Lauren Stanley

Lauren Stanley is a junior in Creative Advertising at Virginia Commonwealth University. She was an editorial intern at Virginia Living for summer 2025.

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Cocktails

Best Halloween Cocktails for the Fall Season

As autumn’s chill creeps in and shadows grow longer, this bewitching cocktail will cast a spell on your taste buds that’s impossible to break. Made with Belle Isle’s Blood Orange Moonshine that glows like a harvest moon and a hefty splash of their Lemon Drop Blackberry Moonshine, this sinister sip is your grimoire for the […]

Food

Celebrate Halloween with Pumpkin-Shaped Bagels

Picture this: You’re scrolling through Instagram and suddenly stop dead in your tracks. Is that a pumpkin? Wait, no—it’s a bagel shaped like a pumpkin, and it’s so realistic you’d swear it just rolled in from a roadside farmstand. Welcome to Bobby’s Bagel Café, where carbs meet creativity in the most spectacular way possible. Back […]

Drink

Celebrate Oktoberfest in Virginia

The German traditions of Oktoberfest flourish in Virginia with lively local events filled with beer, food, and music. Fredericksburg • 6 Bears & A Goat Sept. 13: Kick off autumn and Oktoberfest season with a bang at Fredtoberfest. This fourth annual event features live music, authentic eats, games, local makers, and more. 6BGBrewingCo.com Middleburg • […]

Most Popular

The Story Behind the Moonshine Explosion in Rocky Mount, Virginia

It was during the early days of the Great Depression, and Virginia’s statewide prohibition was still in effect, banning all sales of alcohol. Meanwhile, in Franklin County, the area was laying the foundation for its future title: the Moonshine Capital of the World. Nestled among the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains, the Turner Motor Co. […]

by Gabriela de Camargo Gonçalves

A Couple’s Small-Town Makeover

After a successful career in investigative services in Washington, D.C., Terri Wesselman and her husband, Julien Patterson, decided to settle down in Irvington. Initially drawn to the area by the Tides Inn, the couple had been weekending in the Northern Neck since the late ’90s. “There was something about the area that was quiet but […]

by Stephanie Ganz

The Ghosts of Virginia

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.—Carl Jung It may be the little diversion on a vacation that no one can resist. After we pad the waistline with fries and ice cream, we turn to the ghost tour in a haunted house. On the surface, of course, […]

by Avery Chenoweth