Cinco de Mayo!!

To most college students, Cinco de Mayo is just another excuse to get drunk on a Tuesday night, or whatever day of the week the infamous holiday lands on. Tonight you may have witnessed the throngs of students at the "official" Cinco de Mayo pub crawl. Yes, proceeds did go to charity.

So what should you do instead? Throw your own fiesta! Why not? My roommate planned a whole low key, yet fun event all on her own for some of her closet friends.

Alli made homemade sour cream and chicken enchiladas complete with rice and beans. And for those who prefer a more "festive" holiday, she had margaritas ready as well.

So next year, forget about knocking back as many tequilla shots as possible and just enjoy a night with friends. You'll probably remember more the next day anyway.

The Office Party

One of my favorite college traditions my roommate and I have created is our Thursday night Office party. We are both avid watchers of the NBC show The Office, and have many friends who share our passion for the hilarious show. In the fall, we decided to invite these friends over to watch the show with us on the night of the season premiere. We ended up having about 20 people over watching it with us. We have dvr and recorded the show and our friends were very grateful not to have to watch commercials.

Each week since then, we just told people to meet at our house to watch it about an hour after it actually airs on television, and every week people show up to do so. Some weeks some people can't come or are busy, but we have a solid group following.

Some weeks we prepare extra food if we know a large group will be there, and other weeks we just see what's in the pantry and bring it out, such a cookies or popcorn or a bag of chips.

Find a television show that you and your friends all watch, and rather than watching it all as individuals, watch it together! Its a great way to keep in touch and hang out with friends. With a weekly date on the calendar, you know exactly when you'll get to hang out. Shows like Lost, 24 or even The Bachelor are great to do this with too because you always want to speculate about the outcomes or theorize about episodes to come.

The Art of the Chocolate Chip Cookie

Its a classic, yet tricky treat. There are many recipes and many variations, but I believe I may have mastered the art of the chocolate chip cookie.

It may sound like cheating, but step one of this project involves buying the big plastic tub of Nestle's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough at the grocery store. The tub is great because you can reseal it, so you can make as many or as few cookies at a time.

Spray a bit of Pam or Bakers Joy on your cookie sheet, despite the directions on the tub saying an "ungreased" cookie sheet. Take spoon fulls of the dough and roll them around in your hand until they are perfect spheres. Place them on the cookie sheet about two inches apart.

Put them in the oven at 325 degrees for about 12-14 minutes. This time depends on your oven though, so on your first batch, stick around the oven and check on them after about 11 minutes.

The key to perfect chocolate chip cookies is all in the amount of time they cook for. You need to pull them out of the oven just as they are starting to turn a golden brown. Then leave them on the cookie sheet to cool for 5-10 minutes.

When cooled, enjoy!

These cookies are the quickest and most perfect way to keep hungry guests appeased! I tend to keep a tub of dough in the refrigerator at all times! You never know who might drop by unexpectedly!

Alternative Valentines Party

A great idea for guys to remember!

On Valentines day, a group of guys who are friends and live down the street from my home, hosted myself and my roommates at their home for a dinner party on the night of Valentines. It was such a great idea! It kept myself from being at home that night watching sappy movies on TV or doing homework.

While waiting for dinner to cook, we played Connect Four and reconnected with childhood. After dinner, we played an intense and frightening game of Scategories. If you have friends who are extremely opinionated or do not like to lose, do not play this game. We learned this lesson the hard way after six rounds of gameplay.

A Weekend of Entertaining

This past weekend was quite the busy one at my house on East Campus. One of my roommates and I spent a week over Christmas break on a mission trip to Harmons, Jamaica. This weekend we hosted two reunion get-togethers for the members of our team.

Friday night was a pot luck dinner for all the girls. Kathleen (my roommate) picked up two frozen lasagnas from the grocery store to cook, and everyone else brought sides, deserts, etc. The frozen lasagnas were a GREAT idea, but we learned two important things from them. 1. Know how much a "party sized" lasagna feeds. We made two and I'm pretty sure we'll be eating left over lasagna for weeks. 2. Know how long its going to take to cook your lasagna and plan accordingly. We thought we'd just head to the store a few hours before, pick them up and cook them. Thankfully we shopped about three hours before the party, because it took two hours to cook them! Our guests ended up waiting about half an hour once they arrived before the food was done, but this gave us a great time to catch up and hang out before eating.

We had a good turnout as far as other foods that were brought as well. We had e-mailed the guests a week before and asked us to let us know what they were bringing. The day of the party I e-mailed out a few last minute necessities that no one had volunteered to bring and within an hour, they were covered too.

Saturday night we had a picture party at our home for our Jamaica team members as well. This party was a chance for us all to hang out together, but also to bring any pictures you had taken of other people you thought they might want and give them to them. It was such a fun night. There was a lot of laughter going on and revisiting stories from our week in Harmons. We just had everyone bring $5 and we ordered a bunch of pizzas. Definitely an easier night food wise, but still a lot of fun.