Tips for Your Living Situation Next Year

Are you going through a roommate change, or are you looking to get an apartment?  Make sure to read these tips on how to pick out roommates and keep a great relationship.  Being compatible in living together is one of the most important aspects of picking who will you live with the following school year.

When the going gets tough, the tough get ... housemates?

In these brutal financial times, having a housemate – or even two or three – can be one of the best ways to reduce your rent and other costs, and keep your head above water.

It can also be the quickest way to a murder rap, if you live with somebody who drives you up the wall.

How do you ensure that the “Roommate Remedy” doesn't turn into “Housemate Hell”? Fear not: We know how bad you look in black and white stripes. So we got the experts to cough up these 15 strategies for you.

Plan to succeed
The best way to make sure your roommate situation works, of course, is to actually create a good situation from the get-go – and that means choosing the right housemates.

How?

1. Start fresh. If possible, start out in a new living situation where no one thinks he or she has seniority and therefore more of a voice than anyone else in how the house or apartment is run, says Amy Zalneraitis, author of "Room for Improvement: The Post-College Girl's Guide to Roommate Living."

2. Play the numbers. "Always opt to live with one other person over two other people to avoid triangulated roommate relationships," Zalneraitis says. "For example, I once moved in with two girls who had already lived together for some time. Their apocalyptic-style partying would happen every Friday night. Because they were on the same page when it came to this type of partying (and had sort of established the rules or lack thereof before I moved in), it was hard for me to stop it. Two against one. I felt like I had very little power." (Zalneraitis notes that this applies much more to young women than to men, in her experience.)

3. Best friends — bad? "If you want to stay friends (with friends), then roommate with strangers," says Sylvia Bergthold, author of "Sorry, the Boa Has Gotta Go: A Roommate Survival Guide." "That way you keep your friends and hopefully make a new one in the process."

Why not live with friends? Because good friends take liberties in a living situation that put stress on the relationship, and the relationship often suffers as a result, Bergthold says.
"I've found that my most successful roommate situations have been people that I sort of knew, through friends of friends," Zalneraitis adds. "So I knew that I would have similar tastes to them, and that they weren't crazy, because a friend was vouching for them, but at the same time we weren't spending every minute together."

4. Play detective. "Spend some time together with each other and get a feel for that person," Zalneraitis says. Does he have totally different beliefs? Does one person like to party all the time and the other have to work early, every morning? Ask each other what your goals are in having a roommate: a best friend? A drinking buddy? An invisible rent-payer? "Pay attention to how people answer questions," Zalneraitis says.

5. Trust your gut. By the time you're in your 20s and 30s, you know enough about people to know if something doesn't feel right. Trust that instinct. A red flag now is likely trouble for you later. "Don't ever turn your 'crazy detector' off," Zalneraitis says. "You'd be surprised how many crazy/troubled/unpleasant people are out there."

For more information see MSN.

Breakfast on the Go Event

Artists Help Preserve the USS Enterprise

Artists from East Carolina University are helping to preserve the USS Enterprise.   He is using 500 letterpress prints to display the memory and service of the USS Enterprise.  The Enterprise was the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier in history.  Keep reading to learn about the exhibit and the artists.

Hundreds of antique printing blocks are stored among vintage letterpress printers inside a one-story shop in Ayden, where an East Carolina University faculty member applies a 15th century commercial printing process to create works of art.


ECU art professor Craig Malmrose stands in front of the print he created with letterpress printing to commemorate the decommissioning of the USS Enterprise. (Photos by Cliff Hollis)

His most recent project – 500 letterpress prints to commemorate the decommission and retirement of the USS Enterprise – was delivered Dec. 18 to U.S. Navy officers, members of the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama.

Craig Malmrose, a professor in the ECU School of Art and Design, spent the past two and a half months consumed by the Enterprise project, initiated through a request by a former student who now works for the company that built the ship in 1961. The Enterprise was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

“I gladly accepted and became immersed in it,” he said, and laughed. “I spent every waking second in this shop; I even came in here Thanksgiving Day.”

The print features a drawing of the ship done by Ray Elmore, a friend of Malmrose and a retired faculty member from the ECU School of Art.

The printing technique Malmrose employed in creating the prints was originally used for 15th century commercial printing. That printing style was replaced by offset printing, which has since gone digital.

Malmrose discovered letterpress printing in 1994 when he read an article about a school in California teaching the historic art. He was so taken by the idea that he began collecting printing blocks and letterpress machines anywhere and everywhere that he could, traveling as far as North Dakota to get what he needed. Eventually, he acquired enough to open up his own shop.

“It’s so tactile and hands on,” Malmrose said of his craft. “It’s not digital, you can actually feel the engravings of the print on the paper.”

“I asked Ray to do it because when it comes to drawings, he’s the best of the best,” Malmrose said.

Elmore’s drawing was based on a small photograph of the ship and was created using small dots in all black ink.




Printing blocks used in letterpress printing are stored in Malmrose's Ayden shop.

“To make it look darker in certain areas, you place the dots closer to each other,” Elmore said. “It’s all about moving your hand a certain way.”

Behind Elmore’s drawing, the print features a yellow E with a pale yellow back shadow, symbolizing the ship’s colloquial name, “The Big E.”

Underneath the focal image reads “USS Enterprise CVN 65,” in a Photoshop-created font that replicates the writing on the side of the actual ship.

“We took what is on the side of the ship and downsized it,” Malmrose explained. “If you look closely, it looks like there are small lines cutting through the font because that’s how it looks on the actual ship.”

