Up the mountain.

     Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday last Friday!! All of the love from my blogging friends helped to make my day extra special. :-)

     Since I had classes on the morning of my birthday, I spent that night celebrating with new friends from my new school. But I couldn't let my birthday weekend go by without a celebration with some friends from my former school! I was trying to think of creative ideas for birthday fun that wouldn't cost a lot of money, and then it hit me... a birthday hike!

     When I was little, my parents and I used to hike every now and then up a small mountain in Maine that was about half an hour from my house. But it has been at least six years since I've been there, and I haven't really done that much hiking since then! I had always wanted to hike during my freshman year but I never got around to it. Crowders Mountain State Park in Gaston County, NC is about the halfway point between Charlotte and my old school. So I invited some of my girlfriends from freshman year to meet me for an afternoon of hiking on Saturday, and that was a wonderful decision! :-)

A rest stop on the way up the mountain with a couple of my lovely friends!

     While getting to see the summit of the mountain was 100% worth the trek up, that doesn't mean that it was an easy hike!! When I had looked on the Crowders' Mountain website I found a trail that was a little over 2.5 miles one way and was described as "moderate." That sounded perfect for our little group, and the website made it sound like it ended right at the summit. Wellllll..... not exactly. ;-) The trail was definitely more work then "moderate" and it ended a full mile from the summit! The only trail that lead to the top was labeled as difficult... mainly because the last section of it was hundreds of steep stairs leading directly up.

Just a few of the many steps we had to go up!

     I was really struggling right before we reached the top. Sweat was literally dripping down all part of my body, and the little bit of water left in my water bottle had turned hot. My arms hurt from carrying up my totebag of hiking essentials (like the water bottle and camera) and my feet hurt from the tightness of my sneakers.

     But literally all of those feelings of discomfort went away the second that I saw the summit:

     The pictures almost don't do it justice. It was one of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life! The whole time that I was at the summit, all that I could think about was God, and how marvelous His creation his. How anyone could look at a view like that and not be able to acknowledge that there is a divine creator is beyond me. I also thought about how most bible verses that mention mountains say something along the lines of how God has the power to move the mountains. Just this one mountain seemed huge to me, and this was far from being the largest mountain in North Carolina, and certainly not even close to being the largest in the US! Thinking about how our God has the power to move all of these mountains at any given time was incredible... and it made me feel very small and humbled.

     All in all we ended up hiking about six miles, and I'll just say that my body has been paying me back for that since (I'm sore everywhere!). But again, it was 100% worth it, and it makes me want to get back into hiking! I'm not a camper and I never will be (I like to sleep in my own bed at night) but I would like to get more into taking nature related day trips like this one. Exploring God's creation is a healthy and cheap activity with so many benefits!!

     After the hike the five of us gals went to a Mexican restaurant in a nearby town to have my second birthday dinner. My best friend K from my former school met us at the restaurant. It was a wonderful evening of good food and fun conversation.

I had one more friend there who was the one taking this picture. :-)

     Seeing this picture makes me so thankful that I still have such close friendships with the girls who went to my former school, and I'm grateful that they supported me in my decision to transfer and still value my friendship! That might have just been the best birthday present of all.

     xoxo Miss ALK

Hello 19 {An OOTD, a birthday and a blogoversary}.

     Today is my 19th birthday, and the first blogoversary for Southern Belle in Training!! (Hence why I'm holding a poorly made from printer paper and crayons in my dorm room sign with a large "1" on it ;-))

• Dress: Red Dress Boutique 
• Sunglasses: Kohl's 
• Shoes: Marshall's 
• Necklace: Gift from my Japanese friend Anna :-) 
• Nail Polish: Revlon Nail Art Moon Candy in Galactic 
• Lipstick: Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Pink Velvet
• Tiara: Target's $1 section!! ;-) 

     I decided to start a new tradition for myself: buying a birthday dress. This tradition was started after I saw this gorgeous maxi dress on sale last month on the Red Dress Boutique's website! I have loved the clothes on Red Dress Boutique for awhile and last Spring I browsed their website quite frequently, but I wanted to wait until they had a sale to purchase something (especially since I'm not a big online shopper). Anyways, Red Dress had a HUGE sale this summer, and when I saw this gorgeous maxi dress for under $20 I knew that I had to have it! It has so hard for me to save it to wear until now, but definitely worth it. It fits me perfectly, and the blue color was even prettier in person than it was on the website.

