Photo Tour: Our First Christmas in Our First Home

Merry Christmas Week! In years past, I always enjoyed sharing about my Christmas decor in my apartments each year on the blog. While I unintentionally skipped doing that the past two years, I wanted to bring it back for 2025 as a way to always remember this special first Christmas season in our first home! The majority of my decor is in our formal living room, with some small additional touches in our dining room and family room. I hope to continue to grow our Christmas decor collection each year in our house, but for this year I love what we started with! 

     This post is also the first time I've shared pictures of some furnished rooms in our house on my blog. Ryan and I have been very hard at work since we moved in early October! 😊 Looking forward to continuing the decorate these rooms and the rest of the house in the years to come. In the meantime, to keep up with our house updates in real-time, follow my new Instagram account @home.sweet.mead!

2025 Black Friday // Cyber Week Sales + What We Did for Thanksgiving

      Happy Black Friday + Cyber Sales Weekend! I was reflecting while writing this post about how Black Friday for me has changed over the years. During high school and college, I never missed a Black Friday at the mall. I truly looked forward to it all year!! I even once had the experience of being on the other side when I had to work at my mall retail job on Thanksgiving night in 2016. 

     The last time though that I went physically out shopping at the mall for Black Friday was in 2021, my first holiday season living in Virginia Beach. Being in a mall setting just wasn't hitting quite like it used to. These days I really do feel like all of the best deals and steals are to be found online. I still very much enjoying shopping in-person throughout the year, but on Black Friday I prefer to be home and shopping from my laptop these days. 😊

Pretty foliage outside of work earlier this week!

Holiday 2025 Shopping Finds + Picks! 🎄

       Happy November! We haven't started decorating for the holidays quite yet in our house (hoping to next weekend, which is also our first anniversary!), but I have been in the full Christmas spirit when it comes to my recent online shopping browsing history. I've been finding so many cute and affordable holiday fashion, accessories and seasonal decor items. I wanted to do a little round-up here of everything. 

      You can find all of the graphics below on my LTK page! Please follow me on LTK if you aren't yet, I share extra content each week exclusively in the LTK app that I don't share always on Instagram or my blog. 

2022 Apartment Christmas Tree + Decor!

      I'm a bit belated in getting this year's apartment holiday decor blog post up, but even though it's late I couldn't skip the tradition to document it on my blog. Here are a few snaps from my second Christmas season in my little Virginia Beach apartment!

How to Host a Favorite Things Christmas Gift Swap Party.

       Last weekend, I hosted my 2nd annual Favorite Things Christmas Party. After sharing some snippets from it on IG Stories, I got several questions. So, I thought I'd write a blog post on how I do this party and why it is always so much fun! This is also a great type of holiday party to host if you live in a small space like I do. You don't need to have a giant entertaining space in your home to host a favorite things gift swap.

Easy DIY Halloween Couples Costume: Love is Blind

     Popping in just before Halloween to share a pop culturally trendy and very easy couples costume that I came up with: Love is Blind!

2021 Apartment Christmas Tree + Decor!

      The first year that I went all out and decorated for Christmas was the year that I graduated college and was living back in my first apartment.  Since then, I've never missed a year in sharing my Christmas decorations and tree on the blog. This year I only had time to snap a few quick iPhone photos of my living room, but I'm glad I was still able to capture a few photos. It is my first Christmas season living in Virginia Beach after all- and that's worth celebrating!

Casual Holiday Outfit + Christmas Plans This Season!

      Happy December! I wanted to share this casual holiday look with y'all today, and a few thoughts about this holiday season being a lot more normal than 2020. So much to be thankful for and excited about this month!

BLACK FRIDAY / CYBER WEEKEND SALES 2021

     Happy Thanksgiving!!! I shared on Instagram this morning that I possibly have more to be thankful for this year in 2021 than any year before. Today I headed down to Eastern North Carolina to spend the day with my aunt and uncle! I actually have a work event tomorrow morning, so I'll be back in Virginia Beach by this evening to get ready for that. I'll be doing my Black Friday shopping at the mall a little later in the day than normal because of work, but that's totally okay! 

    Here's my annual list of Black Friday / Cyber Weekend sales! As most of these are larger national retailers, I will also try to highlight some small business sales for Small Business Saturday on Instagram this weekend. 

My 2021 Christmas Wishlist.

       I think it's been a few years since I've shared a Christmas wishlist on my blog for myself, but I thought I'd resume this year! I was thinking this weekend about a few stocking stuffers that I wanted to tell my parents I'd like, and that's what got me thinking of resuming sharing my own Christmas list on the blog like I used to. 

     I do want to give a disclaimer beforehand that I am well aware that I don't need any of these things. I am so blessed to be at a point in life with both my day job and blogging side hustle where I can afford most of the things in life that I want to buy myself. I'm also thankful that my parents (and especially my mom) taught me the importance of saving and avoiding debt, and how fulfilling it can be to save up for a larger purchase. But with all that said, we do still do Christmas gifts in my family, and it is always helpful to give my parents an idea of things that I'd like, so I thought I'd share a few of those things here with y'all today.