To create the edition, Malmrose sent the images to a plate maker in Pennsylvania, where the images were replicated onto a metal plate, leaving a raised surface to place the ink, much like a modern day stamp. The plates, with the ink on them, were then set up on the press machine in Malmrose’s shop. He pulled the images by hand, one color at a time, onto Mohawk superfine paper, which he ordered from Raleigh.

Because each print is done by hand, Malmrose said “no two prints are exactly the same.”

He has kept one of the prints for his portfolio. While Malmrose may be done with the project, his work in letterpress printing will continue.

“It is an extremely time consuming, lost art and I believe it is my mission to preserve it,” he said.






For more information see the ECU.edu

Keeping Peace on Winter Break

You are home for winter break and your boredom and frustration may be starting to hit you.  Here are some great tips on how to survive winter break.  Make sure to keep peace with your family and enjoy your family time.  It is pretty nice not having to pay for laundry and getting a free meal!

I was extremely excited to go home for winter break last year. Quality time with the family, no schoolwork, and holiday festivities were just a few of the things I was looking forward to.

What I didn't expect were the changes I would have to make to my lifestyle now that I was back living at home instead of in an apartment.

1. Money: When you were in high school, your parents may have footed the bill for things like gas, shopping, or eating out. Now that you're in college, your parents may be expecting you to pay for more of your personal expenses or to limit what you spend on nonessentials.

Being home for the holidays is great for a free meal or Target run here and there, but try not to take advantage of your parents—or their wallets.

2. Cars: Did your sibling inherit your car when you went away to school? This can create animosity when you're home for breaks, especially if both siblings have a fairly active social life.

Lay down some ground rules about who gets the car and when, and what will happen if both parties have a function at the same time.

3. Conduct: Certain habits that you may have picked up in college—such as messes, late night pizza orders, and use of profanity—simply won't fly now that you're home.

Keep in mind the company you're in now that you're home for break. Parents and younger siblings may not appreciate your inability to do laundry or stories about your college adventures. Keep this in mind before you pawn off your dirty clothes on Mom or dish to Dad about your craziest weekend of the semester.

For more information see USA Today.

Greeting Card Ideas

We love getting greeting cards during the holidays, and we are sure that you do too.  However, after the holidays no one really knows what to do with the cards that they have gathered over the past month or so.  Here are some great tips on how to save those memories without taking up a whole closet in your apartment.

1 Scan or Photograph: Keep digital copies of important cards. File them by year, occasion, or filtered in your digital photo album.

2 Turn into A Book: Send your greetings to Cards for Keeps and they'll transform them into a bound book. If you're feeling crafty, you can try doing this yourself by following the blog Something Turquoise's DIY tutorial.

3 Reuse: I love well designed greeting cards. So much thought has gone into the design, so why not turn it into something else? As long as you're okay with losing the greeting part of the card, you could frame it, cut it up and use it for another project, make it into a gift tag, etc. The options are endless!

4 Turn into A New Card: Much in the same vein as above, a card does not need to be used just once. If it's a folded card, cut it in half and use the front as a postcard.

5 Donate to a Charity: Before you toss any unwanted cards, consider donating them. St. Jude's Ranch for Children will recycle used greeting cards and turn them into new holiday and greeting cards. You can also purchase their recycled cards to support their programs and services.

For more information see Apartment Therapy.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl

Let's Go Pirates. East Carolina University will take on Lousiana's Ragin Cajuns in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. This news comes after one of the most successful seasons in East Carolina's history, and the news that they would be joining the Big East Conference in 2014. The bowl will be broadcast December 22nd at noon.

East Carolina take by SEC blogger Chris Low: The big news off the field this week was that East Carolina would be joining the Big East Conference in 2014. On the field, the Pirates enter the postseason playing some of their best football of the season. They’ve won five of their past six games, but were edged out by UCF in a tiebreaker for the Conference USA East Division championships. Both teams finished 7-1, but UCF won 40-20 back on Oct. 4.

The trip to face Louisiana-Lafayette in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl will be East Carolina’s sixth bowl appearance in the past seven years. The Pirates, under third-year coach Ruffin McNeill, have shown that they can score points this season. In their past five wins, they’ve scored 40 or more points four times and ended the regular season with a 65-59 win over Marshall in two overtimes. Quarterback Shane Carden has rolled up 2,838 yards in total offense and accounted for 29 touchdowns. 

For more information see ESPN.

Make Your Apartment a Winter Wonderland

Do you want to decorate your college apartment for the holidays?  Everyone wants to be festive, but you do not want to spend a lot of money when you will be home for the holiday.  Here are some great inexpensive tips on how to make your apartment a holiday wonderland.

• Personalize and hang stockings for you and your roommates – this can be a fun project and very inexpensive. Purchase plain stockings and paint, glitter, felt, etc. and create your own designs for your stockings. You could even include some school spirit and make University themed stockings.
• Remember in Elementary School when you used to make paper snow flakes in art class.  Flashback to those times and make your apartment a winter wonderland with this easy art trick.
• Hang ornaments from the stairs and or ceiling.  Just make sure you do not damage the walls or ceiling while doing this.
• Use some ribbon and ties to put around chairs and lamps.  This adds some festive spirit to even the smallest furniture.
• Make a giant present out of your door by using some wrapping paper and a bow.  It instantly looks festive and adds so much holiday spirit to your apartment.
• Use holiday cards that you receive to decorate the walls in your apartment.
• Play Christmas music on your ipod or on Pandora!