pretty – isabel notes

My Favorite Celebrity Covers

When people cover songs from other artists, I think it’s just so cool. I love how you can listen to one song, and then someone new sings it and it can turn into something totally different. Here are a few of my favorites. Enjoy!

(These aren’t in order. I can’t choose favorites.)

Imagine Dragons- Stand By Me

The band performed this at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards. They’ve done some really cool covers, including “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift, if you wanna look that one up. This one I thought was super cool.

2. Boyce Avenue and Bea Miller- We Can’t Stop

Can we just take a moment to appreciate these people’s voices? They’re those kinds of singers that don’t really need to try, they just sound naturally beautiful. Love their take on Miley Cyrus’ song, how they softened it up and made it sound so pretty. And Bea was only 14 at the time!

3. Taylor Swift- Riptide

I love Taylor’s version of Vance Joy’s song, I actually like it better than the original. It’s also refreshing to see her with a piano.

4. Little Mix- Doo-Wop/ Never Leave You (Acapella)

The only thing I love better than a good cover- a good acapella cover. I love it when Little Mix does acapella. It really shows off their talent and individual voices. Little Mix are the winners of the British X-Factor in 2011. They are currently #2 in the charts in the UK with their new album “Get Weird” (which I highly recommend, by the way).

5. Fifth Harmony and Boyce Avenue- Mirrors

This one is also with Boyce Avenue, featuring Fifth Harmony. The blending and harmonizing in this is marvelous. I listen to this version even more than Justin Timberlake’s.

6. Ed Sheeran- Stay With Me

If the sunset had a voice, I’m pretty much it would sound like Ed Sheeran.

7. Birdy- The A Team

I think this one is just beautiful. And her piano- playing skills are incredible! The way she sings this song makes it seem like I’m hearing it for the first time.

That’s all for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed these! Feel free to comment your favorites, or if you have any other cool covers you’d like to share!

Adventures in Alaska- Part 2

The day we got to the camp, the Hope Youth Corps leader told us that we had 5 days until we had to actually run a church camp. There were 30 kids from 2nd to 10th grade coming to stay with us for 3 days, and we were totally in charge. (Obviously, there was adult supervision, don’t worry, but we called the shots.) 22 teenagers were supposed to be the counselors, lead lessons and activities, feed the kids, and we had to plan all of this on our own while doing the 8-hour-a-day blue-collar labor. This was our big second task. Kids.

We thought it was impossible. At least, I did. I was shocked that they were giving all these responsibilities to us. We had just gotten to know each other, now we were expected to run a camp? We were just teenagers!

But we had no choice. We had to pull off this camp for the kids. We each thought of our experiences with church camp and wanted to give someone else that great experience. I was so surprised at what we were capable of. I think the world has such low expectations of teenagers sometimes, and things like this reminded me of how much of an impact we can make with God and each other.

We had a blast those three days. It was great. It felt like one big play date. We got to know each kid and spend time with them, play with them, teach them, talk to them. It felt like a big family at the end of it.

Yes, there were smores. What else would we do in the woods in Alaska?

On one of the weekends when we drove down to Anchorage, we got to climb Flat Top. Being from mountain-less Texas, I had never climbed a mountain before. (The picture above was taken probably when we were a third of the way up. ) I’m not going to lie, it was super hard. But I’m glad I did it. I’ll spare you a cheesy mountain analogy.

What’s a mountain adventure without a motivational speech? This is my friend, Nathan, giving the best mountain speech I’ve ever heard. Yes, he was very intense.