     Another thing that I've been waiting to try out is this beautiful Revlon nail polish that I'm wearing!! I have been wanting one of the Moon Candy polishes for like *ever*, and when I had some CVS extrabucks last month I decided to spend them on one of these nail polish!! Definitely a great purchase- I love the design of this polish and how one end has the solid color and one end has the beautiful sparkly color. The sparkles are more like flecks, and they give my nails this amazing holographic look! I'm not sure that the picture of my nails did them any justice.

     Anyways, enough fashion. Onto the next item at hand: my BIRTHDAY! :-) All that I've been thinking about over the past few days is how fast my 18th year went by. I've been told that life starts flying as you get older, and I'm not sure that I'm quite ready for full years of my life to go by in a blink. While being college aged has its pros and cons, I'm definitely enjoying this stage of my life and I hope that year 19 goes by a little bit slower! 18 had its highs and its lows, and I'm glad that I had this blog with me through every step of the way to write about everything that happened. Check out yesterday's post to see my favorite posts from my first year of blogging here at Southern Belle in Training!

   
     And now with all that birthday stuff out of the way, I thought that I'd give y'all a little update for how the past week has been for me. The truth is- not too great. The fact that I really did transfer colleges and am never going to be a student at my old school again finally hit me this week... and so did the tears. :-( I didn't realize how much I truly did love my old school until I'd settled in at my new school. Do I regret transferring colleges? Not one bit. I truly believe that I am at my new school for a reason, and there have been a lot of good things in my first few weeks here. But just because I'm enjoying some aspects my new school doesn't mean that I can just forget out all my friends at my old school, either. I've cried at least three times this week with homesickness for my former college (NOT homesickness for Maine... just gotta stress that. ;-) I'm so happy to be in the South again!). The good news is that my former school is only about one hour-ish away from Charlotte, and that makes a day trip very doable. I've already been out once to see some people, and I had a wonderful time, although it was bittersweet to be back there and not be a student.

     But even though not all of this transition has been easy, I honestly am happy that I did decide to transfer. Rush week for the sororities is next week and I CANNOT WAIT! :-) I've also made some amazing friendships with the girls on my hall. I live in the dorm that has the most transfer students, so I've met a lot of girls who are in the same situation that I am. My building also has a lot of exchange students which is very cool! One of them, Katharina (who is from Germany) had her birthday last week, so a bunch of the gals from my hall all got dressed up and went out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory.

Left to right: Melaney (my roomie!), Lacy, Callie, Meg (the lone freshman in our group of transfers :-)), Katie and Yours Truly! 

     Tonight these lovely girls will be joining me for dinner out to celebrate my birthday! Ironically my school's cafeteria is putting on a big cupcake decorating event tonight, so we're all going to that and then heading off campus for my birthday dinner... want to guess what I'm having?! INDIAN FOOD! My favorite. :-) Then my hall girls and some other new friends (and also a couple friends from my old school!) are all going dancing at a nightclub. Don't worry- I don't go to the club to meet or dance with guys that I don't know. I went once last year to a club with just with a small group of friends to have fun, and that's exactly what I'm planning to do again! You can go to a nightclub and not drink, do drugs, or dance inappropriately (with strangers or people you know!)... and still have fun! And some good clean fun is exactly what I'm planning to have tonight... you only turn 19 once!

     Lastly, I want to thank the Lord for blessing me with another year of life. This past week I have been reflecting a lot on the blessings in my life. In fact, that's a great way for me to cheer up when I've been missing my old school! I truly am blessed to be attending a university to get a higher education, and to be healthy. I hope that my faith continues to grow even more this year. I went to a wonderful church last weekend here in Charlotte and the message touched me so much that I actually teared up a bit... I think I've found my new home church!


     Time for me to go celebrate!

     xoxo Miss ALK

Favorite Things Thursday: Posts from the first year of SBIT.

     Happy Thursday evening dear friends!! My week has been so very stressful, and because of that I wasn't able to get this post up as early in the day as I would have liked. But here it is, better late than never. :-)

     Since my first year blogoversary (and 19th birthday!) is tomorrow, I figured now would be the perfect time to look back at some of my favorite posts that I've written in the past year! I also have gotten a lot of new followers this past summer, so this might be a fun way for some of my newer blogging friends to look back at my older posts. 

