Patio Party Essentials

Throwing together a quick backyard barbecue is about more than just being open to neighbors dropping by—you want to make your event inviting, fun, and interesting.

Make sure you have more than enough food.

You never know if your neighbors will stop by, and if they do, who they might have with them. Load up on cheap, simple foods for the grill that most people will find appealing:

• Hot dogs
• Burgers
• Bratwurst
• Sandwich-cut rib-eyes
• Chips
• Desserts

You don’t need to make fancy foods—just something to munch on while mingling is all it takes, and you don’t want to break the bank, either. Even with buns and condiments, you can feed quite a few people with just some of the foods listed above and have plenty left over (or in case your neighbors have all their loved ones in town for some reason).

Music

Most community spaces in apartment complexes have accessible outlets, so have some great music going at a reasonable volume. Top 40 is always a good choice, as there’s almost always something for everyone playing. It also gives the impression that your gathering is open.

Friends

The best way to draw people in is to have some people already having fun. Invite a few of your good friends to break the ice and make mingling easier.

Food makes friends.

If you want to make the best impression in an inviting community setting, our University Square apartments in Flagstaff have a sprawling, beautiful courtyard at your disposal. If the comfortable, inviting landscaping and grills make you want to plan your own patio party, you can see what spaces University Square has available right now.

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Clean up your apartment

Whether you select one of our studio, one-, or two-bedroom Flagstaff apartments, you must keep it clean in order to house your entire group. If you have junk on the floor or items sitting on the couch, you limit the amount of space you have to fit everyone. You also give the eye a place to wander to while everyone should be working. A messy apartment is a big distraction. 

Provide ample seating and surface area

Group projects typically involve long work sessions, so you don’t want to have anyone standing the whole time. Utilize your couch, dining room seats, desk chairs, floor pillows, and any other seating options you have available. Also, try to provide as much surface area as possible, so everyone can set down their laptops, notebooks and anything else that is required to efficiently work on the project.

Make sure you have surge protectors

Laptop batteries can last for some time, but it’s possible they may die. Have a surge protector or two on hand, so everyone can charge their laptops, if necessary. You don’t want a group member to avoid working simply because their laptop isn’t charged. 

Your friendly off-campus housing community

Our community has the perfect apartments in Flagstaff for students who regularly work on group projects at home. We have some of the best amenities available, and we’re pet friendly! Contact our front desk today to see what floor plans we have available. 

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Lighten Your Decor

This is a great time to invest in bright throw pillows and cream-colored rugs. Lighter colors are better here, but you don't need to stick to neutrals. Try experimenting with pastels or bright patterns.

Use Mirrors and Polished Surfaces

These reflect the light back, making the room seem brighter overall. Steal a tip right out of a decorating guide and place a large mirror opposite the windows. This will reflect light around the room. You can also polish furniture or flooring for extra shine.

Add Flowers

For a more subtle psychological trick, set out a vase of fresh flowers. Get a little creative here and skip the roses. Popular options include chrysanthemums (one of the longest lasting cut flowers), tulips (trendy and a perfect fit for spring), and daffodils for a splash of sunny color.

De-Clutter

Clutter doesn't just make spaces feel smaller. It also casts extra shadows in a room, making it literally darker. Get a head start on spring cleaning. Throw out, give away, or put up items you don't use all the time.

Add Lamps

Here's where you can really get creative. Check out local thrift stores or garage sales and you might score some really funky, unique lamps. Another option is to check out different lightbulbs. Some come in playful colors, while others have a special coating and mimic natural daylight.

Are you looking for comfortable living with easy university access in Flagstaff, AZ apartments? At University Square, we're in walking distance from NAU. We offer a wide variety of floor plans including studios and multi-bedroom apartments. Come by our website to see what's available.

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Gather Supplies Ahead of Time

Make sure you have pet shampoo, towels, a dog brush and any other bath supplies you need in easy reach before getting your pet into the tub. This makes it much more convenient for you to grab the items you need without having to worry about your dog jumping out of the tub.

Use Treats as a Lure

If you have pets who don’t like being in the tub, getting them into it can be the biggest challenge at bath time. You can use treats to lure pets toward the tub. Place a couple of small treats on the far side of the ledge around the tub to encourage your dog to get into it in order to reach them. Even if you have small pets who can be picked up and placed in the tub, treats can help them stay calm. Using treats also forms a positive association with the tub, which can make even the most skittish pets eager for bath time.

