Here we are... the last day of the year! What a year 2025 ended up being. There's lots to recap from the past 12 months, so let's get right into it!
2025 Summary:
What a year this was! So much change and yet a lot also stayed the same. I am normally very dedicated with picking a Word of the Year each year for the past several years... but I literally forgot to do that for 2025. (If that's any indication of where my mental health and attitude was last January- ha!) If I had to pick a Word of the Year as the year comes to a close, I think I would go with "Whiplash" or "Whirlwind". This was a year that brought some sharp plot twists and some really big life changes, and even in the quieter weeks and months I often felt like I was struggling to keep up, if that makes sense. It was a formative year and one filled with so much personal growth, continuing on with that theme from 2024 last year!
It was certainly a very big year for accomplishments and milestones! First and foremost, Ryan and I purchased our first home in August, and we moved into the house in early October. Our whole home buying experience was truly wild- we bought the first home we toured and the only home we made an offer on, and all of this happened one week after starting to work with our real estate agent! Truly an unbelievably accelerated timeline for a life milestone like this.
Buying the house wasn't the only home related accomplishment of the year though. Our house needed some significant cosmetic updates prior to move-in, and we were able to get most of the major projects done within the two months between closing and moving in. I have to give credit to Ryan- he gave countless hours of his time for two straight months to all of the house projects. Every weekend he was there working. At least three days a week he was going to work early and leaving early to get a few hours in at the house before it got too dark. He essentially gave up having any sort of a social life or time for fun for two months to get our home ready to move into, and I will be forever grateful! With that said- I definitely helped a good bit myself on the weekends between closing day and our move. 😉 As did my in-laws and my aunt and uncle, and I'm so grateful for them! It truly was a labor of love to get our house updated and ready to be ours.
The other major milestone of the year was my new job! 13 months after losing my radio job and 7 months after I started actively job searching for a new professional career, I finally accepted a new job in a new-to-me industry. Since May, I've been working in the admissions department for a local university. I specifically work on the adult team for college admissions, which means I work with adults who are going to college for the first time, or returning to school to finish their degree after a leave of absence. The students I've worked with have ranged from early 20s to early 70s in age, and are all from the most diverse backgrounds. The coworkers and managers in my department were all friendly and welcoming when I started here, which I was so appreciative of. It is nerve-wracking not only to start a new job, but a new job in a brand new field that you have no background in. But I did it, and here I am now at the end of the year, 7 months into working in higher education!
And while this next milestone might not be quite as big as a new house and new career, I was still very excited about this one as well. 2025 was the first time that I was able to book and take a 100% "travel hacked" vacation with Ryan (paid for 100% on credit card points). I've been really interested in the credit card points game for several years now, but made a really dedicated effort in 2024 to start diving in even more, with hopes that it would pay off for us in 2025. And it did! I can say with certainty that we would not have gotten to take a big vacation this year without me being able to do this, since buying a first house isn't cheap! 😉 Our first anniversary trip to Mexico in November was so wonderful (recap to come next month), but truly was even better since the flights and resort were free!
While this milestone might be forced to take last place after the other things this year, I don't want to let it go unnoticed that it was an extremely successful year for my side hustle with blogging and social media influencing. My blogging side hustle income had been lower in 2023 and 2024, but that was due to a lot going on in my former radio career, my engagement and wedding, and a lot of friends getting married. A lot of life lived those two years! I felt like in the first half of 2025 I really had the chance again to set myself up for success with maximizing affiliate link usage and doing more brand collaborations again, and I'm very proud of that.
After typing all of the above out, I'm realizing that for a year that was very stressful at times and not always my favorite, 2025 sure held a lot to be proud of! 😊
2025 Travels:
I was able to take 12 trips in 2025. Most of these were one or two night weekend trips, but a couple of longer weekend ones too. This year was an interesting one for travel though, in that things didn't feel evenly spread out through the whole year. Late winter and early spring brought lots of short and drivable weekend trips. Both of our bigger trips of the year fell just two weeks apart and during the holiday season near the end of the year. This past summer was one of my longest stretches in adulthood so far (probably since 2020?) without traveling anywhere. All of my attention this summer was directed to my new job and then preparing for our new house and move! I feel like 2026 and future years will probably follow this year's pattern- less travel in general and longer periods at home, but some bigger trips to look forward to in between.
The tie for my favorite trip of the year is between a fun few days in Florida in February (visiting both extended family and meeting up with my friend Gentry), and our Mexico trip in November!
February - Raleigh, NC (first trip of two)
2025 Visitors:
2025 sadly followed 2024 in this category, with all of the changes happening in our lives this year, we didn't really host visitors. My dad did come to Virginia Beach for a few days in May, but he actually stayed at the hotel I was working at with my employee discount! I am hoping 2026 brings my much-awaited return of hosting overnight guests at home, and in our new guest rooms instead of an air mattress in an apartment!
2025 Winter Memories:
I'm not going to lie: Winter 2025 was a really tough season for me personally, and a tough way to start out our new marriage. January especially was an incredibly rough month. I was a a few months into job searching for a new longterm professional career, and was very sick of my "temporary" job at the hotel at this point. I had numerous job interviews and was rejected from all of them. It was also an unseasonably cold winter in Coastal Virginia, it snowed multiple times, including a full foot of snow (!!!) in February, which is super unusual for this area. Last winter felt like I was going through a full-on identity crisis without much to be excited and hopeful for anymore. And that's a really tough place to be on a personal level when you're starting out the marriage chapter of your life!