1. Here is post that I wrote in November 2012 about how attending a Christian college was impacting my faith for the better!! (My former college was a Christian school.)  "Going Deeper."
2. I wrote in post in February 2012 about one of my favorite memories from my senior year of high school... prom dress shopping! "One of my favorite senior year memories."
3. I wrote about my thoughts on Victoria's Secret in April 2013. This post only got one comment, but I consider it to be one of my best posts! "Victoria's Secret: more than just a fashion statement?"
4. Right after my freshman year of college ended in May 2013 I did a post documenting some of the best moments from fall and spring semesters... and since I ended up transferring I'm so glad that I have some of my best memories from my old school all wrapped up in one post. :-) "First year of college = DONE!"
5. In June and July 2013 I decided to get brutally honest on my blog and share about two situations with guys that had happened during my freshman year of college. Both situations involved me having a crush on a guy, but neither resulted in relationships for different reasons. I learned a lot through both experiences and decided to share what was on my heart! "Guy lessons from reflection {Part 1}" and "A sort of part 2 on "guy lessons from reflection."
6. Following up after my two posts on failed crushes/relationships, I wrote a post with a new perspective on singleness. I think this is one of my best blog posts to date. "From failure to triumph."

     I also have a few favorite OOTD posts! You can see those here, here and here! Something ironic is that my favorite outfits from my closet are dress or skirt outfits, but all of my favorite OOTD posts on my blog involve jeans or shorts. 

     Stay tuned tomorrow for a special birthday/blogoversary post! I'm off to enjoy my last night as an 18 year old... aka doing homework and then going to a club meeting on campus. :-)

     xoxo Miss ALK

Friendship Week: When one of your good friends becomes a blogger!

     (If you're a fan of anything Disney (Disney parks, Disney movies, Disney characters... etc), this post is for *YOU*!!)

Shout-out to September 2012 when my hair was this long! I'm starting to have serious regrets about cutting it this past April... but anyways BACK to the main post at hand! ;-)

     It's a well-known fact that blogging is something that's pretty important to me. Because of that, I tend to talk about it a fair amount with my real-life friends, most of whom don't blog and probably don't understand the significance that it has to me. As much as I love my blogging friends (and blogging friends that have become real-life friends... aka Gina!), I always desired to have more of my school friends be members of the blogging community, so they can see exactly how wonderful it is, instead of just listening to me go on about it! So I'm sure that y'all can imagine my great delight when I learned that one of my best friends from my former college was starting a blog.

     Meet Becca! 

     ...As you can see we've sported a wide range of outfits in the common room of my suite from last year!

     Becca is a native Floridian, and it always delights me to no end how excited she gets about cooler weather! I took this picture of a very happy Becca last year when she spotted some early fall foliage last September. In turn, I'm sure she got a kick over how happy I was last December when it was still in the 70s in North Carolina! :-)

     Becca has an obsession with the Southern grocery store chain Publix (I gotta say though, Publix is a pretty awesome grocery store!). Sadly there were no Publix locations near our college, so sometimes Becca and I used to venture "south of the border" to a city in South Carolina that had not only Publix, but also my favorite store, Charming Charlie! The last time that we had a "jewelry and groceries" night we also ventured in Dillard's to try on prom dresses, just for the heck of it. ;-)

      This picture of Becca and I is probably the most special to me. Becca was the wonderful friend who accompanied me when I met my favorite author Karen Kingsbury last year, even though she was not familiar with Karen's books herself. She totally didn't mind the fact that I insisited that we show up over two hours early for the signing so I could be the first one in line... and instead was a wonderful waiting line companion! I will never forget this wonderful day that Becca was able to share with me.


     I have managed to leave out one important detail about Becca... She LOVES anything to do with Disney. I mean *LOVES*. (It put my obsession with Karen Kingsbury's books to shame.) This past summer Becca decided to start a blog devoted to all things Disney, and it has quickly become one of my new favorite reads!! Let me just say first that I am not really a Disney fan, like at all. I have been to Disney World a couple times and enjoyed it, but I'm not a huge fan of the cartoon movies or characters. But despite that, I LOVE Becca's blog, and it's not just because she's my real life friend. This girl is one of the most talented writers that I know of, and each post is just written so darn well! Becca is also absolutely hilarious, and her stellar sense of humor shines through in every post and I laugh out loud at almost all of them! Her blog has also given me a new appreciation for Disney, and after reading some of her posts about Disney World I have a whole new list of things to do and try in the parks if I ever get the chance to go back.


