoughts about things.

31. Especially politics and what you like. 

32. Changing your major if you find a new one you like.

33. Trying your hardest.

34. Accomplishing something you thought you couldn't.

35. Going to a college football game.

36. Tailgating

37. Learning to work with people you don't like
38. Figuring out how to make a budget.
39. Sticking to a budget.
40. Figuring out how to make things work when you don't stick to your budget.
41. Making it to graduation.

I am not saying that your GPA isn't important it is. But there is so much more to college.
However, I think it would be a shame if you graduated college with a great GPA without doing any of these things.

Bottom line is do your best and you'll succeed. If you don't get back up and try again.
Be open, try new things and learn.
That's what college is all about.

So Close, Yet So Far

I am smack dab in the middle of dead week right now.

While I should be focusing on finals and studying,

I find myself thinking ahead to our trip to Mexico.

While I would love to fill my suitcase up with all new goodies.

That is just not realistic.

However, I have created a little wish list.

These are the items I would love to get for our trip.

While I may not get all of these,

I am going to have my eyes out for them!

What would be on your wish list?

If you love any of these

Check out the links below!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

5 | 6

Dreaming of Mexico

Me and Nathan are planning a trip down south in June.

I am so dang excited that it is finally getting close enough to start planning!

To me the planning of the trip is 

almost as much fun as the trip its self.

Am I alone on this?

I am getting to the point

 where I am starting to count down the weeks,

until I can be in the sun.

With a margarita in my hand of course.

Here are some photos that are getting me through the next weeks.

Six Months Since I do

It has been six months since me and Nathan stood in front of our friends and family and said i do.

Can you believe that?

In some ways it seems like it was just yesterday that we were walking down the aisle,

and in other ways it seems like years ago.

Time is funny in that way isn't it?

A lot has happened in that time some great and some tragic.

We went on a wonderful honeymoon together.

Started classes again in the fall.

Adopted a baby kitten (Kingsley)

But other things have not been so good.

We found out around thanksgiving that my Mom's cancer was back.

It was horribly tragic news but we are dealing with it.

I do plan on writing a post about that.

But we can save that for another day.

That's life though, you can't have the good without the bad.

But I am thankful for so many things that have happened in the last six months.

I have a sweet, adorable husband.

A not so little kitten

and so much more.

Which is why I have taken a liking to this saying.

Review: Wedding Wire

Well, It's not wednesday, so Wedding Monday?
That works right?

From the beginning of the planning stages for our wedding we knew we wanted to do paperless RSVP.

1. It saves paper and is good for the environment.

2. It saves money and is any easy way to save in the budget department.

Therefore is became clear we would be doing a wedding website. 

If you have ever searched for a good wedding website then you know there are hundreds and a lot of them are crap.

When we began our search we were looking for a couple of things.

We wanted it to be a FREE service and we wanted to be able to customize it.

After searching around I realized this was going to be a tall order to fill.

That's when I stumbled across wedding wire.

I will start off by saying that this site is not perfect.

However, it does have a lot of really cool features.

First off there are a ton of designs to choose from and you can completely customize them to make them feel like your own.

I loved that.

Also, once you begin tinkering around with it you can see that if you get creative you can really make your site look really individualized.

The site also features a lot of tools besides the website.

Checklists, budget makers, etc.

To be perfectly honest I didn't use any of it.

So I can't really tell you anything about those.

But, overall I love the site and found this to be the best option when looking for a free wedding website.

Now, some downsides.

The major one is that the site can be difficult to edit.

More than once I found myself scouring the Help page looking for answers.

But if you are patient and put in a little time It's well worth it.

Second downside the RSVP set-up they have is pretty complicated.

They want you to add every single guests name.

That just wasn't that practical for us.

So we got creative on that end.

We re-named our "contact us" page to RSVP.

We then asked guests to write their name and the number attending.

This message then gets sent to a special Gmail account we have set up just for the wedding.

Although this seems a little complicated it works perfectly for us and we could not be happier with our website.

Here are some photos of our website:

If you want to check out our page leave me a comment below and I would be happy to share the URL.

Here is the note we left to guests explaining how to RSVP.

Happy Monday All!

Done Done Done

I just finished my last final for the year! 

Which means I am officially done with school for the summer!

Although my summer is filling up pretty quickly, (Work, wedding, trips)

I am looking forward to relaxing for most of it.

Here some photos that just scream summer to me!

What's your favorite thing about summer?

Countdown to Summer

With all the stress and craziness of the end of another year of college I decided to take a minute and get excited for whats coming up this summer.

June:

Finish off school for the year.

Make a trip up to Portland to work on some wedding stuff. Food, decorations, ect.

Moving into our new apartment.

July:

Bridal Shower.

Road Trip down to LA.

See Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z.

August:

Nathan turns 21.

Get Married.

This summer is going to jam-packed with things but I could not be more excited.

The only thing standing in my way is two more finals and a lab report.

Wish me luck!