Friends, hello! Happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you enjoying the loveliest of mornings, coffee in hand, comfy socks on, and, ideally, in the mood for a spot of armchair travelling! I’m dropping into your inboxes to share my latest travel offering with you: A Long Weekend on the Causeway Coast, Northern Ireland. As you might remember, Husband, Bean, and I escaped up north back in the middle of summer, and it was so lovely! We spent five days exploring the gorgeous rugged coastline — three of them alone & two of them with my family, who joined us for a final hoorah! — and I’ve been itching to share this guide with you ever since!

Located at the northernmost tippy top of the country, the Causeway Coast and Glens is an area known for its exquisite scenery. And when I say exquisite scenery, I mean absolutely gawp-inducing spectacular scenery at almost every turn. On top of that, we were based in Ballycastle for the duration of our visit, a town that’s actually located within a designated ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’, so we were never without a pretty view. It would easily rival the most beautiful of landscapes along the Ring of Kerry.

Everything we got up to on the Causeway Coast is listed below, divided into the following categories: getting there / where we stayed / where we ate + drank / where we tourist-ed / where we shopped / and map our trip. I hope you find it helpful, friends!

Shall we?

getting there

Here are the steps we took getting to the Causeway Coast from Dublin:

• we drove up! The journey was a largely uneventful 3.5-ish hours, and it was mostly straight sailing. This is the exact route we drove to get there; it completely surpassed Belfast + its surroundings, which is good because the traffic is so unpredictable around the city, and the number of lanes can get pretty confusing. Google Maps routed us through the city on the way back home, and we got totally screwed with big build-ups of traffic — would definitely recommend avoiding.

• we hit two tolls on the way up from Dublin, both before the border. One was an open-road toll that we paid online the same night, and the other was an actual physical toll plaza where we were able to tap a bank card. The costs at the time of our journey were €2.60 and €2.30 respectively.

• a good halfway stopping point on the journey would be somewhere around Banbridge or Lisburn. The Applegreen Lisburn Sevrices Northbound is home to NI’s first ever Taco Bell, and the one on the other side — Applegreen Lisburn Services Southbound — has a Chick-fil-A, so there are some exotic road-trip options! We opted to eat car-picnic sandwiches in silence while Bean slept, but maybe next time!

where we stayed

Read more

Hi friends, happy weekend! I hope this post finds you well-rested, appropriately caffeinated, and with some fun plans for the day ahead; be it a cosy day on the couch watching films, getting out for a walk, or meeting a friend for coffee. As promised, I’m dropping into your inboxes to share a very fun post with you: every single detail from Bean’s “it’s fun to be ONE!” birthday party! I went a little craft crazy in the run up to the party, and I’ve been dying to share an in-depth look at everything I made! Who knew having a baby would awaken the crafty woman within me?!

Before we get into it, you might’ve read in my last MM post that we, unfortunately, ended up missing the birthday party. There’s more details in the MM post, but long story short: Bean’s temperature went through the roof and we had to leave the party about 10-minutes after it started to rush her to the emergency room. It ended up being a weird viral thing and thankfully we got home later the same night — but I’m only mentioning it because it means I didn’t get to take any photos of the soiree in motion. Every photo included below was taken either before or after the fact, but I think you’ll get a pretty good feel for the crafts anyways.

Full disclosure: this is a loooooong post! When I said I’ve included every single detail from the party, I meant every! single! detail! I hope you love it, I hope you find it helpful, and, if you’re in the depths of party planning, I hope it provides you with some fun inspiration 😊

Subscribe now

everything i DIY-ed

adorable invite

Okay, this was by far the easiest thing I made for the party, but I love how it came out!! I wanted the invitations to be super fun and colourful, while also hinting slightly at the major cuteness of the birthday face garland I planned to surprise everyone with.

I kept mostly to a lavender / pale blue / sage green / dusty pink / sunny yellow colour scheme, and finished the whole thing off with a few mismatching squiggles and hand-drawn stars. I had initially littered the background with a dousing of semi-transparent sprinkles, but ended up removing them because the extra colour was too distracting.

Isn’t this just the cutest invite you’ve ever seen? I wish I could show you the version with Bean’s big cheesy grin!

DETAILS:
// PicWish, to remove the background of a photo and get a cut-out of Bean’s face
// Canva, for designing the invite. Fonts used: More Sugar, Handsome, Space Mono

happy birthday plate

This is maybe the only craft on my list that I wasn’t sure about — I thought it might’ve been a little TOO extra? — but I’m so glad I decided to go ahead and own my extra-ness because it came out so! cute! My mom and I went to a local pottery painting place, booked a seat for 2-hours, and found our inner zen as we lost ourselves in the process. I looked at roughly a gazillion different designs online before going to the pottery studio, so I had a pretty clear idea in my head of what I wanted to do: bunch of balloons, sprinkle background, scalloped edge, and retro typeface-style lettering. Again, I kept to the same colours as above, and I love how fun it came out!

I also am just so proud that I painted this and we’ll get to pull it out year after year to eat cake off of?! So cool!

DETAILS:
// The Art Lab, for pottery painting

birthday face garland

It’s hard to choose for sure, but this DIY is maybe my favourite of the bunch? I saw the idea online and knew immediately that I’d have to make one for Bean’s birthday, because how could I not?! I ordered a bunch of zoomed-in photos of Bean making a variety of faces — the funnier the better! I went for as many different ones as I could find — , cut them out, glued little triangle party hats into place, topped each hat with a pom pom, and glued them all onto a long ribbon to string across the room. Of course, because I’m a crazy lady, I also decorated each of the hats with different ribbons and designs, so no two hats were the same.

Judge my OTT-ness all you want, but it was so worth the effort! This is hands-down the most adorable thing I’ve ever made, and the fact that every single face AND every single hat is different makes it so much more interesting to look at — like a mini art piece! It is also the most joyous thing I have ever laid my eyes on, and if you leave this post with just one birthday DIY to take home, please let it be this; it is so fun!!

DETAILS:
// Snapfish, for 50 free prints a month on the app
// coloured card from Tesco, for cutting into party hats
// mix of regular + glitter pom poms from Euro Saver + Dealz, for topping the hats
// assorted ribbon / tissue paper / bows, etc., for decorating the hats
// 9m long ribbon from Søstrene Grene, for hanging the finished garland
// hot glue gun, for assembling

mini party hats for her favourite teddies

I think I was in denial about the fact that I was going to make these until I was actually making these; I included it on my bizarre birthday prep list, but it seemed too ridiculous to say out loud to even Husband. One afternoon, just to see if it was easy / worth it, I casually cut out a semi-circle, rolled it up, hot-glued it into place, and the end result was so cutesy that before I knew it I was measuring the heads of Bean’s most beloved teddies for their custom party hats. Naturally, I had to dress them up ever-so-slightly by adding a fun layer of design paper, a pom pom, and a ruffled tissue paper trim. Aren’t they just the cutest little hats you’ve ever seen?

We dotted the decked out teddies around the party zone for an added little splash of fun ✨

DETAILS:
// coloured card from Tesco, for base sturdiness
// design paper from Søstrene Grene, for the decorative outer layer
// mix of regular + glitter pom poms from Euro Saver + Dealz, for topping the hats
// elastic cord from Dealz, for securing into position
// different coloured tissue paper, for a decorative base edge
// hot glue gun, for assembling

felt birthday crown

I have been mentally preparing for this moment ever since I made Bean a felt crown for her 1/2 birthday back in April, and when I actually sat down to sketch out an idea of what I wanted to make, it just flowed right out! Keeping in line with the rest of the DIYs, I thought it would be cute to do a simple party themed crown: balloons, candles, bunting, and two dancing stars that reminded me so much of Weird Barbie when I was sewing them into existence. I also decided to stitch some sparkles into the background for a little extra pizzazz, and I L-O-V-E the finished product!!

Of course, I used the word simple above, but it probably took me 3- to 4-days of solid work during Bean’s naps to make the crown from beginning to end. The process 100% would’ve been quicker if I went with a less colourful or less intricate design filled with many tiny little pieces — but where would the sense of accomplishment be in that?! I regret nothing and the end result was worth every single second!

DETAILS:
// Hey Jen Brannen, for crown templates, sewing tutorials, and endless inspiration
// different coloured felt, for the crown and any embellishments
// embroidery thread + needles, for sewing the details onto the crown
// lilac heart + flower ribbon from Søstrene Grene, for tying the crown closed

happy birthday backdrop

I think this was the DIY that finally broke the camels back in terms of how many crafts Husband could put up with. I noticed the first crack of impatience when I innocently asked if he thought the backdrop should say ‘happy birthday!’ or ‘happy birthday to you!’ — to which he replied: “what does it matter?” — and the second 3-days later when I asked him what he thought of my progress, which garnered me a “lord help me from answering any more questions about that quilt” 😂

This was definitely my biggest DIY undertaking for the party, and probably took the guts of 5-ish days to finish completely. I ordered a huge sheet of fabric online, cut a bunch of Bean’s old baby clothes into a mix of capital and lowercase letters, stuck them onto the fabric with iron-on glue, and then hand-sewed around the edges of the letters for a more secure hold. If I’d bought a stronger iron-on glue then I wouldn’t have needed to hand-sew around the letters — by far the most tedious and time consuming part! —, but I now think the little hand-sewn edges add a charming homemade quality? A nice silver lining to an accidental oversight!

