The type of walls, paint color, finishes, flooring and the wall decor are all things taken into consideration when completing their house design for the FCCLA contest.

On Jan 29, juniors Natalie Buck and Anatalia Beiler, alongside senior Daphne Longmire, all competed for FCCLA in the interior design category. 

“I’ve competed in FCCLA for two years now and each time it’s so much fun. I love the challenge it brings,” Longmire said. “Last year I was so focused on winning, and this year I just wanted to enjoy it.”

The teams got their project in September, and have been working on it up until the end of January. Their challenge was to design the inside of a home for a family, and they had to make everything from the layout of the home, to the furniture and finishes

“Once we got our prompt we had to start making design boards, and pick all the furniture, and make floor plans, things like that,” Beiler said. “And for the competition we also had to prepare a 15 minute speech that was memorized, which was definitely difficult.”

In the interior design category, Longmire and senior Anne Rios came in first place, Buck in second, and Beiler and junior Taylor Rice came in third. All of them will be advancing to regionals. Vandegrift also scored high in the teach and train category, with Lauren Lopez advancing, and in the fashion design category, with Audrey Kimball advancing.

“This year I was like ‘okay I’m actually super serious about interior design, I might as well compete for FCCLA,’” Buck said. “And I also know it looks good for colleges, and for me it was a great opportunity to do a little extra for something that I want to do in college.” 

FCCLA is a student organization promoting leadership and a mastery of career fields, such as interior design, fashion design, and teach and train, where participants come up with a school lesson plan for more effective learning.

“It was really fun, my partner and I just both happened to be in interior design, so we decided to work together and try to have fun with this project because we’re both seniors,” Longmire said. “We were just trying to have fun with it and it paid off because we weren’t nervous at all presenting and the judges were super nice and we got to bond a lot this year and had to meet and work on the design boards.”

Because of COVID-19, they weren’t able to travel to Corpus Christi as they normally would for the competition, so they had to present their products to the judges over Zoom.

“It’s just a great experience in the field, [sponsor Jodi Jacobsen] is awesome and she really pushes you to your limits,” Beiler said. “It’s great for portfolios and there’s even scholarship opportunities for it as well. It’s just a really great character building thing, it’s hard work and you have to add it to your school load so it’s a lot. But it’s also just really fun to be able to work on something that you love so much for so long and go so deep into it.”