What Would You Do With $500 Million?

The Mega Millions has reached a record high... It is estimated to be about 540 million dollars. I don't know about you, but I don't even know what I would do with $1 million let alone $540 million. Well, I decided to buy a Mega Million ticket. After all, what could it hurt? It's just $1 and you never know if you're gonna buy the winning ticket or not.

This was the first lottery ticket I bought. I went in and said "I'd like to buy a Mega Millions ticket," and right away I saw the lady shaking her head. She says to me "Are you 18?" and I proudly brought out my license stating that yes indeed I am not only 18, but I am 20 years old.

And so now I hold two Mega Millions tickets. One for Isaac and one for me. (Isaac forgot his license at home so I bought one for him, though I still hold his in my wallet because we never know when Isaac is going to lose his wallet :P).

I am completely sure I will not win this Mega Million Jackpot, but it still got me thinking on what I would do with $540 million. The possibilities are endless. I would have no idea where to start!
So let me share with you some of the things that I would do with $540 million.

The first thing I would do is figure out how much I'd need to pay for taxes. I'd want to put that money away separately. I know I would not spend $540 million in one lifetime let alone one year but I still would just want to know how much money I needed for taxes so that I could figure out how much money I actually have leftover and how much I could use for other things.

The next thing I would do is pay off my parents house for them. I'd pay off any of their debt they had on anything and then buy them a new house if that is what they wanted.

The next thing I'd do is pay off any of my siblings school tuition and help them pay for the rest of their way through college (or all the way through college since my sisters and Peter haven't even started).

I'm not really sure what order of things I would do next. I'd for sure want to take some exotic family vacation for like a month. Probably not that long, but it would be so fun to just get away as a family for a while.
Then I would start planning on getting married to Isaac. We have millions of dollars so we're pretty much set for life and can have our dream wedding.

There is so much I would want to do for my bestest friends and family as well. I would just want to help THEM in any way I could.

I think the main thing I would want to do with my money is to set up some type of ministry. I'm not even sure what kind of ministry... whether for kids, adults, teens... or what we would even do. I just know I would want to set up a ministry and work full-time for that. I recently found that my spiritual gift is compassion. I always knew it was something along the lines of that. My heart breaks for people who are in need and I wish that I had more resources to give to people what they need. I would like to write a post sometime about spiritual gifts and how I found mine. But like I said, that'll have to wait for a different post :)

If I won millions of dollars I know it would be because God wanted me to use it for his glory. I'm 100% sure I won't even come close to winning this jackpot, but it is still fun to dream about. All I can ask for now is that God will still show me ways that I can help serve him and show compassion on people who are in need.

So now my question is, what would YOU do with $540 million?

Random Musings on a Random Day

I have not had a lot of time to blog but I decided to take a moment to breathe and write a little post.

I feel like my life is pretty repetitive these days. Mondays I work on homework, go to work and then make sure I have all my assignments turned in by 11:59pm. Tuesdays and Thursdays are days that I just stay home all day and do homework. Wednesdays and Fridays are also work/homework days. I feel like I'm stuck in the same routine and it will never change. I know that I won't be in this same routine forever but I still feel like I keep running into the same brick wall every week.

I guess my breath of fresh air that I get each week is through the new college group that I have become a part of at my church. It's all pretty crazy how I became a part of this. Sometime in January I was talking to my best friend Anna about how we both really wanted a college group to be a part of and it would be really nice if Oak Pointe started one since that is the church we go to. Well, lo and behold, the very next day they announced that a college group was starting that very day! Anna and I were overwhelmed with how quickly God answered our unspoken prayer. We realize now that we never prayed about it but God still answered us. We did not stay that first week due to other commitments (more like we were too overwhelmed to stay that week), but the next week we went and it has been such a blessing.