As labour intensive as it was, I’m obsessed with the finished product! I can picture Bean wearing every single one of the outfits that got repurposed into a letter, and I love that this backdrop gave us a reason to hold onto them! I also love that we’ll get to hang this up for every future birthday to take photos in front of? For extra memory-making, the three of us also added our handprints to the corner and I couldn’t love it more! Imagine how sweet it’ll be as we add Bean’s growing pawprint every year!?

DETAILS:
// Canva, for doing a mock-up of layout + lettering. Font used: Handpicked Seashells
// 1-metre unbleached calico cotton fabric from Amazon, for the backdrop
// old baby clothes, for cutting into letters
// heat-n-bond lite iron-on adhesive from Amazon, for securing the fabric to the backdrop
// embroidery thread + needles, for sewing the letters onto the backdrop properly
// acrylic paint from Flying Tiger Copenhagen, for family handprints

paper chains

I’m sorry — but a child’s birthday party has to have paper chains and that’s just the way it is! I made six long chains to hang from the ceiling + decorate the party room, and I loooove how retro they made it feel! I’m not really into the chunky paper chain trend doing the rounds at the moment, so I cut my paper into 8 thin-ish strips, and my chains ended up being about 70-strips long. I used a mix of rainbow + pastel coloured paper and it came out so cute!

90s party décor, a fun burst of colour, and a therapeutic few hours spent mindlessly stapling — success!

DETAILS:
// rainbow coloured and pastel coloured card from Art & Hobby, for the chains
// many many staples, for securing the chains together

bakes and smash cake

In an effort to keep things super simple, I decided to make two of the most reliable bakes I know: rice krispie squares, and honey butter apple cake. The former is the ultimate crowd pleaser, the recipe makes a huge tray of chocolatey goodness, and it actually gets made on the hob, so it was a quick easy thing to knock off my list. The latter is also a reliable crowd pleaser; I’d made it many times before, we had an abundance of apples from the tree in the back garden, and it simply isn’t a birthday party without an actual cake for guests.

Seeing as Bean still hasn’t had any real taste of sugar yet to speak of(!), we wanted to make her her own special cake to continue that trend. I settled on a recipe for a yogurt banana cake spiked with vanilla and cinnamon, and it ended up being not half bad! I used whipped cream as the defacto frosting, and ended up finishing it off with a light dusting of sprinkles across the top. Bean loved it!

Due to the aforementioned ER visit, Bean’s smash cake is the only bake I have photographic proof of. There wasn’t a single rice krispie crumb to be found when we got back from the hospital, and only a few slices of apple cake remaining — so I’d say people liked them! I would’ve murdered a rice krispie square after the day we’d had, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

DETAILS:
// Rice Krispie Squares from Avoca, via In an Irish Home
// Cinnamon Sugar Apple Cake from Pinch of Yum
// Baby Smash Cake from MJ and Hungryman

everything i did not DIY

extra décor bits

Husband thought it would be so cute to hang a balloon or two on the front gate to let everyone know where the party was and who was I to deny such a fun nostalgic idea? The fact that it was just our immediate family and closest friends coming was obviously irrelevant.

I gave into the Pinterest birthday board pressure and bought a couple of gold star garlands to dot around the place, and I love the sparkle they brought to the room! We hung them from the art on the walls, across the backdrop, and around the window to catch the light. If I hadn’t been absolutely maxxed out on the DIY front then I might’ve been tempted to make my own garland, but frankly it was nice to just buy something ready-made for once.

DETAILS:
// balloons + birthday candles from Dealz
// gold star garland from Amazon

party tableware, nibbles, and drinks

We decided to go for paper plates, napkins, and cups to make our lives easier. I found some adorable rainbow spotted plates/napkins, and the cutest little paper cups with birthday candles going around — but you’ll just have to take my word for it because I didn’t get to take a photo before we left. Sigh.

The same easy approach goes for the savoury food we served; we opted for little nibbly bits like cocktail sausages and tortilla chips with dips etc., things that people could just pick at while we mingled. Again, no photographic proof — but based on the fact that there was barely any food left when we got home, I’d say this menu was a success!

DETAILS:
// rainbow spot plates + napkins from Tesco
// candle themed paper cups from Dealz
// Bottlegreen presses, cocktail sausages, hummus, breadsticks/cheese straws + tortilla chips and dips from Tesco

bean’s birthday outfit

I might be crazy enough to have undertaken all these wacky crafts — but I am nowhere near delusional enough to think I could make Bean her own special birthday outfit. We purchased this gorgeous dusty pink smock dress with dainty hand-embroidered flowers and a cutesy peter pan collar back at the very beginning of the year, and I’m so glad it fit her perfectly just in time for her birthday! It effortlessly toed the line of fancy yet fun and has a beautiful timeless quality about it. I picked up a pair of baby tights with ruffles on the bum for her to wear underneath, and the finished outfit was so adorable!

DETAILS:
// Eglantine Smock from Tartine et Chocolat, via Over The Moon
// tights with ruffle bum from Dunnes Stores

And there we have it, every single detail from Bean’s first birthday party: it’s fun to be ONE! I’m so proud of all the crafts I DIY-ed for the big day, and I’m so happy to get to preserve the details of them all here on the blog forevermore. Which craft was your favourite? If you have any thoughts or questions, hit me up using the comment box below — I’d love to hear from you!

Happy crafting,

Vicki xo

related posts

The Best Thing I Ever Baked
Monthly Musings: October 2025
Monthly Musings: October 2026

Hello friends, happy Sunday! Welcome to our Monthly Musings: October 2026 post —I hope it finds you well. I am stopping by for the briefest of moments with a very condensed post for the month, because if I don’t share this now I fear the whole month will get away from me! How are you? Did you have a lovely September? I am flabbergasted that we are into October already(?!), but also thrilled because I love this time of year! The slight chill in the air, the crispy orange leaves, the cosy oversized jumpers, and the hankering to add more cinnamon to everything. Isn’t it just the best?

Let’s get into it, shall we? I’m writing this on borrowed time as Bean is taking a slightly longer nap than usual… but more on that, along with our usual ramblings, listed below. All the usual suspects are there — baby update, travel talk, movie + book chatter, etc. —, just a little on the lighter side.

Enjoy!

Subscribe now

monthly musings: october 2026

On the baby bulletin: I have so much to say here that I don’t even know where to start! Yesterday, two days ahead of her actual birthday (more on this below!), we had a little birthday party for Bean with our immediate families and besties. The house was all done up, everyone was arriving — and suddenly Bean’s temperature went up to 39.3°C, so we had to drop everything and head into the emergency room. It came on so fast and so out of the blue; one second she was fine, the next she was burning up and cuddling into my chest with her eyes closed, whimpering. It was terrifying, but thankfully the CHI team at Tallaght really looked after us and we were back home just in time for Bean’s normal bedtime. Apparently it’s some sort of viral infection, so all we can do is wait it out, give plenty of fluids, and make sure she gets lots of rest. Grateful it wasn’t anything more serious!

*

Related: I cannot believe that Bean missed her first ever birthday party. I mean, obvz, there was nothing we could’ve done about the situation — but it was so sad!! Husband and I spent hours hanging up decorations the night before, and literally about 10-minutes after most people arrived, we were on the phone to the doctor getting the advice to head to the ER. I poured my heart and soul into making so many cute crafty DIYs and it breaks my heart that I wasn’t there to chat to people about them! Everyone did stay after we left though, enjoying the food and taking some photographic evidence, but it bums me out so bad that Bean couldn’t enjoy it 💔

*

Also related: Bean is turning one tomorrow! I can’t believe we’ll have a little one year old on our hands! This whole year has flown by so fast and, other than yesterday, it has mostly gone off without any hiccups! I’m still in shock that we’ve known Bean for a full 365-days! She has grown into the most lovely little toddler-to-be: she’s very chatty, loves to sing the opening line of Baa Baa Black Sheep, is the ultimate nosy parker, a cheddar cheese afficionado, an 11-hour through-the-night sleeper, and, generally speaking, a pretty chill little lady. We all have our moments, but for the most part, she has made this parenting thing pretty dang lovely ❤️

*

Okay, one last related thought: as sad as it was that we missed the party, I am so! glad! that it didn’t happen on her actual birthday. We were always planning to have a special family day, but now I am determined to make it even more so because of yesterday. We will be donning the special birthday outfit — that was whipped off after 10-minutes in an effort to cool her down —, wearing our birthday crown, and plan to hit up the local aquarium for some fishy fun! Please cross your fingers and toes that our day goes off without a hitch tomorrow!

*

In travel news: we went to Nantes last month! We had some issues with Bean settling down for daytime naps and the exhausted hysterical baby this issue created, but, by and large, the trip went mostly well. We had some good food, did a lot of easy tourist-ing — Le Grand Éléphant being a particular highlight —, and, although we enjoyed the break from our home reality, neither of us really connected with the city? We just didn’t vibe with it in the same way we do other French cities, but it’s always nice to explore a new place regardless. Have you visited Nantes before?

*

In case you missed it, a recap of our foodie day in town hit the blog last month: A Saturday in Dublin, Ireland. The post details everywhere Husband and I stopped on our mini food-crawl across the city back in July, and even just looking through the photos makes me hungry! I hope you love it, friends.

*

According to my StoryGraph, I shockingly didn’t finish one single book last month! After my foray into the Off-Campus series, I took a hard left turn and started reading Lena Dunham’s memoir, Famesick. I’m not usually a memoir reader, and as I’m coming to the end of this one, I think I’ll stick to fiction from here on out. How is your autumnal reading going?