Get Three Towels Ready

Have three towels ready to use for bath time. Place one on the floor, so your pet won’t get water all over it after getting out of the tub. Drape another towel over your dog right after getting out of the tub to prevent water droplets from getting on the walls and other surfaces. Use a third towel to dry your dog off.

Our pet-friendly community allows up to two pets per apartment. Contact us to learn more about the pet policy for our apartments in Flagstaff, AZ.

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Ways to Use Your Apartment Community's Clubhouse

Crafting Nights

If you want to get to know your fellow community members better, why not offer to host a crafting night? Find a night that works best for the majority of residents and encourage everyone to bring their favorite crafting projects to work on. If you're good at your chosen craft, you could offer to teach a class. Provide popcorn and something delicious to drink, such as hot cocoa in the fall and winter and sparkling cider during spring and summer. Who knows — you might even start a regular tradition.

Study Groups

Study groups help students avoid procrastination as well as provide them with motivation and commitment. Most students also find it helpful to hear different perspectives, and you'll also be able to compare class notes with others. Whether it's a one-time group to get past a particularly tough midterm or something ongoing for a challenging course, your apartment community's clubhouse has large tables that are ideal for study groups. 

Book and Hobby Clubs

If you're a voracious reader or have a hobby that you enjoy and would like find others who have the same interests, consider setting up a book or hobby club using your apartment community's clubhouse as a meeting place. Your community manager should be able to help you with the specifics. For instance, perhaps there's a community bulletin board in the office where you can tack up a notice, or maybe your apartment complex has a social media page where you can reach out to interested parties. 

Our pet-friendly community offers studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. Please feel free to contact us for more information. 

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Summer makes you feel lazy and not much in the mood to fire up the oven. Still, residents of University Square in Flagstaff, AZ still need something to serve when they have a few friends over. Try throwing together one of these great summer recipes designed with the idea of beating the desert heat!

BLT Sliders

Turn this classic sandwich into a fun party treat. Fry up a pan of your favorite bacon – turkey or pork, it doesn’t matter! Next, stack your sandwiches with your meat of choice along with lettuce and tomatoes on toasted white or wheat bread.

Slice them into fours and serve them up on a platter to your guests. Leave their favorite condiments off to the side so guests can finish them off how they wish!            

Easy Shrimp Tacos

Just pull together these ingredients for something tasty that guests can serve themselves.

Shrimp Taco Ingredients

• Fresh or frozen shrimp
• ½ cup freshly chopped onions
• ½ cup sliced red bell peppers
• A pinch of sea salt
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Ground black pepper
• A pack of corn tortillas

Saute your onions and bell peppers in a pan with some olive oil. Toss the shrimp in a bowl along with your salt and ground pepper. Cook them in a separate pan until pink and fully cooked.

Spread some corn tortillas out on a baking sheet in an oven set on broil until warm. Place everything out for your guests along with sides like avocado or other fresh vegetables.

Melon Mix Fruit Salad

Serve your guest something cool for dessert by slicing up different melons like cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew into a large bowl. Add some grapes and strawberries for extra flavor.  

We want community members of our University Square apartments in Flagstaff, AZ to keep as cool as possible this summer. If you want more information on our available floor plans, call our office at (844) 795-6793.

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Need to know how to stay more organized in your apartment? When things get busy with work or school, it’s never easy to keep your apartment organized. Fortunately, these tips will help you figure out how to get your life in order even when things seem chaotic in general.

Use the One-Minute Rule

This is a great rule that can help you throughout your entire life. If the task takes less than one minute, consider it done. Make sure you complete tasks that take less than a minute right away because these things can make a huge difference in your organization (taking out the garbage, putting the dishes away from the dishwasher, folding a basket of laundry).

Learn How to Make Decisions Quickly

Many people struggle with small decisions that they need to make on a regular basis. Should I buy the fat-free milk or the 1% milk? Do I need the extra-strength garbage bags or will regular strength do? What toothpaste do I buy? Unfortunately, these decisions take a large chunk of time out of your day, so learn to make them faster.

Have a Home for Everything

This is a big one. Make sure that every item you have has a home in your home. Staying organized is about doing the small things quickly. When you get home from work or school, for example, you should know where to put your keys, your coat, your purse or wallet, and your book bag. When things like these don’t have a home, that’s when your apartment gets cluttered and disorganized.