I'm also realizing that I need to simplify my life. I recently went through a week in my devotions that talked about simplicity. I guess you could say that my life is simple in the way that I do not have a lot of activities that happen each week. But I still want to simplify some things at home. For example, I'm currently reading 6 different books. Sure 3 of them are devotion books, one of them is the book that I'm leading a Bible Study on, one is for my own "Christian living" book and then of course a fictional book to entertain me. However, I still feel like I should not be reading soooo many books at once! How can I truly enjoy one book if I'm also focusing so much attention on other books as well? Another way I should simplify is the fact that I'm not even sure how many blogs I have. This is my only blogspot blog but I have numerous Tumblr blogs.

Simplification is just something that God has asked me to work on and I'm determined to try and work on it.
Next week is my spring break so I think I'll try and clean out my room and hopefully get rid of stuff. I'll also work on finishing a few of those books so I'm not reading so many at once :)

Here's a word of wisdom that I'll leave with you all for now:
"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." - Matthew 6:33

DIY Tangle-Free Headphones

For those of you who don't know what DIY stands for, it's Do It Yourself.

Thanks to Juliana, I've become addicted to Pinterest. It's this nifty site that lets you "pin" pictures, quotes, recipes, crafts, and basically anything you want. I have about 18 boards that are all different categories. I have a board for recipes, a board for quotes, a board for my bucket list, a board for crafts and many more.

My favorite board to add to is the recipe board and the craft board. I have been finding so many craft or gift ideas, or even ideas to get my room more organized and stuff. I decided that I am going to spend this semester doing school, of course, but in those moments when school gets to be too much, I'll go over to Pinterest and pin some stuff. Annnd the fun part is, this summer I am going to actually make some of those crafts and recipes and do some of those ideas!

Well the first "DIY" thing I did from Pinterest is the tangle-free headphones. Here's what it looks like:

I decided to do two different colors on the "connected" part of the headphones and then one color on each other "separate" headphones part. So like this:

The reason I did two separate colors on the headphone part is so that it is easier to tell which one goes in which ear. Yes, I am one of those people who can't stand to put the right bud in my left ear. So this way, instead of trying to see the tiny little R or L, I can just be like "Okay, this is green so it goes in my left ear." So much easier!

Now I would like to tell you how you can make your own tangle-free headphones. And yes, they do not really tangle anymore! Which is also nice since I always took 5 minutes untangling my headphones.

Materials:

Headphones

Two or more colors of embroidery floss.

Tape

Technically, you can do just one color, or you can do two colors, or you can do a lot of colors. It's totally up to you. I used the entire "roll" of my embroidery floss so if you are going to do only one color, you probably will need two. But if you do two or three colors, you should only need one thing of each color. Unless your headphones are super long in which you'd probably want to use a different roll on the "separate" parts.

So the first thing you're gonna want to do is tape your headphone to a hard surface. (It is easier this way so that it is not moving around while you're trying to tie the string around it.

I started from this end of the headphones.

You'll want to make sure the cord is lying flat too. Obviously it's not flat in this picture, but when you're doing it, make sure it's flat or the pattern of the string is going to look weird.

So next you will tie the string onto the headphones and make sure it's right up next to the edge. Unfortunately, I could not find anymore embroidery floss in the house so I had to use my graduation tassel to show you how to do the "tying."

So even though this picture doesn't show it, make sure that string is pushed all the way up!

Then you will lay the string across the headphones as shown.

Then bring it under the headphones and over the string and pull tight!

And obviously pull it tight and make sure it's right next to the other knot.

If you are doing alternate colors, I would do about 5 knots and then switch the color. Also, make sure the other colors string is being tied into the knot along with the headphones. So hold the string you are not tying, right next to the headphones so that the knot goes over it.

I hope this sort of makes sense. If you know how to make a friendship bracelet, it's pretty similar to that. I'm better at showing people things in person so hopefully my words will make some sense.

I've been using my headphones and absolutely love them. Now I have another pair of headphones that I'll probably do the same thing to.

Happy DIY!