*

Have you seen anything great recently? Movie-wise, our most fun new-to-us viewings were Rebuilding, Over Your Dead Body, and The Love Hypothesis — although none of them lit our world on fire. Fun rewatches include One Hour Photo, Labour Day, Gothika, and The Mule, all of which were so fun! TV-wise, I think the only new series we watched was Crew Girl? It was cheese-tastic & generally not great, but watchable all the same. To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here.

Okay, that’s all I have time for! I’ll be back next week with a full post about every single detail from Bean’s first birthday party — I can’t wait for you to see it; it’s so cute!

My love to you,

Vicki xo

PS: photo of me + Bean taken by Husband in Passage Pommeraye, Nantes!

related posts

2025 // 2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021 // 2020
2019

Friends, hello — happy weekend! I hope this email finds you well! I am dropping into your inboxes, as promised, with a slightly overdue travel post: A Saturday in Dublin, Ireland. As you might remember, Husband and I celebrated our 11-year anniversary back in July and we marked the occasion by going on a little self-guided food crawl! We started with wine + cheese toasties, ended with fancy cocktails, and somehow managed to squeeze coffee, cookies, beer, chicken AND pizza in the middle there — it was the best day ever! We might have to plan little food crawls for all of our future celebrations together?! It was so fun!

Full details on everywhere we hit during our mini food crawl are listed below. Because we didn’t want to be traipsing this way and that around the city, everywhere we stopped at was very localised and easy to walk between.

Enjoy, friends!

a saturday in dublin, ireland

Read more

Hello friends, happy Monday! Welcome to our Monthly Musings: September 2026 post — I hope it finds you well. I had every intention of getting this post out to you over the weekend, but you know what they say about the best laid plans! Since we last talked, I celebrated turning another year older and tried to soak up as much of the love and joy surrounding that as I could. My family had us over for dinner, Husband and I escaped off for a meal without the baby, I met up with friends for coffee, and we generally just ate a lot of really delicious food — it was so glorious! It also felt a little more special than usual because it was my first birthday as a mama, and being greeted in the morning by Bean holding my birthday card with her little paws is something I hope to never forget ❤️

Aside from the birthday celebrations, we also just had a generally delightful month. We took Bean out for her first ever walk in Glendalough — the Green Road Walk was perfect with the buggy! —, enjoyed a day out in Powerscourt, and spent many an early morning walking along the seafront; the perfect end to a wonderful summer! The only downside of our month was that our little car was handed down a death sentence after failing its NCT, so we’re officially on the lookout for a new-to-us car. The silver lining of this is, of course, that we’ll have a new car for the first time in over 10-years, and that is pretty dang exciting. Can’t beat that new car smell!

Anyways, let’s get into it! Our musings for the month ahead are listed below, filled with all the usual ramblings. A baby update, some travel talk, a recap on what I’ve been reading and watching, and a few additional titbits for good measure.

Enjoy!

Subscribe now

monthly musings: september 2026

On the baby bulletin: Bean is officially 11-months old! The leadup to her first birthday is on and whoa nelly I cannot fully comprehend how? Our little angel has been so adorable over the last month! New cute things she does that melt our hearts: cuddling into Mama in the evenings before dinner, suddenly loves playing peek-a-boo, wraps her little paws into the hair at the back of my neck when I carry her around, and, as of a few weeks, loves standing! Still no crawling, but I’m starting to think the little miss might bypass it & head straight to walking?! We shall see!

*

The countdown is officially on for our trip to Nantes! We’re jetting off in T-minus 16-days, so it’s high time we start making some proper plans for our time there. So far all I know for sure is that we’re planning to let Bean try her first ever croissant(!), but other than that our trip is an open book! If you have any recommendations for nice areas, restaurants, cafés, baby-friendly parks etc., please hit me up using the comment box below. Neither of us have ever been to the Loire region before, and we’re so excited!

*

Related: Nantes will be our last trip out of the country until April next year when we’ll be flying to South Africa to get my bestie married! I, along with my other bestie, will be one of her six bridesmaids, and I still can’t quite believe we’re going all the way to ZA for the wedding! I finally found the perfect bridesmaid dress — April is the end of their summer/start of their autumn, so I needed to get something lighter before all the A/W lines came in — and now that the stress of that is out of the way I feel like I can finally relax and look forward to such an exotic trip! Only 209 days to go!

*

I finally ticked a big item off my new year’s resolutions list and went to a Mom Group thing!! I was totally out of my comfort zone and knew literally no one, but I finally reached a stage in my maternity leave where that no longer mattered. The group organised drinks at the pub and it was so lovely! I was the only new mama there that night, but I relaxed right in and felt like I could actually be friends with some of these people — hurrah! They organise all these fun mama & baby walks, sauna outings, little picnics etc., so I’m looking forward to joining more of their events.

*

I truly lost my mind and went to crafty extra mom cloud cuckoo land over the last month, but I am totally okay with it! I finally started some of the DIY decorations for Bean’s little 1st birthday party and they! are! so cute! My mom and I went to a local pottery studio and spent a delightful two hours painting one-of-a-kind special birthday plates to bring home to our families — it was so wholesome! I also completed my first major DIY piece that took hours off my life but was 100% worth it and is maybe the most adorable decoration that has ever existed? I’m planning on sharing a little post about all my DIYs next month, so stay tuned!

*

I am so sorry about the lack of new posts last month! I was chipping away on both my Dublin food-crawl and Ballycastle posts, but once I went into the crafting zone it was hard to claw my way back out! Now that I am temporarily between projects I plan to finish off the food-crawl guide and get it out to your inboxes next weekend — writing it here will hold me accountable!!

*

Let’s talk books! What have you been reading? I decided to take a little Stephen King break after reading two, IMO, complete duds in a row, and moved instead onto Elle Kennedy’s Off-Campus series. So far I’ve read book #1, #5, and #3 — yes, completely out of order, but they’re all semi-standalone — and although they’re totally awkward cheese with a gratuitous dose of smut, I sort of enjoyed them? Bad for my street-cred, but sometimes I like a cringy embarrassing book! To follow along with my reading in real-time on StoryGraph, click here.

*

Have you seen anything great recently? We kind of fell down a TV-show rabbit hole for most of the month, with fictional shows Sterling Point and The Shards — the former we enjoyed a lot more — and true-crime docs Death of the Pastor’s Wife and The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, both of which were so sad. Movie-wise: the best new-to-us films were definitely The Drama, which I really wasn’t expecting to like that much but thought it was so good, and Nightbitch, which really blew us away! It was such an accurate depiction of how crazy the postpartum period is and Amy Adams was just so right for the role! If you are also in the depths of postpartum-hood, would definitely recommend! To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here.

*

Oof, Husband whipped up a delicious breakfast for us using this recipe for Austrian Kaiserschmarren from Martha Collison recently and it was so ridiculously delicious! We’ve never had it before, but it was kind of like eating a plateful of bite-sized buttery soft pillows? It was so good! We were thinking that it could make a wonderful Christmas morning breakfast? Caramelized and buttery in all the right places, maybe with a grating of orange and a sprinkle of cranberries for a festive twist? Yum!

And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: September 2026 post! I hope you found something to take away with you, and I realllllly hope it’s a yearn to do some crazy DIY crafts. Catch you again next month!

Hugs,

Vicki xo

related posts

2025 // 2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021 //
2020 // 2019

Friends, hello! Happy August! Welcome to our Monthly Musings: August 2026 post, I hope it finds you well! How the heck are you? I truly hope that you’ve been getting out to squeeze every last ounce of sunshine out of your summer — we certainly have been, and I’ve got plenty of new summer freckles to prove it! Every dang day saw us making the most of the long summer days, be it by heading to the beach, having an impromptu little picnic, strolling along the seafront, and, most recently, by escaping up north for a couple of days with my family. More on all of this below, but I really feel like the past month was maybe my favourite summer month ever? It was just so fun and light and joyous, you know? Here’s hoping we can make all of Bean’s future summers as lovely as the first one ❤️

Our musings for the month ahead are listed below, filled with all the usual ramblings and then some. A little baby update, some travel talk, a recap on what I’ve been reading and watching, and a few additional summery titbits for good measure.

Enjoy!

Subscribe now

monthly musings: august 2026

On the baby bulletin: Bean is doing so well! Big milestones from the last month include: she started pointing — so cute! except when she points at something behind me and I’m alone with her? less cute and more creepy —, transitioning down from three naps to two — seemed impossible the first few days, but is now effortless and actually seems to suit her more? —, and she’s really making a big effort to talk lately! She’s trying out words with different types of syllables and it is so sweet when she tries to include herself into conversations! I cannot believe she is 10-months old already?! Crazy!

*

I know I touched on it above, but wow we just had a really wonderful five day long trip in Northern Ireland, and it was so perfect! Based in my uncle’s holiday home in Ballycastle(!), we went out exploring every day and were absolutely blown away by how beautiful the Causeway Coast is?! The beaches, the cliffs, the mountains — not to mention the Giant’s Causeway or Carrick-a-Rede! It was all stunning! I am itching to sit down and write a full guide about our time there, so definitely watch this space!

