1. Don’t buy your books. WHAT? Don’t buy books? Okay, buy them, but don’t go through the bookstore, unless you have to! Check out Chegg, Amazon Textbook, or BigWords. I’ve been renting from Amazon since I started college, and thanks to my Prime membership, I get the books within two days and at a great price. Chegg is another awesome resource. I started renting from them my second semester of college. They not only have great prices on renting and buying new or used books, but they almost always send fun goodies along too. Last semester I received a new flavor of Red Bull, Tide Pods and a coupon for 3 months of Hulu for FREE! I just started using BigWords, but they are an awesome company who scans tons of websites to find the best prices!

2. Be prepared with supplies. Nothing sucks more than having to run in to the bookstore and grab a set of pens thats $4.99 when a pack of 10 at Walmart is $2… That $2.99 savings could have gone towards a Starbucks tea… Or Chick-fil-A! Buy your supplies early!

3. Check the clearance rack for notebooks and other supplies! All of the “fun” school supplies are long gone because no one actually cares about college kids and their need for school supplies mid year. But the clearance racks hold lots and lots of spiral notebooks. So what if the cover isn’t adorable? Mod-Podge a cute piece of scrapbook paper to the front and call it a day!

4. Invest in some form of a planner. The year is almost 3 weeks in and there’s a good chance stores are starting to put planners on sale, especially the ones that started in September! I received a Kate Spade planner for my birthday. It was on sale for $19, and thankfully my savvy aunt jumped on the sale and purchased it for me. If not a planner, use free printables or even your phone to store assignment due dates and test dates because we all know you probably won’t keep up with your syllabus the entire semester.

5. Look up everywhere that gives student discounts. Make a list of your favorite places, put it in your phone or planner and put those discounts to use! Student discounts can save you at SO many places, some that you would never expect to give a discount! Saving in one place can go to spending in another!

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We rolled in to Frisco, Colorado that afternoon and our bodies were NOT happy about the intense altitude changes. After a quick stop at Starbucks for some warm drinks to help soothe our throats, we were in Breck within minutes!

As always, we stayed in a beautiful AirBnB with spectacular views of Downtown Breckenridge.  I could not have asked for a better place to stay! We were within walking distance of Main St. AND the bus stop that took us to the mountains, what else could we need in a ski town?

Thomas and I grabbed our ski gear the night before we hit the slops. I was SO excited to have ski boots in my favorite color! 

We really thought we were over packing with tons and tons of layers, but when we arrived on the mountain the first day, it was 0 degrees. I had 7 layers on the first day, and was still a little chilly! The first time Thomas took me Skiing for my “Birthday of a Lifetime” trip, it was in the 40’s and 50’s, so these temps were quite different!

By the afternoon on our first day, it had turned from bright and cheery to snowy and dark, which was A-Okay with me! I had certainly never seen such intense snowfall, and I was so in love with its beauty!

So many of the trees has giant ornaments on them! I was so enamored with the charm of this little city!

I’d be lying if I said I loved crepes, I really actually used to hate crepes, but before our arrival, Thomas found a little crepe place on Main St. that has amazing reviews! The only downside? There’s no indoor seating! Which means you can either sit outside in the -14 degree weather or take it while you walk. Regardless, these crepes were a game changer for me. I can now proudly say I am a crepe lover!

Our second day on the slopes was EVEN COLDER than the first. We were certainly not used to negative temps, but we embraced them with lots and lots of layers and facemarks and made the best of it!

As a fun change up from shredding it on the slopes, we decided to shred it up with snowmobiles one day!

I had never been on a snowmobile before, Texas doesn’t get much snow, duh, which made this experience so much more fun! We rode them alllllllllll the way up to the Continental Divide at Georgia Pass, where it was -33 degrees. If you didn’t know, iPhones don’t really work at those temps, so I was unable to get any pictures from the top!

From the time we got there until the time we left, we had almost TWO feet of snow! I had never seen so much snow in my entire life!

This was easily the best vacation Thomas and I have been on! We were able to experience so many new things and see SO much snow! I don’t think there is any present that he could have put under the tree that would have topped this trip! I’d rather have experiences over “stuff” any day!

Now for the real reason we drove instead of flying…. When Thomas and I first started dating, Thomas was going to school in a small town in Kansas, which meant once our first summer of dating was over, we would transition in to a long distance relationship…We took the picture on the left in August of 2012, after only dating for a few months, and having no idea what was to come in our relationship. After a stop at our favorite local market in this tiny town, we knew we just had to recreate the picture from our first trip!

This trip proved to be so much more than I could have ever imagined, but it certainly threw me off on Christmas shopping and everything else holiday related! Sometimes, it’s just best to go with the flow and not worry about everything else, and that’s exactly what my motto has been this holiday season!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is prepping for an awesome New Year!

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