I was thinking today, as I poked my head out the door to my parent’s backyard to the campfire they made, how many experiences the smell, and sound reminded me of. From summer camp to family gatherings, to late nights with friends. We often let smells, and sounds take a back seat in our memories.  Often they’re not memorable or even noticeable in some cases, but I think there’s some worth thinking about. As a Minnesotan, I understand the thought behind smelling, rain and snow and hearing rain, it’s a comfort you end up remembering times when you were a kid playing in the snow, or when you heard rain…

I love getting a good bargain. I love saving money on things I know I need anyway. My Mom and my best friend from high school have helped me develop up a good bargain hunter mentality. We save money this way but also shop smart.  I love looking at everything from estate sales, to garage sales, to flea markets, and thrift stores. I have found some of my favorite clothing pieces and sports equipment at these places, in addition to my beautiful china set. I have been able to buy things that I would not have been able to afford otherwise, hockey gloves, designer shoes, and again the china because…

I’ve tried an escape room before, it was huge, and quite hard, but my group and I enjoyed it, and I was excited about trying one again. They’re a challenge but one where you know there is, for the most part, a logical end. So when my Dad decided he wanted to try one as a family for his birthday, I was excited if not slightly concerned: Would we get frustrated as a group being that I was the only one who had tried it before? Would we get stuck? We decided to try one called the Inheritance *see title*. We were solving puzzles in what felt like a dining room…

As I’ve gotten older I’ve taken on my Mom’s affinity for looking at home magazines, and looking past the old items at estate sales to see the home design present. All the designs I’ve seen have gotten me excited about furnishing my own home someday and since high school graduation, I’ve been collecting home items. My sister and I realized that we didn’t want to pay full price for furniture, and other items we would need, and we didn’t want to buy it all at once, so we started adding home essentials to birthday lists. We also started saving items for ourselves that my parents had replaced and were happy…

I grew up listening to the Christian radio station on the radio and kid’s music, namely Veggie Tales, and Disney. As I’ve grown up my music taste has really only expanded, and I’ve come to like all lot of different genres. Though there is one artist that I’ve heard all my life that I consistently come back to, Steven Curtis Chapman. He’s unique in that he’s been in the business 1980s, but he continues to write original songs, and that some of his songs are worship, and others are more just encouraging, but almost all of them are gospel focused. He has written songs that I have found to encourage…

A couple of weeks ago I tried a virtual reality (VR) system for the first time. My friend has a state of the art home system and they let me try it. I couldn’t believe how real it felt even, though it didn’t actually look completely real. VR has a lot of potentially interesting implications in the real world. After I took off the equipment my friends and I discussed the implications VR could have on the world. If businesses used this kind of tech, people wouldn’t necessarily have to come to work, they’d be able to just visit the virtual office that everyone else was connected to. This is…