*
Related: Bean did so well on this trip! Northern Ireland was her fourth new country in less than 10-months, and she was a superstar! The drive there and back was maybe the hardest part — 3.5-/nearly 4-hours in the car each way isn’t ideal for anyone tbh, not just a baby — but she had no problem settling into the new house for naps etc. We did have some teething upset, but I’d rather have them away on a trip than at home in our everyday life! I just love exploring the world with our little bestie and I genuinely believe she is a more adaptable baby because of it 😊

*

Husband and I celebrated our 11-year anniversary at the end of July! You might remember that our milestone anniversary last year was completely overshadowed by my appendectomy at 29-weeks pregnant, so we really wanted to make the most of this one. My lovely mother and sister offered to babysit Bean, and Husband & I went into town for an epic foodie day out! We basically ate our way across Dublin — starting with wine + toasties, finishing with fancy cocktails, and somehow managing to squeeze in coffee, cookies, pizza, chicken in the middle somewhere — and it was the best day ever! Don’t worry, I’ve already started working on a little guide covering everywhere we hit 😉

*

In case you missed it, two new travel guides hit the blog last month! A Complete Guide to Nice, France and A Morning in Antibes, France. I’ve had a version of the Nice guide on the blog for the last couple years, but I completely gutted it and updated it to include all the info from our most recent trip there a couple months back — it is absolutely stuffed to the gills with everything you need to know about the city and I truly hope you love it! The Antibes guide is more of a sweet little memory capsule; we only spent a handful of hours in town, but it was so lovely that I couldn’t bear to not share what we got up to with you. We also had the best cookie of our lives there, and that fact really needed to be documented here for all to read. Have you read the posts yet?

*

The lovely people at TokyoTreat were in touch recently and kindly sent out their August snack box, Okinawa Snackin’ Paradise, for me to try! I’ve been eyeing their stuff for ages, so I was thrilled to hear from them out of the blue! The team create monthly fun & exclusive Japanese snack boxes that are absolutely filled to the brim with exciting goodies: limited-edition KitKats, fun-flavoured Japanese crisps, seasonal treats, and so much more! We’ve especially enjoyed the tropical island theme of this month’s snack box and have loved taste-testing the pineapple gummies, shisa sweet cookie, kakigori chewing gum, sweet potato chinsuko, etc. — it’s like being back in Japan all over again! Would definitely recommend! More info here.

*

Summer Bucket List check in: nearly every item on my list is almost ticked off! We went for a road trip up north with my fambam, we’ve had three picnics thus far, we went to the beach, celebrated our anniversary in style, booked our final maternity leave trip, ate ice-cream nearly every day we were up north, and I’ve started Bean’s birthday prep! I’m so proud of all the fun summer frivolities we’ve accomplished this year! The only things really left on the list are to get out to Glendalough, a little more birthday prep, and to start prepping the yearly photobook photos. Getting! It! Done! How are you getting along with your summer bucket list?

*

RE the aforementioned beach day: it was so lovely! Together with my sister, Husband, and Bean, we packed up the car with all the snacks, picnic blankets, camper chairs, + sneaky tumblers of wine and headed down to Brittas Bay for the afternoon! We set up camp along the dunes and spent the most wholesome few hours soaking up Bean’s first day at the beach. We dipped her little toesies in the sea, enjoyed a picnic lunch together, and just generally enjoyed the sunshine and the feeling of the waves. Of course, it’s all lovely until you get home and realise you’re still covered in ALL THE SAND — but it’s a nice summer day out regardless.

*

Okay, what are you reading at the mo’? I’m currently stuck in a little rut because, sadly, the Stephen King train has finally let me down — twice! First with Revival, which I thought was a total DUD; so boring and ultimately pointless, and now again with Full Dark, No Stars, which I’m still trudging through but have lost interest. Send help in the form of book recommendations — I am in dire need! To follow along with my reading in real-time on StoryGraph, click here.

*

Have you seen anything good lately? Our movie viewing really took a backseat last month, with the only new-to-us flicks being Obsession, Black Phone 2, and The Devil Wears Prada 2; all three of which we did not enjoy. However! We did watch some good new-to-us TV lately — Widow’s Bay + The Beast In Me —, both of which we really enjoyed! I’m new to the Matthew Rhys fan club, but I thought he was fab in both shows, and so different in each! We also watched the new Cape Fear reboot and thought it was soooo bad; maybe it was just lacking Matthew Rhys? To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here.

And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: August 2026 post! It’s a biggie, but there were just so many lovely things from the last month that I wanted to share with you! Let’s catch-up again next month, okay?

My love to you,

Vicki xo

related posts

2025 // 2024 // 2023 //
2022 // 2021 //
2020 // 2019

Friends, hello — happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you well. I’m dropping by for the briefest of moments to share a very short-yet-sweet travel offering with you: A Morning in Antibes, France. As you might remember, Husband, Bean, and I spent 1-week frolicking around Nice back at the beginning of May, and, luckily, we managed to squeeze this little outing to Antibes into our itinerary! We spent a very relaxing 2-ish hours wandering around the town with absolutely no plans and no to-hit list — it was perfect! Antibes is absolutely gorgeous: there are many beautifully winding streets, the waterfront is stunning, the café scene is hopping, and, honestly, every single corner is a postcard just waiting to happen. I was blown away by the place!

This is less of a guide and more of a photo journal — a few snaps of pretty places and little descriptions of what we were doing or where we were wandering when we came across them. It’s basically a diary entry, but we just had such a beautiful morning that I didn’t want to forget a thing.

Enjoy!

a morning in antibes

We ultimately decided we’d go to Antibes for the morning about 1.5-hours before we boarded the train to take us there. Here’s how we made the journey from Nice:

• I used the SNCF Connect app to buy our train tickets before we even walked through the doors at Nice-Ville train station. We knew from past experience that the train station is always hectic, and I’d used the SNCF app a handful of times before — for Saint-Émilion / Bordeaux / Villefranche-sur-Mer — so I knew it would save us a headache.

• a one-way ticket cost us €6.70 each — under 4s go free, so there was no charge for Bean — and they appeared on my app in the form of a QR code. There was no discount for buying a return ticket, so we decided to just play it by ear and see when we felt like returning.

• there’s only six stops between Nice and Antibes, so the journey was a handy 27-minutes. There are trains that can get you there in 21-minutes, but they were all booked out — and, really, what difference does 6-minutes make?

• our train was super busy when we got on, but we managed to nab a spot for us + the buggy in a bicycle seating area. From what we overheard, most of the other passengers were heading onwards to Cannes, so we were happy to leave the bulk of other tourists behind us.

… And then we were in Antibes!

Read more

Hello friends, happy Sunday! How are you keeping? I hope this post finds you enjoying the beautiful sunny morning, coffee in hand, comfy socks on, and in the mood for a light spot of armchair travelling. I’m dropping into your inbox to share my latest travel offering with you: A Complete Guide to Nice, France. Husband and I have visited the wonderful city on the Côte d’Azur a handful of times— most recently, back in April/May with Bean! — and always love every second of our time there. Over the years, we’ve accumulated quite a list of our favourite places to explore, stop for coffee, eat or drink, or just linger around… Can I tell you about it?

As usual, there are tons of recommendations below, divided into the following categories for ease: getting there / where we stayed / where we got pastries / where we ate / where we drank / where we tourist-ed / where we shopped / and map our trip. Of course, the where we ate category is further broken down into dined in / took out / and gelato. It’s loaded to the hilt with everywhere we’ve visited and loved over the years, and I really hope it helps you plan your trip.

Shall we?

getting there

Nice airport is extremely well connected — with over 12-million passengers every year, it’s the 3rd busiest in the country! — and getting from there to the city couldn’t be easier. Here’s how we made the journey:

• we flew direct from Dublin to Nice with Ryanair, with the flight lasting approximately 2-hours. We have also previously flown Aer Lingus on the same route.

• from Nice airport, we walked to the tram stop and bought two tickets to take us into the city centre. The tram stop is located directly outside the exit at Terminal 1, and the L2 tram towards Port Lympia departs every 7-minutes. We bought two return tickets — the only ticket option available! — from the machine on the platform, and they cost €10 each.

• you used to be able to buy single tickets from the machine for €1.70, but this option has since been removed from the airport machines. According to the internet, you COULD chance riding the tram (!)ticket-less(!) to the first stop, Grand Arénas, and get out there to buy a ticket for €1.70 instead of paying the full-whack at the airport. This sounded like too much hassle and a risk we weren’t willing to take with Bean in tow — but you do you.

• from the airport, we rode the tram all the way to the Jean Médecin stop, which took a delightfully short 20-minutes. We didn’t see any ticket checkers on our trip, but be sure to validate your ticket upon boarding the tram regardless.

• from the Jean Médecin stop, we walked a very convenient 2-minutes to our accommodation, below.

Maybe one of the easiest airport to city centre transfers ever?

where we stayed

Read more

Hi friends, happy Sunday! Welcome to our Monthly Musings: July 2026 post — I hope it finds you well! What’ve you been up to lately? Have you been getting out to enjoy the sunshine and earn a new summer freckle or two? The heat has been a little hard to manage with Bean, so we’ve only really been venturing out in the early morning or when it borderline looks like it’s going to rain, but it’s still been so nice! Other than that, Husband, Bean, and I are just home from dog-sitting for my parents while they were away at a wedding last night, and, even though we were literally a 5-minute drive away from our house, it feels like we went on a little overnight vacation.

Our musings for the month ahead are below, filled with all the usual ramblings. A little baby update, some travel talk, a recap on what I’ve been reading and watching, and a few additional titbits for good measure. It’s a little lighter than usual, but that feels exactly right for the summer month that’s in it. Enjoy, friend!

