Tag Archive for living

5 Benefits of Volunteering or Doing Community Service

5 Benefits of Volunteering

Volunteering has many benefits for both the community and the volunteers themselves.

5 Benefits of Volunteering or Doing Community Service

Volunteering benefits not only those you are helping but also yourself. Though you most likely are volunteering (or thinking about volunteering) because you want to help others and/or do some good in your community, volunteering also comes with some lasting benefits for the volunteer.

Whether you are volunteering to help your community, individuals, animals, or the environment, what you get back from your acts of service can be worth just as much as the work you put in. Below, we explore five of the main benefits of volunteering in your community.

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Five Types of Spider Plants for Your Indoor Garden

5 Types of Spider Plants for Your Indoor Garden

Spider plants are one of the best house plants you can bring into your home, and there are many different varieties to choose from.

Five Types of Spider Plants for Your Indoor Garden

Spider plants are one of the most popular houseplants, and for good reason. These tropical-looking plants are very easy to care for and difficult to kill. They are believed to be one of the best houseplants for cleaning the air and removing indoor air pollution, and they are safe to have around cats and dogs. These plants are also very easy to propagate, so you can quickly fill your house with baby spider plants, or gift them to all of your friends and family. There are several different spider plant cultivars to choose from, depending on your personal preferences. All of the available varieties make excellent additions to your home. Here are some of the most popular varieties of spider plants available.

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Why Spider Plants Are the Perfect Houseplants

Why Spider Plants are the Perfect Houseplants

There are many benefits to owning a spider plant.

Why Spider Plants Are the Perfect Houseplants

Spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum) are one of the most popular houseplants, and for good reason. There are many benefits to choosing a spider plant as your next houseplant. These tropical, leafy plants are incredibly easy to care for and are very difficult to kill. They are believed to be one of the most effective houseplants for cleaning the air and removing indoor air pollution. Spider plants are also one of the best houseplants for pet-lovers, as they non-toxic to cats and dogs. These plants are very easy to propagate from naturally growing offsets, so you can quickly fill your house with baby spider plants. These baby spider plant plantlets also make wonderful gifts for your friends and family. Here are some of the reasons why spider plants make the perfect houseplants.

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How to Clean Your Drains Naturally With Bokashi Tea

Unclog your drains with Bokashi tea!

Bokashi tea is a wonderful, eco-friendly alternative to harsh chemical drain cleaners. Learn how to use this bokashi composting byproduct to safely and effectively get rid of annoying clogs in your plumbing.

How to Clean Your Drains Naturally With Bokashi Tea

Bokashi tea, also sometimes called bokashi leachate or bokashi juice, is the liquid that builds up at the bottom of a bokashi bucket. It is simply a byproduct of the fermentation process that happens inside the bokashi bucket. This byproduct doesn’t have to go to waste. In fact, it has a number of uses, including fertilizer, weedkiller, and even drain cleaner! This article will focus on how to use bokashi tea as a green, eco-friendly alternative to traditional harsh chemical drain cleaners.

If you aren’t familiar with bokashi composting or are interested in starting your own bokashi bin, check out my article: How to Set Up and Use a Bokashi Bucket for Indoor Composting

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Just an Update

As always, I’ve been busy and forgot to update this blog for a long time. Since the last time you’ve heard from me, my boyfriend and I have moved out of our small apartment and into a townhouse. I’ve also decided to go back to school for video game design this fall. So here’s everything that’s going on in my life right now:

Our new place is pretty awesome. We have an extra bedroom, which I have turned into a classic gaming room (pictures to come!) We still need to get some poster frames so we can finish decorating.

As long as nothing happens with my financial aid, I’ll be going back to school for video game design. I realized that, at this point, I’m probably never going to “grow up” and decide on a grown-up type of career, so I might as well try to make a career out of something I actually enjoy.

I bought a Kinect as soon as we moved into our new place, since we have enough living room space for it now. I’ve already lost a little bit of weight playing it. I’m hoping to get into awesome shape so I can go to the beach this summer, not look like a gamer stereotype when school starts, and be able to pull off a Golden Axe cosplay.

I won’t be at Colossalcon this year (unless we decide to go for maybe one day), since my friend is getting married that Saturday, and I’m going to be a bridesmaid. It would be pretty douchey to skip a friend’s wedding for something like that. But I’ll hopefully be able to go to other cons later this summer.

I did go to Shinbokucon, which was pretty much how you’d expect Shinbokucon to be. We just reused our Elfen Lied costumes for that, since that con isn’t really worth making a whole new cosplay.

