Shooting!

We ended the school year with a bang... literally. The New College "Redneck Roadtrip" took us out of the little downtown Franklin area into real Tennessee, with strong Southern accents, true Tennesseans, and an amazing redneck shooting range. Just after going through a week of finals, it was the perfect way to relieve stress. Plus, it was loads of fun!

The group. It was a blast, that's for sure. We got to end the afternoon with aMAZing burgers at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Delicious food, especially after hours shooting. A burger never tasted quite that good.

DIY Triangle Garland

Recent obsession: triangle garland. They are so cute I can hardly stand it! Sometimes they're made from fabric, and some I've seen are made from paper, felt, or even old book pages. Every party, picnic, and movie night is that much sweeter if one or two are hanging around. Plus, what a fun thing to put up on birthdays, or just leave in the bedroom for adorableness' sake?

So, finally, after admiring and ooooh-ing and awwww-ing at triangle bunting on Pinterest and in real life for quite some time, I got down to it and made one myself.

First, got fat quarters of fabric from Walmart. Pretty floral (I love the bright blue and pink), polka dots (can any room be complete without a few polka dots?), and gingham (because gingham is classic and summery).

I started by cutting out the triangles (7 of each fabric) following a pattern that I traced onto the fabric. Here's the link to the PDF with the pattern. There's one for a smaller garland, too. It also has instructions for one way of putting the garland together, step by step.

After cutting out all the triangles, I sewed down the edges. Then wrapped it around a plain old 12 foot length of cording, and voila!

So I hung the finished garland on my bedroom window, where I can see it every day. It's so cheerful, bright, colorful, and fun!

I will definitely be taking this off my window to use for parties and anything that needs an extra pop of cutesy.

It was such a fun project! And actually easier than I was expecting. My sewing job on it is anything but perfect, but I'm still quite pleased with the result.

Thank you, Pinterest and downtown Franklin and darling people for inspiring the project.

Just Keep Studying...

Source: tumblahphotos.tumblr.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

Yep. That's pretty much how it is these days, folks. I just keep studying, like a fish keeps swimming (thanks Dori, from Finding Nemo).

And when I'm not studying, I text, eat, or watch a movie with study sheets, open books, notes, and papers around me.

While the grand goal is to survive finals, at the same time I really wouldn't mind getting good grades too. That has mostly been translating to:

• No movie-watching (Don't have time, must work on finals)
• No running (Can I do a workout in 10 minutes instead? Okay, that'll have to do.)
• No nail-painting (Sad day.)
• No cookie-baking (Well, very minimal, anyway.)

And last but not least...

• No shower-taking (Just kidding, mostly ;)

Don't worry, I don't get that extreme. It's really not as bad as I made it sound. Really I still do those things, I just feel guilty doing them because, you know... I could be studying! When I'm not working on that final exam that's currently 60 pages, I should probably be working on that 15 page music paper, which is currently 0 pages. Or getting ready for my arithmetic presentation (eek!).

Needless to say, I'm just a tiny bit excited for summer. It'll be a couple months of work that is at least different from school before going strong again in studies next school year.

So excuse me while I make plans to run and bake cookies this summer. :)

Marriage and Home

From Raising Homemakers:

Marriage, sweet little people, is not for the purpose of your happiness. Happy as I want you to be and hope you will be, you must yet understand that marriage is God’s design and His purposes must be pursued in order for you to be truly happy. His end is holiness and He will use all things in a life devoted to Him to fulfill that end.

To my girls: Marry a man whose first pursuit is Christ. After that, he is not hard to please. Admire him, cheer him on and show gratitude, and he will fall over himself trying to please you. Smile often, speak well of him always, and do whatever necessary to try and maintain a pleasant mood about you so that it transfers to your home, making it a place where he and your children love to be.

You’ll have bad days of course, crying days even, and that’s when you go to your bedroom, kneel on the floor and beg the Lord to carry you. Then get up, get a fresh perspective (crayons will come off the wall), and try again. Above all else, make a home.

Rappelling Trip

Tennessee is just downright beautiful, no doubt about it. Why not spend an entire Saturday outside at Stone Door Park if you can, right? Of course right. So one weekend, us NCF students ditched our homework  and went rappelling and rock climbing. We get homework assignments every week... well, practically every day. But rappelling and getting to climb a 70-foot cliff with is not an opportunity that comes knocking at your door every day.


Rappel. How terrifying can it be, right? Well, pretty scary. (At least to me--after all, there's just a rope and a carabiner between me and death.) The dictionary makes the whole experience sound all logical and lovely:


rap·pel [ruh-pel]
(in mountaineering) the act or method of moving down a steep incline or past an overhang by means of a double rope secured above and placed around the body, usually underthe left thigh and over the right shoulder, and paid out gradually in the descent.


So quaint. Just the act of moving down a steep incline (translate: HUGE CLIFF) by means of a double rope (*ahem*, one tiny little rope that doesn't look extra thick in any way) and something gradual about the descent (really? It's a cliff, it can only be so gradual of a descent). Let's update that definition, shall we?


rap·pel [ruh-pel]
(in Tennessee) the act or method performed when feeling incredibly adventurous. It involves moving past the edge of a cliff by means of equipment that doesn't look strong enough to hold you, and then because it worked the first time, being crazy enough to do it again.

Woohoo! Gorgeous view at Stone Door, TN :)

Walking the trail to our rappelling site. We weren't nervous yet since we hadn't seen the rock face. :)

Climbing!

Yahoo! It was a fun day. :)