A bright spot came near the end of winter: my trip to Florida at the end of February was amazing. My friend Gentry invited me to meet her in Miami Beach for an exclusive influencer event she was invited to with LTK, one of the top affiliate programs for influencers that I've used for a decade. The LTK event was so much fun, and was very inspiring to me personally as a way to start really prioritizing blogging and influencing in 2025! Although buying a home wasn't on our radar yet since I didn't have a new job, I did start taking more of an interest in home decor / design during these months. I loved setting up a bar cabinet in our apartment and styling it, and started to become inspired for design ideas for a future home.
2025 Spring Memories:
Spring brought a lot of fun and short weekend trips. An especially notable one was visiting Washington DC with Ryan during peak bloom for the cherry blossoms! It was also our first joint trip to DC. A real highlight of this past spring was watching the 2025 Masters. I've been obsessed with professional golf for a few years now, but felt like I really got into it this year. I even got to host my first-ever Masters viewing party for some of my girlfriends. Another bright spot of this spring is that I did get to play golf pretty regularly! My friend Amanda and I got into a nice routine of playing together a good bit, and we even did some scrambles together through a ladies' golf group that she was in.
Spring also brought my biggest low of 2025: ending up in the emergency room for fluids for a horrific case of Norovirus. It came on very quickly, and was the absolute sickest that I have ever been in my adult life. A double whammy is that Norovirus hit on the one-year anniversary of losing my radio job, as well as over Easter weekend this year. Boo!
The spring season ended with me finally accepting and starting a new professional job in late May- truly an answer to prayers and a long waiting season!
2025 Summer Memories:
Summer is when the year really started to feel like a whirlwind. Just one month after starting my new job (I wasn't even done training yet!), we decided to dip our toes into house hunting and at least find a realtor. We started working with our realtor in late June, and on July 5th we made our first and only offer on a house! 😅 Summer because less about continuing to settle in at my new job and having fun weekend plans, and instead pretty much all about our new house and preparing to move. I don't think I can even properly put into words how much it felt like it felt like my life changed overnight. Ryan and I both thought it would take months (if not over a year) to find a house, and instead it happened so quickly. (Is this similar to the feelings for those who get pregnant super quickly I wonder? 😅)
We did still have a few days of summer fun between work and house preparations. We enjoyed seeing the fireworks show at Norfolk Harborfest with friends for the first time, a big beach day with friends on July 4th, and a day trip to Edenton to visit my aunt and uncle. As well as golf on the weekends when we could!
We closed on our house August 1st, and from there on out pretty much all of our weekends and free time were spent working on our new house, and getting it ready for move-in in October.
2025 Fall Memories:
Fall didn't get off to the most fun start, since it was a race against the clock to finish all of the bigger cosmetic projects with our home prior to move-in. Ryan and I were so thankful for all of the help that his parents gave us, as well as my aunt and uncle and a few girlsriends helping with moving preparations! We finally got to move in on October 4th! Our moving day was one of the more stressful ones I've experienced (for multiple reasons) but we made it through and started settling into our first home at long last!
Fall did bring a few fun trips! I loved crossing the iconic Omni Homestead resort in Virginia's mountains off of my travel bucket list finally with my friend Amanda. I also enjoyed my second weekend of the year in Raleigh with three girlfriends to get to see Tate McRae in concert! Tate was by far my favorite artist of the year, and I feel so lucky to have seen her twice live less than 12 months apart (the first time was at Jingle Ball in December 2024).
The end of the fall season brought us back-to-back trips: our first anniversary in Mexico, and then visiting my parents in Maine for an early Christmas celebration! Both trips were fun but it felt like a lot to do those so close together, and with busy periods at work in-between.
2025 Weddings:
Sadly there were no weddings this year. 😟 That kind of broke my heart after all of the wedding fun in 2024 with it being our wedding year, and several friends getting married as well! I'm really hoping 2026 will bring some weddings once again for family and friends.
The one fun wedding-like event I did get to go to this year was a wedding dress themed charity gala over Thanksgiving weekend! My friend Bri invited me, and we had a great time. We both re-wore our reception dresses from our own weddings!
2025 Concerts / Special Events:
May - PGA Championship, Charlotte NC
5 Favorite Memories of 2025:
1. Getting the phone call from our realtor that our offer was accepted on our house! I have never seen Ryan look so happy and in shock at the same time. 😊 We immediately got in the car and drove over to OUR house!
2. Attending the LTK influencer event in Miami with my friend Gentry. Such a bucket list moment for blogging/influencing, and so special to share that with a dear friend!
3. Being poolside in Mexico for our first anniversary trip! Even better was that Tate McRae's deluxe album came out during our trip, and I got to listen to the songs for the first time with this view.
4. Tate McRae's Miss Possessive Tour! I got to see the show in Raleigh in October with three girlfriends.
5. A tie!! My best round of golf of the year in October with my friend Amanda, and spending July 4th with a big group of friends at one of our favorite local beaches.
Blog - Readers' Favorite Posts of 2025:
1. What to Wear to Megan Moroney's "Am I Okay?" Tour
2. What to Wear to Tate McRae's "Miss Possessive" World Tour
3. Life Update: My Next Career Chapter Begins
4. My First Time Renting Clothes: A Review of Armoire
5. Life Update: We Bought Our First House!!
Top-Selling Items of 2025:
My Favorite Purchases of 2025:
Past Highlights From My. Year Posts:
2024 // 2023 // 2022 // 2021 // 2020 // 2019 // 2018 // 2017 // 2016 // 2015
God Bless,
xoxo Annaliese
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