Clothes Swap!

Bored of your clothes? Me too. That's why my friends and I had a clothes swap! It's a great way to give away the clothes you don't want and get free new-to-you clothes! What you do is get everyone together, boys and girls, and bring all of the clothes you don't wear anymore. Lay them all out and mix and match until you have a few new outfit ideas. With the clothes you have left over you can donate them to your salvation army or local clothing drive! This way everyone benefits and you have done you good deed for the day!

If you are feeling more on the money making side, you could do something like set up a facebook group where you and your friends display your clothes. Between everyone, you can either sell or auction your clothes off to make a little bit of money! This is a great way to reach out to those "acquaintances" who aren't really your personal friends, but still love your style. 

Easy ways to Save Money

• I know it's all about the cheap stuff, but a girls gotta dream! It's why I work so hard to find cheap accessories, clothes and decorations and what-not so that we can save up for those things that really matter to us! Knowing myself I get carried away and about 90% of my money goes to food, clothes and liquor. Saving a dollar here and there eventually does add up, and maybe with that change you can buy that Cannon DSLR camera you've been desperately wanting....or maybe thats just me. It's all about patients though. What I like to do is to set aside a jar where you can put your spare change into. Instead of buying that bag of chips at the end of the day or the chocolate bar, put the change into your jar. To make absolute sure that you don't spend it, tape around the seal and cut a slit in the cover so that you can't give into temptation. It will suck when your hungry, but trust me it will pay off! What I'm really dreaming for is a car and a really nice camera. I know change wont buy a car all on its own, but you'd be surprised how quickly you can get to at least $100. So if you think about it, it's $100 you don't have to get from somewhere else!

• Create a separate account. By creating a savings account or a checking account it is easy to keep extra money out of site so you aren't tempted to spend it. Plus it feels sooo good to see your money adding up instead of continuously going down. 

• Another idea would be to give up something for a month. This takes a lot of will power, but pays off even more then your money jar! Say you give up liquor for a month (not likely for some of you, especially if you're like me haha), take the money you would have spent each weekend (or more then that, I don't judge) and put it either into your separate account or your money jar. It may be a bit of a wake up call about how much you spend!

• Using ATMs. They are great when you are in a stitch for cash, but it adds up after only a couple uses. If you are at a university like me, you may be victim to using the closest ATM around because you don't have a way to get to your bank or it's just a hassle. If you could cut it out completely that would be awesome, however thats probably not realistic. What I started doing is instead of taking out $20 every time I use it, I take out $60 or more to last me the whole month. This both limits me to how much cash I spend in the month as well as cuts down on the number of fees I have to pay for using a random ATM. It's a win-win. 

How To Make Your Own Necklace!

Here I'm going to show you a cheap, easy way to make your very own necklace. You can really do any type of design you want, but this is an example of how I did mine.

Materials you need:

• String- I used colored hemp from the Dollarstore (of course!)
• Small beads- can be any size, I used two small colored beads
• One big bead- from Michael's
• Wire- I bought mine from Michael's, which was about $5.00 Canadian
• Small connector rings- I'm not actually sure if that's what they are called, but it's a small ring connecting the big bead and the string. Again from Michael's
• Pliers- I got mine cheap from the Dollarstore 
• Scissors 

1. First What you need to do for this necklace is cut a piece of wire long enough to wrap around your big bead a couple of times. Put the wire through the hole in the bead so that it will stay in place, and start wrapping it tightly around the sides. This is where you may need the pliers if the wire is not very bendable. 
2. Second, take your string and cut it to your desired length. Make sure you have it doubled because it has to go around your neck, so it will be twice the length if you just measured out one strand. What I did, was made it so the bead would fall almost to my stomach, then put two slip knots in at the top so if I wanted it shorter, I could. 
3. Third, take your connector ring and put it around the surrounding wire of the big bead, then put your string through it as well so that your necklace is now put together. 
4. Put your two small beads through the string down to the bottom by the big bead. If they do not fit both strings (like mine didn't) just put them on one string and tie a knot with both strings above thee beads so they stay in place. 
5. Tie either a regular knot at the top of your necklace or a slip knot (by tying a knot with only the left string over the right string and vice versa), and your ALL DONE!

This is what mine turned out like :)