financial aid and college loans

Once you have finished your decorative movements, changes, refurnishing of carpets and furniture and in general, the application of your own design and theme on your house, apartment or room at college or the university that will still adapt to your student loan budget. The next thing to do is to accessorize the entire house, apartment or room; there are distinct ways in which you can achieve this goal.

Of course, the best way is to provide each room with matching and adequate items that will in turn round up all the decoration that you have achieved here.

• Living room

It is the first room in the house or apartment that visitors will see, regardless if you are only expecting company from your peers or not at this early stage of your college or university education, it is now the time to create something that will allow you to rest, settle, soothe the anxieties, stress, anguish, and overall problems of daily life; at the same time it has to be something that reflects the type of professional that you are quickly becoming as well as the mature self that you currently are.

Therefore, the living room has to be the best presentation of your entire house or apartment. In this case, you have done your job simply by working on the refurnishing of the furniture and of the rug, painting the walls and cleaning the entire place up; now it is the time to decide what it is that you will be placing. Type, form, color and even material of the pieces that you want to use as accessories for your living room are amongst the first things that you have to consider and make a decision on.

• Dinning room

Since this is the room adjacent to the kitchen and there is a high possibility to get overflowed with kitchen’s greasy smog, then you should consider and calculate all the accessories that you use all decorative accessories as far from the kitchen as possible, however, it is a good idea to try and keep it as balanced as possible.

Since a dinning room is not the first room that is seen by your visitors is not as important as the first one, but still it has to be in accordance to the style and form of the living room providing a friendly environment that is homey and at the same time it has to invite you and your visits to spend a wonderful time together at parties or dinner celebrations.

If you decide to use an acrylic board on top of the brick columns and/or glass bricks, then you do not need to paint them, they will be able to coordinate with almost every style and decoration.

• Wall mounted desk

Of course, another choice for you to create your own computer desk is to make it wall mounted, almost any family member or any of your friends will be able to lend you a drill and some screws. However, you need to take into consideration that a wall-mounted desk requires you to use a wider board as well as bigger wall mount supports.

This might not be entirely good or adequate with your landlord, however, it’s good for you to know that in such an event, once you have dismounted your wall mounted desk, without making much dent on your student loan budget, you can cover the holes with plaster. Do not use toothpaste, a commonly resort trick since they are big holes and toothpaste will stand out too much.

Since a wall mounted desk will not be as high as a bookshelf it is not as important for it to be well balanced, however, it is always advisable to have it perfectly horizontal. You should not rely on the horizontal lines that are provided to you by the ceiling or the floor, some constructions are crooked. If you do not have a friend or relative that has a leveling tool, then you can use a simple marble; all you have to do is to mount one side of the board, then place the marble in the middle of the board and balance it out.

• With Carpentry

If you are fearless and believe that you can create your own desk you can attempt to do so, however, it is advisable that you avoid trying to give it an elaborate finish. Carpentry will work for you if you decide to create it only with wood or with wood and acrylic. However, it is advisable that you use screws instead of nails, in this way, if you need to move it, it will be easier to dismantle it and assembly back later.

However, if you need drawers you will have to adjust yourself to any of the many plastic drawers that are available on the market and that are somewhat inexpensive. This applies to any type of desk that you decide to build by yourself, and if you decide that you need a rolling platform for the CPU a roller-skate will do the trick just fine.

Remember that the whole idea is to provide you with the commodities that you need to make the most of the student loan money that you requested in order to achieve a college or university education.

Guidelines to build your own furniture
Desks
Part 1

The whole idea is to use as little as possible of the student loan money that you have so you will be covered for any and all unforeseen events while at the same time providing yourself with as much comfort as you had on your family home if not more. It is in this manner that you will be able to take as much advantage as possible from your college or university education.

• Desks

A personal computer has become a very important tool for the college or university student and the right position or desk that allows you to type, consult, and use it altogether is just as important as the specifications of the computer itself.

However, sometimes is not easy to find the right furniture at the Salvation Army stores, other second hand stores, or even in garage sales. Therefore, a student like you, undergoing a college or university education with the assistance of a student loan will need to adjust as much as possible since buying it new might dent too much your already tight student loan budget.

o B&B

Creating your own desk with boards and bricks will not be easy however it is indeed possible. The only major difference is that you will be required to purchase a bigger amount of bricks if you are using red bricks or you can rather choose to create it with glass bricks, or gray construction bricks that offer a longer structure and are more resistant to daily use.

