Blog Posts

Star Wars Day

Star Wars has taken the world by storm, permeating multiple generations and providing entertainment and fandom for many people. The effect of Star Wars has been so grand that they’ve even set aside a day to celebrate it! Derived from the notable phrase “may the force be with you,” May the 4th is the perfect day for Star Wars Day. In this week’s Virginia Square Towers Blog, we’ve got a few suggestions on how you can celebrate this upcoming May 4th in true Star Wars Fashion. Movie Marathon There are many movies in the Star Wars film world, which makes it easy to have a long marathon. Whether you choose to watch all of the movies in chronological order or to pick your favorites and enjoy their content, you’ll have hours of entertainment. To make your marathon even better, we suggest ordering some pizza and getting some snacks and drinks! Star Wars Treats There are plenty of ways to celebrate Star Wars Day, but one of our favorite ways is by making some treats! Use your creativity and experiment with some different treats; you can try making some pretzel lightsabers, character macarons, and even carbonite jello! This is a good way to spend some time with friends and your children and also to enjoy some delicious treats! Crafts If you have children who enjoy the Star Wars Saga, it can be fun to encourage their creativity and help them explore the fandom! We suggest getting crafty by making some of these crafts: Foam lightsabers Yoda or Leia headbands R2-D2 trash cans Chewbacca or Ewok plush dolls We hope you enjoy your May 4th by trying out these suggestions. If you’ve got some other ideas on ways to celebrate Star Wars day, we’d love to hear it! Leave a comment for our Arlington, VA apartment community so we can give those ideas a try!

Games for a Night In

Do you find yourself struggling to find something to do on a night in? Instead of turning the television on and sitting around, we suggest you invite some friends over to enjoy a night of fun and games! In this week’s Virginia Square Towers Blog, we’ve got a few game suggestions for you to try the next time you have a game night! Try out these games, and don’t forget to put out some snacks and drinks to make it a great night. Cranium Do you fancy yourself smarter than your friends? With Cranium, you can find out whether you’re right! Match wits with your friends in a competitive board game that exercises your whole brain! Battle your friends through challenges or tasks grouped into categories: Creative Cat, Word Worm, Data Head, and Star Performer. These tasks are meant to test your capabilities in their respective categories. Do well and beat your friends! Scrabble Whether you’re a wordsmith or are just looking for a fun game to play, Scrabble is a great game for a night in. Scrabble is easy to learn and fun to play. The overall objective of the game is to play your tiles to form words that would give you the most points while taking into consideration the various aids on the board. Here’s a quick strategy to help you out: early on in the game, you’ll want to try to play big words, but getting rid of those last few tiles can sometimes make all the difference late in the game. Check out these two-letter words for the end of the game. If you can memorize these, it will come in handy later on. Mafia For this game, you’ll need a deck of cards or pieces of paper that have character names written on them. There are many variations of this game, but in each iteration, each player will be given a role to embody throughout the game. Depending on the size of your group, there will be at least two mafia members, a detective, and townspeople. A moderator leads the game, telling the story about the phases in the game: the day phase and night phase. Put your observation and people-reading skills to the test by playing mafia during your game night! Do you have any games you’d like to share with our Arlington, VA apartment community? Leave us a comment so we can try it out!

Waffle Day!

Waffles are a great breakfast option, but they’re an especially viable breakfast option on Waffle Day! March 25th is Waffle Day so we’ve decided to share with you some recipes in this week’s Virginia Square Towers Blog. If you love waffles for breakfast, you won’t want to miss this week’s blog! Easy Strawberry Shortcake Waffles Recipe from Real Advice Gal This breakfast recipe tastes just like dessert. If you enjoy strawberry shortcake, you’ll love the wonderful taste of these strawberry shortcake waffles. Use extra strawberries and your favorite whipped cream to add that little extra kick to this treat. We hope you enjoy this treat! Cinnamon Sugar Churro Waffles from Chef de Home Churros are a great treat for theme parks, but can also be a great breakfast food! Start your day with something sweet and sugary, just like a waffle is supposed to be, this month with this churro recipe. If you’re looking for a recipe that will bring you a crisp, textured outside and a soft, fluffy inside, this is the recipe for you! Make it with ingredients you probably already have: all-purpose flour, unsalted butter, sugar, salt, and water. Banana Bread Waffles from Diethood Bring the taste of banana bread to your meal by making these waffles. Fry some sliced bananas for the topping and you’ll get an array of tastes and textures that will make you never want to go back to normal waffles again! Banana bread is delicious, so it makes sense that banana bread waffles would be just as delicious! Check this recipe out this weekend! We hope you try out these recipes and enjoy a sweet and delicious Waffle Day! Do you have any waffle recipes you like to use? Let our Arlington, VA apartment community know of them by leaving a comment.