Get Organized in Your Very Own Stylish Apartment

Style and organize your new apartment just the way you like it when you move into one of our cozy Flagstaff apartments for rent! University Square Apartments offer the best off-campus NAU housing in the area. You’ll get all the convenience and comfort of University Square’s unique situation. Plus, you’ll be within walking distance to NAU campus!

Contact us today to see what floor plans we currently have available!

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The University Square community is an active and vibrant part of the Northern Arizona University environment. In support of a healthy lifestyle, experts have found that using a foam roller is a great way to warm-up or cool-down before or after a strenuous activity, or it can be used as a stand-alone program to increase flexibility and loosen stiff joints. 

How to Use a Foam Roller in Your Fitness Routine

A foam roller workout applies pressure to muscles, simulating a massage. It loosens tight muscles and will speed up your recovery after exercising. Not only will foam rolling decrease soreness in muscles, it also increases your range of motion.

Roll your calves by putting a foam roller underneath the knee and lift your body up onto the palms of your hands. Slide yourself back and forth on the roller, while flexing your ankle up and down to work out kinds in the calves. Don't be afraid to linger for a few seconds when you a muscle spot that feels tight.

Roll your upper back which can become tense and tight from the stress of your day. Lie on the foam roller, by placing it just below your shoulder blades. Lift your hips up from the floor allowing your upper back to be supported by the roller. Move in a back and forth motion to loosen tight upper back muscles.

Roll your glutes, working separately on each side. Sit on the roller with one ankle crossed over the other side knee. Put pressure on your glutes as you roll back and forth with the body. Repeat with other ankle crossed to stretch alternate glute.

After your workout, relax in your spacious Flagstaff apartment home at University Square. The scenic environment, complete with outdoor grills and a picnic gazebo provide the perfect end your biking or jogging activities. While located near NAU, we offer pet-friendly living spaces in our studio, one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment homes.

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We walk through the rooms of a storm soaked apartment in Houston, Texas, as Mary, a twenty-plus-year resident of Nob Hill Apartments, points out the items she hopes she can keep, but we can clearly see are lost. The safety masks covering our mouths and noses do nothing to block the rank smell of stagnant flood water and growing mold. The air in the apartment is warm and humid, the air outside buzzing with mosquitos preying on the exposed skin of anyone walking through the community working to salvage what they can from the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Even with the flood waters receded, we feel the sense of loss that weighs heavy as a storm cloud over the apartment community we’ve come to serve.

We try to prepare Mary for the worst—the disheartening fact that most of her worldly possessions must be declared casualties of the hurricane’s destructive force. But Mary’s determination outweighs our own, and pushes us in a new direction. Where we strive to prepare her for despair, she insists upon building us up with hope. And as we tell her we will help her as best we can, she leaves us with these words: “When I was a child, my teacher told me that the good deeds you do are added as stars to your crown in heaven. Your crowns are going to be full of all the stars in the heavens.”

***

Our group of volunteers left Arizona in the early hours of September 6 to make our way to Houston. Our team was made up of multifamily housing team members from Bella Investment Group in Flagstaff, AZ, who had committed to partner with Apartment Life, an organization that places CARES Teams within apartment communities to “look for ways to love their neighbors as themselves.” We have often seen the outpouring of love CARES Teams deliver to the residents of our Bella communities—now was our chance to take the CARES mission upon ourselves and make a difference in the lives of those impacted by Hurricane Harvey.

After spending Wednesday evening assembling and loading U-Haul trucks with Resident Recovery Kits, we headed into the community on Thursday to see where we could help. As we approached Nob Hill Apartments, a 1300+ unit apartment community situated on Brays Bayou in the Meyerland suburb, we saw streets lined with debris and abandoned furniture, clothing, toys, even cars—all casualties of the surging flood waters. Nob Hill is where we met Mary, along with dozens of other residents who were packing up what they could to leave the community many of them called home. We expected the despair in the faces of the people of the community to match the destruction we saw in the streets. But where we expected despair, we saw hope.

One of the first young men we spoke to assured us that he had not been hit “too bad” by Harvey’s destructive power. “For me, it wasn’t as bad as for other folks,” he told us as we walked through one section of Nob Hill. “Other people got it much worse.” I learned later that for him, “not too bad” meant he “only” lost his car and about half of the possessions in his apartment. He counted himself lucky, despite his losses, and assured us that now that he knew we were there, he would help us find people who needed more help than he did. And he was true to his word. He eagerly came to us with the names and addresses of neighbors who could “really use your help,” and seemed overjoyed to be what he considered a “small part” of our work. The misery we expected seemed to have receded with the flood waters, and in its place love, humanity, and hope had blossomed.