Subscribe now

monthly musings:

On the baby bulletin: Bean officially has her two front bottom teeth and they are so cutie-pie! The little bites she has started giving me when we are feeding is less cutie-pie — which brings me onto my next update: we’ve started the process of weaning Bean onto formula! It’s going…okay. She won’t reliably drink the formula, so I’ve had to get creative and sneak it into everything she eats to make sure she’s consuming enough. It’s a journey, but we are getting there! In more fun news: she loves to clap handies, and just recently learned to wave — both of which are the most adorable things ever! Her little chubby paws make the best clapping noise and she is always so pleased with herself when she does it!

*

In travel news: we booked our last hoo-rah before my maternity leave ends! In a rather unexpected turn of events, we booked a trip to Nantes, France! We were this close to booking Tallinn — but the flights and accommodation stars aligned to make Nantes the perfect trip for us right now! We’ve never been to the Loire region before, and the city looks so cool! Have you ever been? Please send on any recommendations!

*

Related: I have finally finished my Nice travel guide! It’ll be hitting the blog this day next week, and it is absolutely filled to the brim with everything we know and love about the city. If you’re looking for any travel guides in the meantime, you can always browse the travel index here — be it for a Euro summer trip, an Asian adventure, or maybe even a trip to Canada!

*

In case you missed it: my 2026 Summer Bucket List hit the blog last month! It’s filled with light and breezy fun items I hope to accomplish over the next two months with Bean and Husband, and I’m feeling good about it! What’s on your summer bucket list this year? I enjoyed reading Julianna’s Summer Bingo Card and might be adding some of her suggestions to my own list! Such a fun summer tradition I hope to keep up over the years to come with Bean ❤️

*

How is your summer reading going? Since I finished Billy Summers last month — which, btdubz, I loved! about a paid assassin with a conscience, kind of — I leapfrogged back onto the Jodi Picoult train and read By Any Other Name. I didn’t love the overall book, but I did enjoy reading the Emilia Bassano chapters — although fictionalised for the novel, they tell the tale of how Bassano could have been the real writer of many of Shakespeare’s plays, which I thought was fascinating! To follow along with my reading in real-time on StoryGraph, click here.

*

We’ve been trying to watch movies actually set in the summer and I’m proud of our viewing so far! Admittedly, it’s mostly been old rewatches — Adventureland, The Last Song, Say Anything… —, but we also hit Do The Right Thing and Y Tu Mamá También, the latter of which I thought was so great! Any quintessential summer goodies you think we need to add to our list? To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here. TV-wise, there has been a lot of binge-able brain rot on our screens recently. We recently devoured Every Year After, nothing special but pleasingly easy to watch, and I Will Find You, the plot of which was so ridiculous yet un-turn-off-able. Currently, we’re tuning in for the weekly episodes of Cape Fear, which tbh is also rather ridiculous, and also Elle, which is fun for the nostalgic ‘90s feel. What’re you watching?

*

At the risk of sounding like I’m obsessed with a) lemon cakes and b) any recipe Nicola Lamb shares — oh WAIT both of those things are in fact true —the only new recipe I made last month was Nicola’s Lemon Drizzle Cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday bash. It was zingy in all the right places and paired perfectly with a dollop of whipped cream and juicy summer strawberries. I’ve also been eyeing up this Strawberry Brita Cake and this Old-Fashioned Strawberry Cake, both of which look like stellar ways to embrace our favourite seasonal treat.

And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: July 2026 post! I hope you found something to take away with you, and I really hope that something is a hankering to make a little list of summer things to accomplish.

My love to you,

Vicki xo

PS: my camera roll is still 99% Bean at the mo’, so please enjoy the above photo of an ice-cream that hit the spot in Nice recently.

related posts

2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021
2020 // 2019

Hello friends, happy Wednesday! I hope this post finds you well. I’m here today for just the briefest of time to share a quick post with you: my Summer Bucket List, 2026! If you’ve been visiting this corner of the internet for a while, you might’ve come across one of my seasonal bucket lists before. Essentially, they’re my intentions for the next few months, and sharing them here is my way of making sure they get done! This is Bean’s first ever summer earthside, and, although she’ll be too young to remember any of this, I want to get out there and make fun family memories that Husband and I will cherish into our old age. Our first summer as a little trio ❤️

Shall we dive in?

Subscribe now

summer bucket list, 2026

plan Bean’s first birthday

Only 105 days to go! I’ve seen a million little videos of crafty things people do for their baby’s first birthday and there are so many I want to make. A baby face garland. A month-by-month photo display. A happy birthday backdrop. Paper chains aplenty. DIY party hats for her favourite teddies. A special birthday plate? A special first birthday crown. So much to do!

beach day

Husband and I visited Brittas Bay one day a few summers ago and had the most wonderful time — I want to try and do this again with Bean! Dip our little toesies in the water, play in the sand, eat a packed lunch, and generally just have a fun classic summer day out.

have a picnic

My parents used to pack up the car and drag us out for a picnic + walk in Glendalough come rain or shine during my childhood weekends, and, although I complained 85% of the time, I now think back very fondly on these outings and want to start the traditions with Bean. Pack a little homemade lunch, find a picnic bench to enjoy it at, and go for a little stroll around one of the lakes.

go on a road trip

Ideally: up north, to Ballycastle, with my little fambam, my parents, and my sister. I’m just going to keep repeating this until I somehow manifest it into being.

more photos of loved ones

… and not just Bean. I have a gazillion photos of Bean from basically every day of her life thus far, but not enough of us, our family, or our friends. This needs to change.
Also, a sub-list item: start prepping a folder of photos to add to a photobook at the end of the year. Now that we have a little bambina, I want to start creating yearly photo albums, and a photobook seems like the easiest and most hassle-free way.

last maternity leave hoo-rah

We’re looking to book one more little trip abroad before I go back to work in November and we’ve narrowed it down to two places: Tallinn or Helsinki. I’m flip-flopping between the two wildly because they both seem like places we’d love, but we just need to decide and get it booked in.

celebrate our anniversary

Husband and I will have been together for 11-years at the end of July, and I want to plan something special for just the two of us. We didn’t get to do anything special for the 10-year milestone last summer — what with me getting out of hospital after a 15-day stint just the day before, 30-weeks pregnant, newly anaemic, and emotionally + physically EXHAUSTED —, so I’m hopeful for better luck this year.

enjoy sangria in the sunshine

I actually got to do this with my sister at the weekend and it was so lovely! We sat out in the garden on a picnic blanket and enjoyed a few hours in the sunshine with Bean. It was perfect!

eat more ice-cream

A general life rule I try to carry with me always — but especially important in summer. I’m also thinking I might freeze some yogurt in little ice-pop moulds for Bean to chomp away on!

And there we have it, my Summer Bucket List, 2026! What’s on your summer bucket list? Hit me up with any great ideas using the comment box below!

With love and sun-kissed freckles,

Vicki xo

related posts

Spring Bucket List 2021
Summer Bucket List 2025 // 2024 // 2023 // 2021 // 2020
Autumn Bucket List 2022
Winter Bucket List 2020 // 2021

Hello, friends — happy weekend! I hope this post finds you well. I am here today to share an absolute behemoth of a travel guide with you: A Complete Guide to Florence, Italy. See, as you may or may not know, Florence is one of my very favourite cities, period. I’ve loved it since I first laid eyes on it back in the summer of 2013. I was just 19-years old then, and Florence encapsulated everything I love about a great city: extremely walkable, beauty around every corner, amazing food, and an abundance of fantastic art. Truly, it was love at first sight. As such, I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve shared more than a couple of posts about it over the years.

Looking through the archives, it would seem that I’ve shared four different guides to the city in the 10-years we’ve been travelling there! Yes, they all weave around a few central spots we adore and can’t help but revisit, but they also all have some new-to-us gems I just couldn’t bear to keep quiet about. There has been: Italian Adventures Part I: Florence / An Ode to Florence, Italy / Three Days in Florence, Italy / and Festive Florence in December.

You might now be thinking — wait, is this another new guide?! Alas, no. See, it recently occurred to me that a new reader looking for information on Florence might not want to read through four different guides looking for recommendations. Which brings us here, to this post: a compilation of all four guides in one place. Handy, no?

As you might expect, this is a whopper of a guide. For ease, I’ve divided everything into the following categories: getting there / where we’ve stayed / where we’ve had coffee & pastries / where we’ve eaten / where we’ve imbibed / where we’ve tourist-ed / map our trip. Naturally, the where we’ve eaten category is sub-divided down even further into panini / dined in / and gelato. My love for sub-categories knows no bounds!

Okay — let’s dive in!

getting there

The annoying thing about Florence is that it is located in between the main airport cities. While the city does have it’s own little airport, Amerigo Vespucci, I have no idea what airlines fly there and don’t know anyone that has ever flown into or out of there. Here’s how we’ve made the journey over the years:

• fly into Bologna’s Guglielmo Marconi airport, make your way to Bologna Centrale via taxi or the Marconi Express monorail, and take a high-speed Frecciarossa train into Florence’s Santa Maria Novella from there. All in, if everything goes your way, you could be in Florence in around 1-hour. This is our favourite option because we love all things Bologna, but it isn’t always feasible with flight times.

• fly into Pisa airport, walk or take the PISAMOVER shuttle to Pisa Centrale, and take a high-speed Frecciarossa train into Florence’s Santa Maria Novella from there. All in, if everything goes your way, you could be in Florence in about 1.5-hours.