Bloggers I Recommend For Great Christmas Gift Guides!

     Happy November 1st! This holiday season is going to look a little bit different on Southern Belle in Training for blog content. I've made the executive decision not to do any Gift Guides this year. I'll get more into why I decided not to do them later in the post, but I mainly wanted to share with you some other bloggers that you should check out if you're looking for Gift Guides. There are a few ladies I follow who absolutely kill it with this content every holiday season, and you should definitely check them out if you're looking for gift ideas!

4th of July Gingham Outfit.

      Happy July 1st! (Side note: where did this year go?! How is July 4th literally just a few days away?) I haven't shared 4th of July outfits every summer on the blog, but out of the years that I have done one I think today's look might be one of my favorites yet! 

❤️Red + Pink Valentine's Outfit Round-Up.💗

      The month of love is here- welcome to February! I'm not quite sure why, but in the past few years especially Valentine's has become a favorite holiday of mine, and that has zero to do with my relationship status. Hallmark holiday or not, I just love the fact that there is a day to celebrate love! Red and pink is one of my favorite color combinations out there, and see it pop up everywhere makes me so happy. I also love knowing that mid-February means that winter is almost over! Well- almost over here in the South at least. 😊I'm also a huge enthusiast of Galentine's!! 

     To kick off this month, I wanted to share a round-up of some of my favorite red and/or pink outfits on the blog from the past few years! As I mentioned above, red and pink is a favorite color combo of mine, but I think only the first outfit featured below is the only fully red and pink styled look I've shared on the blog. That will hopefully change in 2021 since I do love this color combo! But I do have some other fun separate red or pink outfits from the past few years, so those are all linked below. Some of these looks are a few years old and exact items aren't still in stock, but I tried to find similar pieces for everything! 

2020 NYE Outfit Fail.

      Although I have no plans for New Year's Eve this year, I still wanted to dress up in a pretty and sparkly outfit at home to celebrate the end of 2020. But in true fashion for this year, there was a bit of a mishap with the outfit I was hoping to wear at home. Fortunately, I got these outfit pictures before that happened, so I can at least share what I planned to wear with you today! 

Merry Christmas 2020!

     From my little Charlottesville, VA household to yours...

Home for the Holidays: Christmas Tree + Decor 2020.

     I can't believe it's already that time of year when I share my apartment Christmas decor on the blog! 2020 was the slowest year in some ways, and the fastest year in other ways. It seems like yesterday that I was sharing last year's version of this blog post. In past years, I've sometimes dressed up when sharing my apartment Christmas decor (I definitely did in 2017!). This year it only seemed fitting though to share this post while wearing festive pajamas... it is 2020 after all, and I've never spent more time at home. Welcome to our apartment!

10 Socially Distanced or Virtual Experience Gift Ideas.

     Gift giving is my love language- I get so excited to find the perfect Christmas gift (or birthday gift) for someone I love, and see them enjoy receiving it. I've had a little bit of a change in my gift giving habits over the past few years though. I've started becoming a big fan of giving experience gifts instead of just material things! I love treating someone to a special experience that they probably wouldn't do for themselves otherwise. 

     Obviously not all traditional experience gifts are possible in 2020 with the pandemic, but there are still a lot of socially distanced or virtual experience gift ideas that would be unique, fun and memorable! I'm sharing 10 ideas in today's blog post:

Untraditional Thanksgiving Menu: Our Thanksgiving Brunch

      I know that it's already been a few weeks since Thanksgiving and we are well into the Christmas season already, but I still wanted to get a post up about my menu for this Thanksgiving. Save this to use as inspiration for a future year, or maybe you'll even want to incorporate a recipe or two from here for your Christmas meals!

Lilly Pulitzer Holiday 2020: Try-On + Sizing Guide! 💖🌴

     It's been a couple months too long since I've brightened up my blog and Instagram with some Lilly Pulitzer! I typically share most of my Lilly content in the spring and summer months (since it's when I'm wearing the most Lilly, and summer ends with an After Party Sale), but this year I think the holidays definitely need some more pink and green! In past years, I haven't been as into Lilly's holiday and winter collections. But this year that all changed! I was excited a couple weekends ago to spend an afternoon at Lilly Pulitzer River Road in Richmond shooting a dressing room try-on of all the gorgeous new arrivals.

BLACK FRIDAY / CYBER WEEKEND SALES 2020

    It's finally my favorite shopping day of the year! Happy Black Friday!! I haven't missed a Black Friday of shopping in-person since I was 13... that's 13 consecutive years I think?! But things will look a bit different for me this year. 

     Instead of waking up bright and early and rushing to the stores, I'm waiting until late afternoon or evening to go out and just hit a couple places. I'll be wearing not only my mask, but also my face shield! And if there are crowds at the places I'm planning to visit later, I'm planning to just leave and come back home. Safety first. 😓But thankfully online Black Friday shopping and Cyber Weekend deals are not cancelled in 2020!