If you are using red bricks you will need to create support pillars that are best made with four brick constructions, the layout resembles a roman two (II) with parallel bricks surrounded by transversal ones.

For glass bricks you will need to create two distinct columns with two brick aligning each, back to back. It is advisable that you fix the bricks together, this can be done with plaster, cement, or even silicon glue; just remember that using silicon glue it has to be cold and this produces an odor and fumes that might cause headaches and asthma attacks on some people.

A wood board can be used to top the bricks or you can buy an acrylic one providing you a more stylized look for your own crafted desk. To blend the desk with the decoration of the room, house, or apartment where it is going to be located, you can cover the bricks with Paper Mache or plaster, and then painting them with the adequate color of your chosen palette.

Guidelines to build your own furniture Bookshelves
Part 2

Do not rely on the perception that you might have following the roof or the floor lines, since some constructions are not made adequately and therefore are somewhat tilted.

Buying or borrowing a leveled guide can work, but if you do not have that luxury, since it is something that not everybody has, a simple marble can do the trick.

All you have to do is to fix the board on one side, place the marble in the middle and move the board up or down to keep the marble still in the same place where you placed it. Once the marble does not move, you know that the board is leveled.

Some people will tell you that a bottle can work the same too, but this is not as accurate as a marble. Making a wall mounted shelf blend in with your decoration will rely on the painting that you decide to make on your walls.

For example, if you chose to create a central design on the wall, the parts of the design that are covered by the wall mount should be painted on the board in the same manner, in this way, the board will blend in. Remember to paint the up and down sides of the board matching to the base color of the wall.

Or you can simply paint it in a matching color from the palette that you have already chosen; in this case, the wall mounted bookshelf will be a coordinate. To change color, all you will need to do is to unscrew it, sand the wood, and then repaint it.

• With carpentry

If you are more adventurous, you can choose to build your own bookshelf; however, it is advisable that if you do decide to follow this path, you do it in a very traditional manner and avoid hoping to create elaborate figures and forms, a bookshelf that is simply squared will work fine.

An other important matter is that you consider and create the bookshelf with screws instead of nails, this way, you can transport it easily when you move out or your room, house or apartment and into a new place. Or, if your financial situation improves, you can renew it or sell it to another student who, like you, is adjusting tightly to his or her student loan budget.

Regardless if you are skilled in carpentry or not, you need to be sure that creating your own bookshelf is actually cheaper than searching for one on second hand stores, the Salvation Army, or even garage sales.

Guidelines to build your own furniture Bookshelves
Part 1

It can be that your student loan allows you to create a refurnishing budget to modify or customize the furniture that your friends and family have been able to hand you down. One of the most important things is to pause a moment and determine if you will be requiring any specific furniture that you might not have such as a bookshelf or a computer desk.

Of course, if your student loan budget allows you to, you can seek to buy these very much needed furniture, but it can also be that despite you are almost desperate to have them, your student loan budget does not allow you to actually purchase the finished furniture not even from a second hand store or a garage sale.

Still, there are things to do and ways to incorporate a very simple and cheap do-it-yourself furniture into an elaborate and refurnished atmosphere, the trick will be in the color palette that you are using and the overall design of your house, apartment, or room where the specific furniture will be placed.

• Bookshelves

There are many ways to create your own bookshelves.

o B&B

Boards and bricks are the most commonly used materials to construct and create your own bookshelves; the method is quite simple at it requires almost no building abilities or skills. All you do is pile up bricks to either side of the board and keep on building it as if you were doing a sandwich.

Of course, the brick colors and the board colors will stand up in any type of decoration, to blend them in you can use either Paper Mache or plaster. In this manner you can cover the bricks providing a paint receptive surface that will, in turn, allow you to blend the boards in and change the blending by simply scraping off the Mache Paper or the plaster.

The boards will be blended in simply by painting them according to the already selected palette.

o Wall mounted shelves

If you are not able to buy the bricks to create your own brick and board bookshelf, then you could prefer to use wall-mounted shelves; it is likely that someone in your group of friends or relatives is able to lend you a drill and some screws.

