Happy Holidays from DormDelicious

Good evening! We're just checking in to wish everyone a happy holiday season...

Happy Holiday Season!!

For those that celebrate, we hope you had a great Christmas day today. We have been, and will continue to be, celebrating through the New Year (it's our birthday on the 30th also... presents are accepted!) so there may not be many updates between now and then.

But don't forget about us - we'll be back strong in '09 with exciting giveaways, guest posts, new site features, and of course, good old fashioned advice on dorm decorating. Until then, stay delicious and be safe!

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Dorm Videos: Wall Street Journal - Tech Dorm Gone Wild

The Wall Street Journal visits the PUTZ dorm at MIT, where MIDAS (the dorm room with a "party mode" resides). It all looks a little dark but the technology is sweet, and the idea that MIT students stay in the same dorm all four years is pretty cool. It opens up the possibility of making your room that much more of a home, and probably means students save on summer storage costs.

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Make Your Off Campus House A Home

We see no reason why your off campus accommodations can't be delicious, too. This post is the third in a series of posts on off campus housing and, yes, gasp, moving beyond that university-owned bubble that is your college dorm.

Once you find off campus housing and sign that lease, the next obvious step is thinking about how to decorate it! Your new bedroom is really not that different from a dorm room, and we actually know a great website with killer decorating tips for it (hint: it's DormDelicious!) In this article, though, we'll highlight some things to think about in your house or apartment that are different from living in the dorms. We'll talk about how to take advantage of all the freedoms you get with off campus housing (as well as how to cope with the inherent risks), and what to do with all the space outside your bedroom.

Undoubtedly, while living in the dorms you noticed there was quite a lot you couldn't do when decorating. For better or worse, in an off campus house or apartment you start with a blank slate. For people who love to decorate, this is great: you can put up curtains, go on an Ikea shopping spree, (maybe) paint the walls, put up art, and so on. If you are not so decorating-inclined, fear not! We'll break it down for you.

The Bedroom: Where The Magic Happens?

Lebowski on rug... it really brings the room togetherYour bedroom might be considered your new dorm room, but let's not make it Dorm 2.0 okay? First, think about getting a bigger bed. It's time to part with those Twin XL sheets. Yes, say goodbye. They've served well under you... and on top of you I suppose. Please donate them to Goodwill or Salvation Army, though. Someone else will be able to use them! Two more key bedroom items to consider: a dresser and a desk. When shopping, don't forget our advice on getting cheap dorm room furniture. Depending on whether your room is carpeted or not, you might also consider getting a nice rug. It'll really bring the room together.

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Delicious Site: Find Dorm Supplies Easily At Dorm Spot

Recently we were contacted by Tim over at Dorm Spot, who let us know all about his site that helps students shop for common dorm room needs. They are also adding cool features like a list builder, which allows you to create a list of things you want to bring to your dorm.

An extension of this that we think is particularly cool considering we've already given advice on what to split with your roommate, is that you can add roommates and view their lists to make sure you don't overlap.

Here's what Tim had to say about Dorm Spot...

Usually, preparation for the first year in college is a shot in the dark at best. Half of the stuff on your list you end up not needing, and the rest you end up buying after you get there, once you realize how unprepared you are. Until Dorm Spot, there wasn't really much out there to help college students find and acquire everything needed for freshman year in the dorms.

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DormDelicious Is On Facebook

Good news! We've taken the plunge into the world of Facebook by creating a DormDelicious Page where you can become a fan of us. It's lonely over there right now so help us out by becoming a fan!

Also, here is an added incentive: we can't make any promises, but we're in the midst of planning some exciting giveaways and one of them might just involve being a fan on Facebook - so best to get in there early!

While you're at it, make sure you're following us on Twitter, friends with us on Digg, and subscribed to our RSS feed. So many ways to keep up with us!

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Get 15% Off Custom Dorm Room Art from PhotoFiddle!