I guess that’s about it for now. I don’t have any photos for this post, so I’ll use one from my Elfen Lied cosplay. Notice how I switched from the horns to bows.

Our New Apartment

Here's my awesome desk. I believe you have my stapler...

We’ve had our new apartment for over a month. I promised I’d show off the place in my blog, even though anyone who actually cares about it has already seen it in person by now. Anyway, Here’s some photos of our awesome new apartment.

Here's my awesome desk. I believe you have my stapler...

Here's my awesome desk. I believe you have my stapler...

Here's our built-in bookshelves. This is were we keep our action figures and other nerdy crap.

Here's our built-in bookshelves. This is were we keep our action figures and other nerdy crap.

Hans let me hang my Sailor Moon wall scroll in the living room!

Hans let me hang my Sailor Moon wall scroll in the living room!

I decorated our air conditioner with Sailor Moon dolls and a dinosaur lamp.

I decorated our air conditioner with Sailor Moon dolls and a dinosaur lamp.

I’ve done some other stuff that was actually somewhat interesting over the the past month, such as go to an anime convention. (Read about it at 8BitBites!)

I will also be publishing short stories and novels in ebook form. My first one is just about ready to be published. Check back for my next post to find out how you can get them!

Moving!

Great news: Hans and I are moving to our new apartment this Sunday! Okay, if you are someone we actually care about you already know by now, and are probably getting sick of hearing about it. If you are just some random internet stalker, you now know a new cool story.

After looking at a few places, we found a great one bedroom apartment that we both really liked in an undisclosed location. We viewed the apartment for the second time and got the application Monday, applied Tuesday, were approved Wednesday, and signed the lease Thursday. It has been a busy week. We are now enjoying 2 days of rest (AKA packing) before moving in on Sunday.

Our apartment is in a nice, quiet community of mostly 40-50 year olds, so it won’t be infested with small children or drunk college kids. We won’t be bothered by annoying people our age, unless we decided to invite our friends over! We also hit the neighbor jackpot, as the landlady said that all of our nextdoor neighbors are rarely there during times we’ll be home. The walls are also thick enough that we probably won’t hear them (and vice versa) anyway. Yay not having paper thin walls in our bedroom!

We have all of our furniture covered too! Through the wonders of FaceBook and actually having real-life friends, we’re getting an awesome couch and chair set and a lamp from a good friend. We also got a not-so-awesome, but functional, computer desk from a friend of a friend. Between the two of us, we already had everything else we need.

I can’t wait to finally have our own place! We’re going to have so much fun building couch forts and playing awesome board games like Hungry Hungry Hippos, Candyland, and Pokemon Monopoly all night. (That’s what couples who live together do, right? Build forts and play children’s board games? This is the first time either of us has lived with someone, so we’re new to this!). Since Hans just turned 8 on February 29th, I figured he’d like to have some fun games to play. I need to keep him entertained while I’m kitchening. (Who am I kidding? After a week or two, he probably won’t let me kitchen any more).

Maybe I’ll post pictures of our new place in a future post. Or maybe they’ll just go on FaceBook if I even bother to take photos. We probably won’t get internets until the middle of next week sometime, so I probably won’t post right away unless I go to the college to borrow some internets.

Yay! 🙂

 

Our New Home

While looking at apartments and houses to rent, I realized that it would make more sense to just build a new home. Most rentals in my price range are in the ghetto or infested with small children and drunk college kids. Since my boyfriend didn’t seem to like my suggestion that we build our house out of dirt and stuff, I had to find an alternate building material. I think it turned out pretty good. Take a look at our photos and let me know what you think!

Here Hans and I are standing outside of our beautiful new home. It’s a cozy ranch style home built from the highest quality red bricks. It even features an iconic white picket fence, representative of the American dream (no, there will not be 2.5 kids or minivans any time soon):

Jen and Hans standing in front of their new home.

A new house isn’t complete without a new car! Since we don’t need a minivan, we opted to get a more fun, sportier vehicle. Here we are in our brand-new sports car sitting in our driveway:

Jen and Hans test driving their new car

Let’s go inside now, shall we? In this next photo, you can see Hans and I enjoying a meal in our modern, minimalist new kitchen. It was my turn to cook dinner today. I decided to make an Ethiopian recipe that I’ve been wanting to try out:

Hans and I enjoying a meal in our dinning area.

Now let’s head on over to the bedroom. Here Hans and I are testing out our super comfortable new queen-size Tempur-Pedic mattress:

Our New Bedroom

I hope you enjoyed your photo tour of our new home!