Wall mounted shelves are easy to install; however, you will need to make sure that they are actually horizontal.

Cushionizing your house or apartment
Part 2

A good choice are green plants, the ones that do not flourish, these types of plants are able to grow with little to no direct sun light, cactus plants will grow perfectly with little to no water, however they do require lots and lots of direct sunlight and a hot day temperature while a cool one at night. If you are determined on blooming plants, then you will need to consider window orientation and caring directions before you should purchase even one.

• Bedroom

A bedroom is the least visited place in the house or apartment, here you will only bring those who are very special to you, it is your place to linger, dream, plan, sob, regret, vent and so on; therefore, the ambiance and decoration should also be special and the overall ambiance created should be cozy, to say the least.

Regardless if you have to lay your mattress on the floor or if you are able to have a bed and all the proper bedroom furniture, using cushions can create a nest-like perception that will allow you to enjoy those quiet moments when all your dedication is directed to the most important person in your life at that moment: YOU.

A thumb rule is that if you are using a dark coloring like the one that most oriental oriented decorations have, the cushions that you use should be as soft as possible, this is created by the proper use of cushion stuffing. In an opposite manner, if you are using clear colors, then you can balance the cushions with soft and medium hard cushions.

One of the biggest problems for young adults that are decorating and furnishing their houses or student apartments is to know how many cushions will they be needing in order to being able to create a cuddly environment. There is no specific number suitable for any of the rooms in a house or apartment; a living room can have as few as one cushion per seat, while a bedroom can have as many as two each: Huge, big, medium, small and petite.

However, if you decide to create the cushions yourself and decorate them accordingly to the design that you have already made for your house or apartment, then you should try to make them of solid colors in the palette that you have already used and then decorate them with fabric paint.

Cushionizing your house or apartment
Part 1

When you have decided and structured the decoration of your house or apartment and proceeded to create a unique design on the fabric of a hand me down furniture, carpet or rug, and wall, the following step, of course is to commence to make the environment more cuddly and comfortable. Each one of the rooms will require a special treatment either in the form of accessories or in the form of plants.

• Living room

This is the room that will receive the biggest amount of visitors, therefore, it should be the most friendly, the most versatile, and the easiest to clean at the same time. This is no simple matter and in most cases is something that will require additional effort, yet, by using cushions you can make the most resilient and ugly of the furniture into a cuddly piece.

For instance, if the furniture that your relatives or you were able to acquire in a second hand store or a garage sale is decorated in a block color such as brick red or brown, and you decided to customize it with fabric painting a wonderful marine scene or a flower bouquet. You can accentuate and finish the idea by using cushions whose fabrics hold the colors that you used on your designs.

• Dinning room

Of course, it will be more than strange to have a dinning room that is flooded with cushions, however, you can still accessorize a fabric painted chair cushion with a smaller one, just as you did with the living room cushioning relations. Just make sure that the cushions that you use for the dinning room are small enough to fit in the little void that is formed in the lower back.

Other than that, this room, the second most visited room in the house or apartment can only resist and endure accessories and plants. If you choose plants, remember to select only those who will grow and flourish with little to no care, since when you leave the house or apartment that you have during college or university vacations there will be no one left to water them.

Unless you can figure out a way to keep the moisturized and well during your stay, have roommates that will remain in the house or apartment for the duration of your trip or have someone who you trust enough to give him or her your house or apartment keys allowing him or her to enter to water the plants.

Tidbits for grocery shopping corner cutting for students with student loan budgets

When you are a student who is looking to achieve a collage or university education, you have to learn how to “cut corners” on the expenses that you will be having, especially if you are currently enjoying the benefits of a student loan. One of such “corner cutting” are groceries.

Whether you are on a dorm room by yourself or with other people or sharing an apartment, you will need to make your own personal shopping for things such as toilet paper, shampoo, laundry soap and things like that.

Here are some pointers that might prove beneficial when dealing with corner cutting and grocery shopping.

• Do not check only price, check net weights, as well as ingredients. In cleaning products, this is particularly important since it is how you can determine whether a product has a bleach or ammonia base. In other cases, the price might seem lower, but the net weight is also lower, so it ends up costing more.

• Do not plunge into buying brand-free products, these products might seem cheaper but they lack the efficiency of the brand products, therefore, you will need twice as much to get the same result of a single use of a brand product. Of course, there are cases where they are actually good.