  • alternatively, there is a company called Sky Bus Lines Caronna that go directly from Pisa airport into Florence’s Santa Maria Novella! They don’t seem to show up on Google Maps, but they saved our butt one wintery night when we arrived into the city at 1am after a 5-hour flight delay; I think they wait for the last flight of the night to arrive, thankfully! The journey time is approx. 1-hour.

• fly into Milan Bergamo airport, take a Terravision bus into Milano Centrale, and then a high-speed Frecciarossa from there to Florence’s Santa Maria Novella. All in, if everything goes your way, you could be in Florence in around 3-hours. We tend to avoid this option due to the sheer unpleasantness at Milano Centrale — pickpockets and general troublemakers — but sometimes needs must.

where we’ve stayed

Read more

Hello friends, happy Wednesday! I hope this post finds you enjoying a moment of calmness, between meetings, or on a coffee break. I’m dropping into your inboxes this hump day morning for just a minute to share my Monthly Musings: June 2026 post with you! I, of course, had plans to share it with you last weekend instead of today — but we somehow ended up having the busiest two days ever and I just didn’t get the chance!? We had Bean’s baptism all day on Saturday, and then a huge wedding-style gathering with Husband’s extended fambam all day on Sunday, so our weekend was absolutely chock-full! The three of us were dead on our feet come Sunday evening, but thankfully everything went off without a hitch and Bean was a perfect angel on both days.

Our musings for the month ahead are listed below, filled with all the usual ramblings. A little baby update, some travel talk, a recap on what I’ve been reading and watching, and a few additional titbits for good measure.

Enjoy!

Subscribe now

monthly musings:

In the baby world: so much happened in the last month! As of like two-weeks ago, we have officially stopped the dream feed and now Bean sleeps in her own bedroom all night! We put her up to bed at 8pm, and she sleeps the whole way through to morning! We, of course, are getting less sleep now because we’re checking the baby monitor 500-times a night — but this is huge! Also, we have our very first tooth stump! It’s her lower left front tooth and, as per instructions from our resident dentist friend, we’ve been brushing it twice daily, which is just adorable! We’ve also made great progress on the eating front, introduced Bean to her first ever baby friend, and still regularly get told she’s the smiliest baby people have ever met. She’s growing up so fast😭

*

RE the aforementioned baptism: it was so lovely! We booked it into my childhood church — St Peter’s Church, Bray, the very one I was baptised in! —, Bean wore the exact same gown my sister and I wore, and we kept it really small by having only our immediate family and closest friends. There were just two other babies being baptised at the same time, and the whole thing felt so intimate and special. Bean was amazing during the ceremony; sitting quietly on my lap, listening to everything the priest said, holding her baptism candle, etc. — everyone was so impressed with her! For a little celebratory shindig afterwards, we had a special meal at the golf club with everyone and it was wonderful! Such a wholesome family day out filled with so much love for little Bean ❤️

*

RE the aforementioned wedding-style family gathering: it, too, was so lovely! Husband’s uncle/godfather and his wife, who live half the year in Ireland and half the year in the US, organized a fun summer party for everyone! They hosted it at Cliff at Lyons and it was just so lovely! The setting was gorgeous, and the lunch — which was in The Orangery Restaurant — was easily some of the best we’ve ever had at a hotel? Would recommend!

*

In case you missed it, two new travel guides hit the blog last month: One Day in San Marino, and A Complete Guide to Bologna, Italy. The former covers everything we got up to on our daytrip to the 5th smallest country in the world, and the latter is a massive bumper pack of a guide covering every single thing we know and love about Bologna — which, to be honest, is A LOT. I hope you read them, love them, and find them useful! Updated Nice guide and a little Antibes post coming soon, promise!

*

Related: I’ve started dreaming up our next travels! Right around this time last year, pre-Bean and pre-emergency-appendectomy-at-29-weeks-pregnant, I was in the midst of planning a trip up north for a little exploration along the Causeway Coast. Obviously, everything fell through — but I’m hopeful we’ll be able to make it work out this year with Bean in tow! Husband has never been to the Giant’s Causeway, and I think it’d be so fun to take the ferry over to Rathlin Island for a few hours, so we shall see! Cross your fingers and your toes for us 🤞

*
It just dawned on me this morning — this is Bean’s first ever summer! Which means it’s high time we get started on our summer bucket list!! I am well aware that she literally just turned 8-months old, but we absolutely won’t let that stop us from having the best summer ever! I’m thinking a day out at the beach and a picnic on the grass for sure, but what else should I add to the list? Let me know any thoughts and ideas you might have, please! In the meantime, you can read last year’s summer bucket list here.

*

According to my StoryGraph, I only read one book last month: Jodi Picoult’s Handle With Care. Temporarily bookless for a moment, I just grabbed it off the shelf in the library, and I got a weird déjà vu feeling about halfway through that I might’ve actually read it before? It could just be that I’ve read a lot of JP books and her writing style is very familiar to me — but, either way, I really enjoyed the book and would recommend! I’m currently back on the Stephen King train with a standalone novel, Billy Summers, and am predictably hooked. What’re you reading?

*

Did you watch anything good last month? We finally got to watch some of the Oscar big-hitters — Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and Sinners — and, while we really enjoyed the first two, we were both so underwhelmed and confused by everyone’s love for the latter?! Wild. Other new-to-us highlights were: Project Hail Mary, which I loved, and Send Help, which I enjoyed for the sheer wackiness factor. To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here. TV-wise, I somehow convinced Husband to watch Off Campus with me and I loved the sheer cringey-ness of it! I thought the last two episodes sucked, but I will 100% be watching S2 when it comes out, and I’ve obvz requested the books from the library. Awkward teen romance shows are apparently my ideal way of unwinding — who knew!

*

The only recipe I zeroed in on from around the web this past month was this Fancy Lemon Drizzle Cake on Kitchen Projects. I’ve been eyeing the recipe up since Nicola shared it in June last year, and Bean’s baptism was the perfect excuse to finally bake it! Three layers of light and airy lemon chiffon cake, sandwiched together with layers of (homemade) lemon curd mascarpone whipped cream and (store-bought) raspberry jam, all wrapped in a soft swoopy coating of vanilla bean Swiss meringue buttercream. It was delicious! Would definitely recommend if you’re looking for an occasion cake!

And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: June 2026 post! I hope you found something to take away with you, be it a cheese-tastic teen romance or a fancy occasion cake! Let’s catch up again next month, yeah?

Hugs,

Vicki xo

related posts

2025 // 2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021
2020 // 2019

Hello, friends — happy weekend! I hope this post finds you well. I am here today to share an absolute behemoth of a travel guide with you: A Complete Guide to Bologna, Italy. See, as you may or may not know, Bologna is one of my very favourite places, period. It’s the first place that Husband and I explored in Italy together way back when, and I love that, despite being the culinary capital of the country(!), it never feels overwhelmingly tourist-y. Since our first visit, we have returned to the city countless times over the years, and it truly holds such a special place in my heart. As such, I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve shared more than a couple of posts about our return visits.

Looking through the archives, it would seem that I’ve shared six different guides to the city in the 10-years we’ve been travelling there! Yes, they all weave around a few central spots we adore and can’t help but revisit, but they also all have some new-to-us gems I just couldn’t bear to keep quiet about. There has been: Italian Adventures Part II: Bologna / Bologna, A Love Letter / Our Engagement in Bologna, Italy — which, admittedly, is less of a guide and more of a memory capsule — / 72 Hours in Bologna, The Emilia-Romagna Capital / Three Days in Bologna | Our Mini-Moon in Italy / and most recently, The Bologna Diaries, Vol. 05.

You might now be thinking — wait, is this another new guide?! Alas, no. See, it recently occurred to me that a new reader looking for information on Bologna might not want to read through six different guides looking for recommendations. Which brings us here, to this post: a compilation of all six guides in one place. Handy, no?

As you might expect, this is a whopper of a guide. For ease, I’ve divided everything into the following categories: getting there / where we’ve stayed / where we’ve had coffee & pastries / where we’ve eaten / where we’ve imbibed / where we’ve tourist-ed / where we’ve shopped / map our trip. Some of the groups are broken down further into sub-categories: where we’ve stayed is divided into hotels / B&Bs / and apartments, and where we’ve eaten is divided into dined in / took out / and gelato. My love for sub-categories knows no bounds!

Okay — let’s dive in!

getting there

Bologna is so blissfully easy to get to. Here’s how we usually do it:

• by air

  • we fly direct from Dublin to Bologna with Ryanair. The flight duration is around 2- to 2.5-hours.

  • from Bologna airport — which is only 6km from the city centre! — we usually just take a taxi. The taxi rank is outside the main doors of the airport on the right hand side and is well sign-posted. The journey normally only takes around 15/20-minutes, but we have been stuck in the car for 35-minutes or so at rush-hour.

  • taxi fares are capped for rides between the airport and city centre, so even if you do get caught up in rush-hour traffic, the price isn’t too bad. I think the average fare works out at €20-ish, and the most we’ve ever paid was €33-ish.

  • if you’d rather get public transport into the city, there’s a monorail that gets into Bologna Centrale in just 7-minutes. For more information about the monorail, click here.

• by train

  • Bologna is very well connected by the Italian rail system, Trenitalia. We have taken many many trains into/out of Bologna Centrale, and it is usually very straight forward.

  • for journeys to bigger nearby cities, like Florence, we always opt for the high speed Frecciarossa trains. The journey usually takes about 35-minutes, and is very comfortable.

