If you're going to mountain weekend and you're stressing about your cooler, you are just like I was a month leading up to mountain weekend. For those of you who don't know, mountain weekend is a frat thing where every guy brings a girl to a mountain. The guys pay for the house and the girls pay for the food and drinks, and to keep all of these things together, girls buy a cooler and decorate them for the guys like a practical, cute, thank you card.

First thing first, before you even buy anything, you need to decide what is going on each side of your cooler. There are four sides and the lid. The top is easy- it's your date's name and his fraternity, maybe the school he goes to if you feel like throwing that on. The other four sides are a little trickier. If you don't know your date very well, fear not! There are two solutions.

The first is getting to know your date through basic small talk conversation topics like "what shows do you like to watch?" or "What kind of music do you listen to?". Another solution, which seems like a solution to everything sometimes, is Pinterest!!! Who doesn't love Pinterest? I found a lot of my cooler ideas from Pinterest! Just look up cooler ideas and it's great! Finally, you need something to go on each of the corners. For this, you only need four ideas, or you can just do the same design on each side. I definitely think Pinterest is the place to go for these ideas.

Once you determine what goes on the cooler, it's time to go to Walmart. I'm serious, Walmart is amazing. I bought waaay too much and went a little overboard, so I'll just tell you what I bought and actually used.

The big purchases were the cooler and the electric sander. I know an electric sander sounds so extra but it actually was really useful. I tried sanding with sandpaper and my arms got tired and it was taking forever. I got a sander that came with a dust collector so it didn't make a mess and it cost only $13. For the cooler, I got an Igloo cooler (also $13). For the cooler, while wheels are handy, make sure you're not getting the cooler with ridges on the sides because that might mess up your design! Also, get a medium sized cooler- not too big, but not small. IMPORTANT: If your cooler has a logo etched into it like the igloo coolers do, you're going to want to buy spackle- just a teeny little bottle of spackle.

Now you also need some spray paint. The easiest way to do this is to buy the white paint and primer spray paint you can get matte or gloss. I got the Krylon brand. You only need one of these if you're only making one cooler.

Then you need to decide what paint colors you need. Buy acrylic paint and paint brushes. You might want to buy some medium- this clear stuff you mix with acrylic paint to make the paint go on more smoothly. I used the medium for one side and not for the rest, it didn't change the look but it did make the paint last a bit longer because you don't need to use as much paint to cover the whole surface.

I don't think you need this, but you can get it. Painter's Tape was also useful to put on the places where you want to keep white or make a clean line. Now, for the design, you should buy some tissue paper- yes tissue paper like the stuff you put in presents. You could get tracing paper, but not only is tissue paper less expensive, but also you can do sharpie on tissue paper and it'll bleed through to the cooler. You also want to buy sharpies and paint markers. That doesn't happen with tissue paper. And the last thing that you need is one big thing of Mod Podge. Now you're ready to start!!!

First, you have to sand the cooler. If you use the electric sander it really won't take that long. You want to sand all of the color off of the cooler but especially important, you want to get that gloss off of the cooler so the paint will stick. After you sand it all down- even the lid- you want to cover the whole thing in the paint and primer.

Start with the backgrounds. For me, I did the adult cartoon characters Rick and Morty on one of the small sides so I started with the light green/dark green swirl for the background. On the other small side, I used an orange and pink background. On the large side on the back, I did a plain orange background, the top was plain blue and the front- this was the hard part- I did a Texas flag because my date is from Dallas

Pro tip for impatient people: if you don't feel like waiting for the paint to dry, take a blow drier to it and put the dryer on "cool" to make the drying period shorter. This is especially useful if you're on a time crunch.

Or while you wait you can take to drawing the design on some tissue paper. If you want to trace an intricate design that you've found online you can put the tissue paper on the screen of your computer or you can print the picture out and trace. Obviously, if art is your thing don't trace, or if your design isn't too hard, you don't need to trace.

Then you can take a sharpie to the design that you did on the tissue paper and trace your design onto the cooler so the sharpie bleeds through and leaves the design over the background.

Then you paint in the designs on each side. When all of the designs are done you do the corners. I don't think you should do corners as you do the sides because you have to know how much room on each side the designs take up before you know how big you can make the corners.

Now for the food and drinks. ask your date what they want, but my biggest advice to you is to include what YOU want to. I didn't do much of that and I only ate chicken nuggets Friday-Sunday. As much as I love chicken nuggets, I would've liked a little variety.

Once you stock up the cooler, go and HAVE FUN!!!!!! Be social, be safe, and have so so so much fun! Happy mountain weekend!