      So, I invite all of you to check out my dear friend Becca's little corner of the blogging world! Her blog is called Princesses and Pixie Dust, and you can follow her through Blog Lovin'!


     (And to any of my other real-life friends who might be reading this, have I inspired *you* to start a blog yet?! Haha.)


     xoxo Miss ALK

Friendship Week: I met a blogging friend!

      Hello and happy Labor Day!! Since this is the week that leads up to my 19th birthday and first blogoversary, I wanted to have a theme of posts to kick things off. Friendship seems to have been a pretty key part of my life in these first few weeks back at school, and after what I did this weekend I knew that this would be the perfect time for "Friendship Week" on Southern Belle in Training! My posts for today, tomorrow and Wednesday will be celebrating some of the great friendships that I feel so blessed to have. :-)

  

     I decided to kick off Friendship Week with what will probably be the most exciting post for all of my readers. ;-)  After being part of the blogging community for over two and a half years, I have finally met somone in person who I "met" first through the blogging world. This has been a dream/bucket list item of mine for a really long time, and now that it's actually happened I just want to meet more and more and more bloggers! Haha.

     So who was it that I had the privilege of meeting this past Saturday? None other then the lovely Gina of Gina Alyse!  Gina was one of the lovely ladies who particpated in the Summer of Something New blog challenge this year, so you might recognize her blog from that. (She has an AWESOME blog so if you're not reading it then go follow her now!)

     I first found Gina through fellow Summer of Something New challenge participant Jessica's blog... I think in the late Spring (April/May-ish). At one point Gina had written a really long (and wonderful!) comment on one of my posts, and I responded to it via e-mail, and then she wrote back, and then I wrote back.... you get the picture! All summer long Gina and I became e-mail buddies. Her messages were one of the highlights of my summer, and I soon realized that I had done more then just found a girl who had a great blog, I had also found a wonderful new friend.

     Gina's school is just a couple hours from my school, and over the summer we mentioned how fun it would be to meet up, but I honestly never pictured it happening so early in the school year!! Here's how things worked out...

     Do any of you remember how there was a short time this summer when I was working two jobs? One of which was at a day camp? Although I only worked there for three weeks, I did make friends with some of my coworkers. One of them who I stayed in touch with happened to go to the same college as Gina. I also realized that someone from my high school class who I had been in Interact club with also went to this school! This gave me more of a reason to want to visit.

     My coworker from daycamp called me out of the blue last week and asked if I wanted to come up and visit her school over the weekend. At the time I said probably not, but then after realizing that it was Labor Day weekend and not a lot was happening on campus I messaged Gina and asked if she would be around. I didn't want to make the trip up unless I could see all the people that I knew at this school at once! ;-)

     It worked out that all of them would be on campus that day, and I started my visit with Gina. She gave me a tour around the beautiful campus, and we had lunch together at the cutest pizza place!! It was so fun to be eating lunch with someone and being able to talk about blogging, something that just doesn't hold significance for most of the people in my life. Finally I could talk in person with someone who just "got" it!! 

     But of course our conversations were not just limited to blogging- since we had developed a pretty strong e-mail friendship, Gina and I were able talk about so many things! She is a sweetheart and I was truly sad when our visit came to a close. 

     My one regret of the day is that I forgot to charge my camera before arriving at her school. The only thing that I have a camera picture of is my pizza from the restaurant we ate at! So the only picture that I had of her and I was on my phone (hence the crappy quality), but luckily she was able to get some on her own camera. 

     I had so much fun with Gina and cannot wait until the next time that we can get together! She will hopefully be studying abroad next semester, so that means that I need to head back up to her school again soon if I want to see her! 

     And now that I've met a blogging friend and realized how fun it was, I'm determined to meet as many more as I can! Any bloggers want to host me at their houses for my school breaks? Or come visit me in Charlotte? ;-)

     Oh!! Almost forgot- I have more exciting news! I also found out this past weekend that my best friend from high school, Jules, is coming to North Carolina for my school's fall break to visit me!! She was able to find a good deal on a flight, and I CANNOT WAIT to have her with me in the South! She has never been to the Carolinas before and I am so pumped to show her around and take her to some of the things that are uniquely Southern! She will be here in less than two months and I am so excited. Y'all will be hearing a lot more about that as it gets closer!

     Stay tuned tomorrow from a post about how one of my good friends from my former college has started a blog! It's amazing and I can't wait to share it! 

     xoxo Miss ALK