  • for journeys to smaller nearby cities, like Ravenna / Modena / Rimini, we normally opt for the standard regional trains. The travel time is slower, but the tickets are cheaper and the trains are still rather comfortable.

  • before embarking on a train journey, we always buy our tickets online in advance. Not only does it save time at the train station, but it’s much easier to do on your phone/laptop than in a hectic setting with loads of people hovering around you. For more information about Trenitalia routes, tickets, and timetables, click here.

where we’ve stayed

hotels

Read more

Hello friends, happy weekend! I hope this post finds you happy, healthy, and well rested. I’m here this morning to share my latest travel offering with you: One Day in San Marino. In case you missed it, Husband, Bean, and I went on our first ever family trip a few months back, and, as well as galivanting around Italy for a bit, we made it to San Marino. This country, a tiny microstate sitting very picturesquely at the tippy top of the rugged Mount Titano, had been on my hitlist for years — it was so exciting to finally get there! We spent the guts of an afternoon exploring the very best things to do in the city, and I’m excited to share it all here with you now! Shall we?

Everything we know and love about San Marino is listed below. For ease, I’ve divided everything into the following categories: fun facts / getting there / where we ate lunch & gelato / where we tourist-ed / and map our trip. I hope you find it helpful, friends.

PS: in case you missed it, this is my fourth and final post about this trip! You can read the three previous posts here: One Week in Italy & San Marino | Our Itinerary for Baby’s First Trip, The Bologna Diaries, Vol. 05, and A Quick Guide to Rimini, Italy.

Enjoy!

fun facts

I know you love a fun fact just as much as I do! Here are 6 quick ones to keep up your sleeve for your next pub quiz:

• San Marino is the 5th smallest country in the world, and the 3rd smallest in Europe! The only two smaller in Europe are Vatican City and Monaco — fun!

• even though it’s entirely surrounded by Italy on all sides, San Marino is not in the EU. However, seeing as they also use the euro and there’re no hard border controls, it makes little difference to tourists.

• despite the fact that Italy is one of the most visited countries in Europe every year, San Marino is the third least visited country in Europe, after Moldova and Lichtenstein. That’s insane!

• founded in 301, San Marino is considered to be the world’s oldest republic still in existence! It has maintained its independence for over 17-centuries.

• San Marino Historic Centre & Mount Titano is a UNESCO World Heritage Site! They gained their inscription because they are “an exceptional testament to the establishment of a representative democracy based on civic autonomy and self-governance”. 💪

• at any given time, San Marino always has two ‘Captains Regent’. They are the highest elected officials — sort of like presidents — and they only hold office for 6months! Wild.

getting there

Here’s how we made the journey to San Marino:

• we took a Bonelli Bus from the Arco d’augusto stop in Rimini to the last stop in San Marino city, Piazzale della Stazione, which took about 1-hour. The shuttle goes between the two cities once every 1.5-hours or so, and apparently they run every single day of the year!

• while you can buy your tickets directly onboard from the driver, we bought our tickets online in advance — and I’d highly recommend you do the same. Having a pre-booked ticket ensures you’ll be able to board the bus, even if it’s really full. At the time of our visit, a single journey cost €7.

• a note on the bus: although having a ticket guarantees transportation, it does not guarantee a seat! We got on at the second stop and nabbed two of the last three seats on the whole bus(!), and while they do allow standing passengers, it wouldn’t be ideal on the bumpy and winding roads. Would definitely recommend getting on at the first stop if possible.

• for the return journey later that same day, we made sure to queue up early to get seats together. The bus pulled up about 15-minutes before the departure time, and, as some of the first people on board, we were able to avail of the two spacious seats up front.

• for more info about timetables and fares, visit the Bonelli Bus website here.

where we ate

Read more

Bonjour, friends — happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you chilled out and appropriately caffeinated. I’m dropping into your inbox on this beautiful sunny morning to share our Monthly Musings: May 2026 post with you! I had hopes and dreams of sharing it last weekend as normal, but I was on holiday in Nice with my little fam-bam and having too much fun ✨doing nothing✨ to sit down and write this post. Every morning started with buttery fresh pastries from the boulangerie on the corner, every afternoon saw us strolling the Promenade des Anglais, and every evening ended in us eating gooey French cheeses & drinking fancy French wines. It was delightful!

We spent a large part of our days lounging around the apartment with Bean, doing nothing but drinking coffee, working on crosswords, and soaking up the sun from our little balcony. It was exactly the opposite of our Italian trip, wherein we were largely go go go, and it was so nice! We’ll definitely be striding to have more of a chillaxing mindset for any of our future travels — it felt good for the soul.

Our musings for the month ahead are listed below, filled with all the usual ramblings. A little baby update, some travel talk, a recap on what I’ve been reading and watching, and a few additional titbits for good measure.

Enjoy!

Subscribe now

monthly musings: may 2026

Baby update: we’ve officially hit the 7-month mark(!) and she is turning into the sweetest little girl right before our eyes! She gets more vocal with every passing day — including singing along to Roy Orbison’s She’s a Mystery to Me with me! —, loves dancing, is the smiliest baby I’ve ever seen, and thankfully still sleeps the whole night through. Our journey into the world of food is going okayyyy; she’s not big on purees, so we’ve started to lean into baby-led weaning a little and that’s going much better! Seeing her hold and gnaw away on large cuts of food — we’ve had the most success with kiwi, avocado, & steak! — is the cutest thing ever, so long may it continue. I’ve been using the Solid Starts First Foods Database for advice on how to prep food for babies, and it’s been so helpful — would definitely recommend if you’re in the same boat!

*

Travel-wise, Bean was just as good this time as she was on her first trip! The flights to and fro went swimmingly — she basically fed/slept/played the whole way, except for when the Ryanair staff made obnoxiously loud and stupid announcements over the PA system😠— and, even though she basically stopped day-napping while we were gone, she was generally in great form! We definitely noticed a difference between this trip and the last; even though it was just 2-ish months ago, Bean is waaaay more interested in reaching for everything and is far more mobile, so we had to keep our eyes peeled. Very glad we ripped off the travel-with-baby bandaid early on — I’m sure it’s only going to get more involved as she ages!

*

Related: France was Bean’s third new country! I’m pretty sure I didn’t hit three new countries until I was like 9- or 10-years old, so I’m very proud of us for getting her started early! Obviously every year won’t be like this, but I’m glad we’ve been able to put my maternity time off to good use. Ideally, I’d love to get out of the country one last time before I go back to work in November, but it’s been a good run regardless! To keep track of all the trips we take with baby, I’ve actually created a ‘travel with Bean’ tag to keep everything in one handy dandy place. I hope to populate the tag with many more guides in the future😊

*

Friends! Passionate Baker Travels turned 14 at the end of last month!! It was the day before our flight to France and I was so ill-prepared that I didn’t get to share my usual birthday blog post here with you! I’m hoping to remedy this situation soon-ish with a triple chocolate muffin recipe I’ve been tinkering with on and off for literal years, but until then: omg the blog is 14 years old!! I’m so ridiculously grateful for this little nook on the internet and all you lovely people that show up to read and support it — thank you for being here❤️

*

In case you missed it, two new travel guides hit the blog last month: The Bologna Diaries, Vol. 05 and A Quick Guide to Rimini, Italy! I have one more guide to share from that trip — covering all things San Marino(!) — and then I’ll be moving on to some French guides. I actually already have a Nice city guide up, read it here, but I’m thinking I’ll gut and update it with some fun new recommendations. We also did a quick daytrip to Antibes while we were away, so you can expect a sweet little post about that in the not-so-distant future, too!

*

Okay, what are we reading? I spent the last month captivated by the magical world Alice Hoffman created in Magic Lessons, The Rules of Magic, and The Book of Magic. I read them completely out of order — note to self for future rereads: Magic Lessons → The Rules of Magic → Practical Magic → The Book of Magic — but the books stand alone enough that that didn’t really matter; I loved each and every one! Now that I’ve finished the series, I’m officially at a book reading loose end. What should I reach for next? To follow along with my reading in real-time on StoryGraph, click here.

*

Have you watched anything great recently? Our movie viewing seemed to take a hit last month, but new-to-us highlights include: Rental Family, largely because it was filmed in Japan, The Naked Gun, which was just silly good fun, and Roofman, which we both thought was actually very good! To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here. TV-wise, we finished Love Story, which I know everyone was obsessing over, but we thought it was kind of meh boring? Currently, we’re working our way through Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole and Margot’s Got Money Troubles, both of which are based on books I’ve read and I’m really enjoying!

*
Recipes I’ve spied from around the web: the thought of this Cereal Milk Cookie Butter French Toast has straight up blown my mind! That’s just too much goodness in one title to even begin dissecting it, but my gut reaction is YUM. I’m also very intrigued by this Molehill Cake over on Kitchen Projects! I’m always harping on about how I’d love to bake/cook more traditional things, and this certainly appeals to the part of my heritage that is 1/8 Polish!

And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: May 2026 post! I hope you enjoyed reading, and let me know any thoughts or what have you using the comment box below — I love hearing from you! Chat again next month,

Hugs,

Vicki xo

related may posts

2025 // 2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021 // 2020
2019

Friends, hello! Happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you enjoying the loveliest of mornings, coffee in hand, comfy socks on, and perhaps in the mood for a light spot of armchair travelling. I’m here to, hopefully, add to the aforementioned loveliness by sharing my latest travel offering: A Quick Guide to Rimini, Italy. Believe it or not, some iteration of this post has actually been sitting half formed in my drafts since 2022, which is when we’d first hoped to visit the city! WELL, it might’ve taken us four years longer than initially planned, but we finally made it to Rimini back at the end of February!