To see how to determine whether a brand-free product is actually good or not can only be done upon experience, but being a student with a student loan budget it is highly unlikely that you have the financial buoyancy that allows you to risk or loose the price of the product. If you want to know if they are any good, ask your parents or your family members to see if they had tried them and what results did they get.

• If the product does not perish or decomposes, consider buying the family size. Of course, consider that if you buy the family size product you will not be able to change the fragrance or any other special characteristics until the product has gone. On the other hand, you will need to crunch some numbers, sometimes buying the family size product will only “save” you cents instead of whole dollars; in such cases, there is no point in doing the trip all the way to the price market to seek these sizes.

• If your needs are low and buying a full size product (even if it is the smallest presentation) is still too much for you and your budget, get together with some friends or their families and go shopping together. Your pitching in with the tab will allow you to make an input or two on what they are buying and you will learn in turn also.

Tidbits on microwave ovens for the student with a student loan budget

When you are cooking for yourself on the microwave there is a whole lot of information that might come on the instruction booklet and cooking guide of your microwave oven, if, that is, you are lucky enough to have a new one.

For the vast majority, their own microwave ovens came out from the generous donations of family members who were just as well going to toss their microwave ovens to the trash, since they have a new one. In other cases, their microwave oven came from Salvation Army or Second Hand stores or from “sharing” programs scheduled and organized even by internet businesses or any other form of company.

In these cases, there is no luck in having an instruction booklet and even less a chance for a cooking guide. Some resourceful students will write the manufacturing company and ask them for a replacement for these important papers on their microwave ovens. Yet some will not since they already have a microwave oven at home and the functions are basically the same, there is little to no point –at least to them- to waste time and money requesting instruction booklets and cooking guides.

Here are some guidelines in terms of the managing on the microwave cooking scheme.

• You can make hot cakes, though it is cooked, it will not look the same or taste the same, but it can also make up for a small personal cake.

• If you are frying things on your microwave, always use a protective lid and remember to take out the excess oil if you are frying bacon, sausage or any other greasy food.

• If you are boiling water, keep the edge of the water at least ¼” down of the rim of the recipient in which you are boiling the water.

• Despite what any manufacturer states, always try and use glass cookware on your microwave, avoid metal and resins, especially if you are making your own popcorn.

• Clean your oven at least once a week, but deodorize it as often as you can, especially after cooking stew or any other spiced food, just boiling one cup of water will suffice.

• The best way to create gourmet masterpieces in the microwave oven is to practice, there are things that you did not think you could do and things that you think you can do but you really cannot, but the only way you can truly know is to try to do them.

Tidbits in food budgeting for students with student loan budgets

When you do not have to sit at the dinning table to eat with the rest of the family because you are at college or the university making the most out of the student loan that you have, it is not difficult or rare to see that manners are lost and that leniency settles in almost never to leave.

It is important for any student to be able to battle and counteract against such laziness. One of the options is to force him or herself to sit at a specific area of the dorm room or the shared apartment and eat; another option is to prepare the meal in such a way that it might seem a dish that is cooked at any of the many surrounding restaurants.

This might be a difficult task especially for those students who are located at single room dorm rooms, especially considering that in such cases, the need for silverware and chinaware might impede or make it difficult for the student to set the table with all adequacy.

Still, there is no reason why the student will not be able to décor his or her plate with parsley or cilantro to make it presentable and attractive to the eye. In terms of the ingredients, the student that is cooking for him or herself can easily obtain gourmet ingredients such as smoked ham, truffles, bacon, champignons and the like in a very easy and by the piece manner, so that he or she can prepare enough food just for one without having to have leftover food for several days.

Regardless of this, it is important that the student is able to handle his or her way with a microwave oven since this is the most secure, efficient and cost reducing kitchen appliance that the student can have in his or her dorm room.

Learning to handle and to operate a microwave will require some effort and trial and error on behalf of the student. Once he or she has mastered at least the basic skills of the microwave oven, he or she will be able to significantly reduce the food related expenses that he or she has to make in order to keep adjusted to the student loan monthly budget.

Therefore, it is going to be important for the student with a student loan to be able to know where can he or she buy single ingredients by the piece instead of the bulky presentations that most convenient stores have available for their customers.