Strong Female Heroes

International Women’s Day is March 8th and it’s a great time to celebrate women! There are a variety of ways you can recognize the strong women in your life, but one way we enjoy doing so is by watching movies with strong female heroes! In this week’s Virginia Square Towers Blog, we’ll share with you movies that feature female heroes. Wonder Woman Follow Diana (Gal Gadot), princess of the Amazons as she ventures away from her secluded home of Themyscira to fight off the evil plaguing the outside world. Joining Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), a pilot who had crash landed on Themyscira, Diana discovers her true powers, lends her aid in stopping the war, and takes her destiny into her own hands while fighting for what she knows is right. Kill Bill Vol. 1 “A former assassin, known simply as The Bride (Uma Thurman), wakes from a coma four years after her jealous ex-lover Bill (David Carradine) attempts to murder her on her wedding day. Fueled by an insatiable desire for revenge, she vows to get even with every person who contributed to the loss of her unborn child, her entire wedding party, and four years of her life. After devising a hit list, The Bride sets off on her quest, enduring unspeakable injury and unscrupulous enemies.” Miss Congeniality “When a terrorist threatens to bomb the Miss United States pageant, the FBI rushes to find a female agent to go undercover as a contestant. Unfortunately, Gracie is the only female FBI agent who can "look the part" despite her complete lack of refinement and femininity. She prides herself in being "just one of the boys" and is horrified at the idea of becoming a girly girl.” Women should be celebrated, and these movies definitely show the strength, poise, and capability of women! Share your own favorite movies and characters with our Arlington, VA apartment community by leaving a comment!

Hot Chocolate Recipes

It’s February and the weather hasn’t gotten any warmer yet. There are plenty of ways to warm up, but our method of choice is by enjoying some hot chocolate! In this week’s Virginia Square Towers Blog, we’ve got a few choice recipes compiled for you to try. We hope you enjoy these recipes! Nutella Hot Chocolate The delicious chocolate hazelnut spread you love can now be consumed in a warm and rich liquid form. To make this ingenious concoction, you will need milk, Nutella, unsweetened cocoa powder, sugar, and any desired toppings. There are plenty of ways to spruce up your hot chocolate, but we suggest topping your drink with marshmallows, whipped cream, and a touch of extra Nutella. Red Velvet Hot Chocolate If you enjoy red velvet cake, you’ll enjoy this hot chocolate recipe. According to Tidy Mom, to make this drink you’ll need whole milk, sugar, semi-sweet baking chocolate, red food coloring, and vanilla extract. For the cream cheese whipped cream to top your drink with, you’ll need these ingredients: heavy cream, cream cheese, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract, but it’s optional! Your cup of hot chocolate is your concoction, so spice it up how you will! S’mores Hot Chocolate Although the time around a bonfire is still a few months away, you can enjoy the sweet tastes of s’mores by trying out this recipe! Start out with a cup coated with graham cracker crumbs on the rim and make the hot chocolate with these ingredients: milk, water, cocoa powder, light chocolate syrup, sugar, non-bitter stevia, and salt. Mix up the drink, then top with a whole lot of marshmallows. You’ll then broil the cup in the oven to brown and melt the marshmallows. If you don’t want that toast on the marshmallows, you can have it as is! Do you have a favorite hot chocolate recipe you’d like to share with our Arlington, VA apartment community? Leave us a comment!

Valentines Day Movie Suggestions

If you’re not a fan of big, elaborate activities for Valentine’s Day, you can opt for dinner and a movie with your significant other. Many can view going to dinner and watching a movie as boring and uninspired, but we think that it gives you an opportunity to spend more quality time with the person you love. In this week’s Virginia Square Towers Blog, we’ve got a few romantic movie suggestions so you can cuddle up with that special someone on February the 14th! 10 Things I Hate About You “Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is beautiful, smart and quite abrasive to most of her fellow teens, meaning that she doesn't attract many boys. Unfortunately for her younger sister, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), house rules say that she can't date until Kat has a boyfriend, so strings are pulled to set the dour damsel up for a romance. Soon Kat crosses paths with handsome new arrival Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger). Will Kat let her guard down enough to fall for the effortlessly charming Patrick?” The Notebook “A young woman comes to the coastal town of Seabrook, North Carolina in the 1940's to spend the summer with her family. Still in her teens, Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) meets local boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) at a carnival. On the spot, Noah senses that he and Allie are meant to be together. Though she is a wealthy debutante and he a mill worker, over the course of one passionate and carefree summer in the South, the two fall deeply in love.” P.S. I Love You “Holly Kennedy is beautiful, smart and married to the love of her life--a passionate, funny and impetuous Irishman named Gerry. So when Gerry's life is taken by an illness, it takes the life out of Holly. The only one who can help her is the person who is no longer there. Nobody knows Holly better than Gerry. So it's a good thing he planned ahead. Before he died, Gerry wrote Holly a series of letters that will guide her, not only through her grief but in rediscovering herself. The first message arrives on Holly's 30th birthday in the form of a cake and, to her utter shock, a tape recording from Gerry, who proceeds to order her to get out and celebrate herself. In the weeks and months that follow, more letters from Gerry are delivered in surprising ways, each sending her on a new adventure and each signing off in the same way: P.S. I Love You.” Settle into your Arlington, VA apartment after a nice dinner and enjoy some of these romantic movies! If you’ve got a favorite, don’t hesitate to share them with us! Thanks for reading!