For the CARES team in Houston, the Relief Kits and resources they handed out seemed like only a “drop in the bucket” of the recovery that needed to be done in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. An office team member, who had been pulled from a different property to assist at Nob Hill, described her efforts of pointing residents toward resources and gathering contact information from those who needed to move as “a drop in the bucket” compared to what she felt the people around her needed and the losses she knew they had endured. Even as we gave resources, monies, and hugs to those we met, we began to say that we knew it was only “a drop in the bucket” for those who had lost so much so quickly.

Yet the enduring power of hope outshined our perspective. The more people we met, the more we got the sense that in creating for themselves a sense of normalcy even among lost possessions, abandoned homes, and more, the residents of this community were finding something beyond the despair we saw on the news. Make no mistake—there remains much to be done to restore what has been lost in these communities devastated by the storms. But even beyond the knowledge of loss is the hope of helping hands. We saw donations from across the country pooled together to fan the flames of this hope. We witnessed police cars lining the streets from around the country to lend aid and relief to first responders who had not yet even had the chance to assess and accept their personal losses. We saw barbecue fundraisers and Red Cross vans delivering lunches and dinners on a daily basis where they were needed most. We saw neighbor reaching out to neighbor to lighten each other’s loads. And we saw tears of sorrow become tears of joy as people heard how far folks had come to help.

“To help me?” one woman said to me, stepping back in shock from a tight hug when I told her we had flown in from Arizona. “Y’all came all this way just to help me?”

“We know it’s just a drop in the bucket,” I found myself saying, but she cut me off.

“A drop in the bucket?” she gasped, clasping my hands in her own. “Child, it’s the whole ocean!”

I left Houston with news of the impending impact of Hurricane Irma ringing in the background on every television set we passed from our hotel lobby to the airport terminal. In the shadows of yet another destructive storm, it’s hard to ignore that there remains so much need along the Gulf Coast as residents there work to rebuild. Hurricane Harvey’s impact will be felt in this area for months, if not years, to come.

But even in the shadows of these destructive storms crashing upon our shores and cities, we see the silver linings illuminated by the selfless acts of people who keep their heads held high, their spirits lifted, and the hopes of their communities blazing against the dark times ahead. We can all be a part of bringing hope to these communities. Apartment Life continues to raise funds for relief efforts for both Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. The Red Cross continues to step up their efforts to prepare and provide relief. Countless other organizations are out there, waiting for each of us to step up and impact lives by being beacons of hope in the midst of despair.

Please join us in supporting the ongoing relief efforts, and make your own "drop in the bucket" contribution to those impacted by this year's hurricane storms:

Donations for Apartment Life Harvey Relief Kits: https://tiny.cc/alharvey

Donations for Apartment Life Irma Relief Kits: https://tiny.cc/alirma

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Working hard to study those books, but don’t want to get stiff? No need to take a full-on yoga break to beat muscle soreness and loosen up; here are seven stretches you can do right at your desk.

1. Inverted Hand Arm Lift

Interlace your fingers in front of you, then raise your arms in the air. When they’re over your head, turn your hands upside down so palms face the ceiling. Hold for 15 seconds.

2. Side Bends

Stand in front of your desk, then grab your elbows above your head. Slowly bend to one side and hold the pose for 10 seconds, then bend to the other side. Keep the plane of your body straight, pulling your core in.

3. Shoulder Lifts

Stand straight up with your arms down at your side. Lift your shoulders up and let them drop in 5-second intervals. If you want, you can rotate them in the socket.

4. Behind-the-Back Arm Stretches

Put both arms behind your back, grabbing your left wrist with your right and pulling gently for 10 seconds, then switch arms.

5. Prayer Position

Place hands in front of you in prayer position, palms pressed together and fingers facing up. Hold for 10 seconds.

6. Arm Raises

Sitting in your chair, raise one arm into the air and hold it for 10 seconds, then do the other.

7. Back Arches

Sitting in your chair, place your hands on your lower back and arch it, leaning your head back and looking at the ceiling. Hold for 15 seconds, then release.

Get the perfect home office or dining room study setup when you live at University Square. With lovely views outside the window and comfortable Flagstaff apartment floor plans, you’ll enjoy sitting at your desk almost as much as you’ll enjoy stretching at it. Get in touch with us to learn more today!

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