The holidays are approaching, and maybe you're looking for some creative gift ideas or, as always, a way to spice up your dorm decor. Today we've got a great deal on a cool product from Photofiddle. Basically, you give them a high-resolution photo, and they create a unique piece of art on canvas in an artistic style of your choosing. There are a variety of styles available, but the "Impasto" style is shown here:

We're waiting for ours to arrive in the mail, at which point we can tell you how it looks, but until then Ira at Photofiddle has been generous enough to offer DormDelicious readers 15% off their custom art. Just enter the code dorm15 at checkout.

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The Dorm Room Decorating Quiz: 2 Years Later

A little over two years ago we created the Dorm Room Decorating Quiz, which is a simple 5 question quiz that will determine what the best color scheme is for your dorm room. Now, we admit it's a little tongue-in-cheek and hardly scientific... how could it be? All the same, over twelve thousand people have taken the quiz!

Now that we have a significant amount of data to crunch, we thought it would be cool to update you with how DormDelicious readers fall on the color scheme scale. The quiz separates people into 4 categories: chill people, go-getters, creative spirits, and edgy rockers.

A chill person should have light, bright colors. A go-getter needs professional colors like navy blue and gold. A creative spirit should mix and match crazy colors and patterns - they're creative so they can make it work. Finally, an edgy person will have a neutral room with drastic accent colors like black, silver, and red - not to mention tons of concert posters and the like.

Without further ado, here are the results. Of the 12,192 quiz-takers:

[ Continue reading The Dorm Room Decorating Quiz: 2 Years Later → ]


How To Find Delicious Off Campus Housing

We see no reason why your off campus accommodations can't be delicious, too. This post is the second in a series of posts on off campus housing and, yes, gasp, moving beyond that university-owned bubble that is your college dorm.

Now that you've decided that housing off campus is right for you, we're going to dispense some advice based on our own experience looking for the perfect off campus house as well as some advice we received from folks who are following @dormdelicious on Twitter, like Kristen from Rate My Student Rental, who wrote up some great info for us. So let's get started. Before you even start thinking about housing, you must...

Learn Who Your Friends Are

Who are you going to live with? In order to know what you're in the market for you need to know how big your group is. If you're one, two, or three people you might be looking for an apartment. If your group consists of you and 10 to 15 of your closest friends you might be in the market for a house (or a subdivision). Keep in mind you will probably have less selection with larger groups, but might get a better deal and more space since you can rent an entire house.

Kristen from Rate My Student Rental offers this advice:

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DormDelicious on Twitter (@dormdelicious)

We're Tweeting! For those of you unaware of the phenomenon that is Twitter, here's the scoop. It's basically a social tool that lets you communicate with people following you with short messages called tweets. Over the past week, DormDelicious has been building our Twitter account, @dormdelicious, which we encourage you all to start following.

Not only will we be updating you when we have new posts, we'll also be tweeting about goings-on in the college/dorm life space and asking for help as we write our articles. We think it's a great way to get quick feedback from college students like you, so we don't just keep writing about our own experiences, which we will eventually run out of, and have to write about that time we stole a cup from the dining hall, or that time we tried to do that thing where you make a harmonica out of a blade of grass.

For more Twitter fun, check out this just-released video from the guys over at HackCollege, where they ask 101 college students (at LMU, which is just up the street from us) whether they know what Twitter is. Enjoy! And remember to follow @dormdelicious.

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How Walkable is Your College Campus?

By now you've probably heard about Walkscore, a website that scores addresses on how walkable they are. Basically it takes into account the amount and diversity of businesses, parks, libraries, etc. within "walking distance" of an address and assigns a score. Presumably super-rural addresses would get a low Walkscore.

We think an interesting application of this service is to check a college's Walkscore and factor it into your college selection process. Depending on how important it is to be able to adventure in the area around your campus on foot, you might weight the Walkscore more or less highly in your selection criteria.

At the right is the Walkscore map of Harvard University. As you can see, there is lots to do within walking distance, earning Harvard a 98/100 on the walkability scale. This is not surprising, since Harvard is right in the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts and not far from Boston. Just out of curiosity, we looked at how walkable the United States' top universities were. Here's what we found:

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