If you haven’t heard of it before, allow me: Rimini is a small city dotted along the Adriatic Coast in our favourite Italian region, Emilia-Romagna. Mostly known for a thriving nightlife scene and ample beachside attractions — neither of which Husband or I would be very interested in —, I wasn’t exactly sure Rimini would be the place for us. Truthfully, our visit to Rimini only transpired because it’s the easiest city to get to San Marino from, but we ended up being very surprised by what the city had to offer; we really enjoyed our time there!

Everything we know and love about Rimini is listed below, divided into the following categories: getting there, where we stayed, where we had coffee & pastries, where we ate, where we drank, where we tourist-ed, and where we shopped. It ended up being a tad longer than expected, but I just couldn’t bear to leave anything out.

PS: in case you missed it, this is my third post about this trip! You can read the two previous posts here: One Week in Italy & San Marino | Our Itinerary for Baby’s First Trip and The Bologna Diaries, Vol. 05.

Enjoy!

getting there

Getting from Bologna to Rimini was surprisingly straightforward. Here’s how we made the journey:

• we took a direct ‘Intercity’ train from Bologna Centrale to Rimini Centrale, with a journey time of around 1-hour and 15-minutes. Because the two cities are so close, there are a bunch of different train options to chose from; the ‘Intercity’ one we opted for was neither the fastest nor the slowest, but we felt it was a good medium length without costing too much.

• we purchased our tickets online in advance of our journey, and because we booked a certain amount of time out, we were able to avail of TrenItalia’s ‘Me&You’ offer: a discounted fare of up to 50% off for couples travelling together. More money for pastries 😉

• our tickets included assigned seating, which meant we didn’t have to worry about finding seats together, and because they were booked for a certain day and time, we also didn’t have to worry about validating our ticket. The less things I have to worry about as a new parent travelling for the first time, the better! For more info about train fares and routes, visit the TrenItalia website here.

• from Rimini Centrale, we strolled a very flat and straightforward 11-minutes to our apartment, below.

where we stayed

Read more

Hello, lovely people — happy Monday! I hope this post finds you happy, healthy, and kicking butt after a restful and enjoyable weekend. I am dropping into your inboxes on this beautiful sunny day to share my latest travel offering with you: The Bologna Diaries, Vol. 05. In case you missed it, Husband, Bean, and I went on our inaugural family trip back at the end of February and it went so well! We spent one week gallivanting around the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and had the very best time. Our trip started in Bologna, the capital of the region, and from there we moved onwards to Rimini and also to San Marino.

Before we dive in, just a quick PSA: my first piece from this trip — One Week in Italy & San Marino | Our Itinerary for Baby’s First Trip — hit the blog last month! A recap of our trip, examined entirely through the lens of a new parent: how we travelled around without a car, the baby friendliness of our accommodations, a note of eating out, etc. I know I wrote it, but I think it’s pretty darn helpful!

Now — our Bologna guide is listed below, jammed to the absolute brim. For ease, I’ve divided everything into the following categories: getting there / where we stayed / where we had coffee & pastries / where we ate / where we had spritzes / where we shopped. Naturally, the where we ate section is further divided into dined in / took out / gelato. I just love a good sub-category!

Happy reading!

getting there

Thankfully, the journey from Dublin to Bologna isn’t too taxing. Here’s how we approached it:

• we flew direct from Dublin to Bologna with Ryanair. The flight took a delightfully speedy 2-hours, during which time Bean sat buckled onto my lap, chilling out.

• from Bologna airport, we opted to take a taxi into the city centre. The taxi rank is outside the main doors of the airport on the right hand side and is well sign-posted. Seeing as it was rush hour, the journey — normally only 15/20-minutes long — took 35-minutes, which was unfortunate. I kept Bean on my lap for the duration of the ride.

• taxi fares are capped for rides between the airport and city centre, so even though it felt like it took us an age to finally get there, it didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

• if you’d rather get public transport into the city, there’s a monorail that gets into Bologna Centrale in just 7-minutes. For more information about the monorail, click here.

where we stayed

The way the logistics of our trip worked out, we ended up with 3-nights in the city at the start of the trip, and 1-night at the end. As a result, I have two different spots to share with you, one apartment and one hotel:

Read more

Hello, friends! Happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you well rested, appropriately caffeinated, and with some nice plans for the day ahead: a cosy day on the couch watching films, going for a walk with the fam-bam, or perhaps meeting a friend for coffee; I myself have plans for the latter and am very excited about it. First though, I thought I’d drop briefly into your inboxes to share our Monthly Musings: April 2026 post. I did have hopes and dreams of sending this post out last weekend, as per our usual scheduling, but I fell down a crafting rabbit hole and was too busy making felt birthday crowns to get my life together — but more on that below. So, shall we?

Our musings for the beautiful month ahead are listed below. All the usual suspects are there — travel, recipes, movies, books —, but because I can’t leave well enough alone, there’s a couple of additional tidbits thrown in for good measure 😉

Enjoy, friends!

Subscribe now

monthly musings april 2026

Baby news: Bean is officially six months old! How so much time has passed I have no idea, but I’m so grateful everything is still going well! We tried solids for the first time ever this past week — pureed carrots, the jury is still out — and are now babbling away non-stop! There hasn’t actually been a distinctive ‘mama’ or ‘dada’ yet, but(!) there has been a lot of ‘dadadadada’, ‘rararara’, and ‘hoopf’ sounds, which is really rather adorable. We’re also at the stage where Bean delights when she sees us, gives little quick squeeze-like hugs, and lovingly paws at our faces with her chubby hands, so it’s all very sweet at the moment. Soaking it up ❤️

*

I celebrated my first Mother’s Day last month! I was absolutely spoiled rotten by Bean + Husband, my thoughtful parents, and my favourite sister. There were homemade cards, buttermilk pancakes for breakfast, beautiful bouquets of flowers, gramigna alla salsiccia for dinner, some lovely wine and cheeses, a slightly deflated but extremely well-meaning balloon, and of course, plenty of baby cuddles. Feeling very lucky!

*

Did you have a nice Easter last weekend? Ours ended up being super busy because there was just so much happening; Bean’s 6-month birthday coincidentally fell on Easter Sunday, and my dad’s 60th birthday fell on Easter Monday! My dad’s main birthday celebration was on the Saturday — a huge western themed murder mystery party! I was a popular saloon girl with a name too offensive to share here —, we spent Easter itself visiting my grandmother and celebrating Bean + Dad with my family, and then on the Monday we met Husband’s fam-bam for a walk. It was so busy and lovely!

*

RE the aforementioned homemade birthday crowns: I am obsessed! Bean loves kissing her Big Bird + Squirt teddies goodnight right before bed, and then promptly falls asleep staring up at the stars from this light Santa brought her, so obvz I had to try capture that moment in crown form to remember forever. I’m so pleased with how it turned out! My dad’s crown had a more adult theme — Aperol spritz, olives, peanuts, orange slices, and a rogue carton of milk — but it was also just as adorable! I bought this Birthday Crown Kit online and it was so helpful because it included all sorts of stitching tutorials, shaping templates, and even different motifs if you weren’t up for creating your own — would absolutely recommend! I bought it when Jen was doing a huge sale, which I think she does quite often, so keep an eye out if you’re interested!

*

Did you watch the Oscars last month? We are the only people I know that stay up into the early hours of the morning to watch it live, and I love that we kept this tradition up even though we have a little baba! In truth, I still haven’t seen a lot of the movies that took home the biggest awards, but I love watching the spectacle of the whole event regardless. We have seen a couple of the films that were nominated for Best International Feature, and I just don’t get the love for Sentimental Value? I definitely think it should’ve gone to It Was Just An Accident, which I thought was way more beautiful and deserving, but we’re also looking forward to seeing The Secret Agent!

*

In case you missed it, a new post hit the blog last month: One Week in Italy & San Marino | Our Itinerary for Baby’s First Trip! I am working on individual city guides from our trip — Bologna / Rimini / San Marino, all coming soon! —, but I wanted to do a big itinerary post that focused in on the baby friendliness of our trip. You know, how we travelled around with baby, the family-friendly apartments we stayed at, how stroller-friendly the cities were, etc. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m so pleased with how it came out! I tried to jam every nugget of travelling-with-a-baby info I could think of in there, so I really hope you find it helpful!

*

Related: we’re going away again! After the success of our Italy trip, we’ve decided to set off again before Bean becomes fully mobile — and we’re going at the end of this month! We’re heading off to the beautiful French Riviera for 7-full days, where I plan to lounge around eating croissants all day every day. We’ll be based in Nice — which we love, catch my city guide here —, but we also plan to do a couple day trips to nearby towns. Any recommendations? I’m thinking Cannes + Antibes one day, and maybe Menton another? We’ve already hit Villefranche-sur-Mer and Juan-les-Pins, so ideally somewhere new!

*

Have you watched anything life-changingly good lately? Movie-wise, our new watches have included Train Dreams, The Vanishing (1988), Final Destination Bloodlines, and The Strangers Chapter 2; the first two we immensely enjoyed, and the latter two were so ridiculously terrible they barely held our attention. Fun rewatches include the first four Indiana Jones movies, High Fidelity, and, randomly, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Does anyone else ever get the hankering to rewatch old films from your childhood? To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here.

*

Apparently, I speed-read my way through three books last month! I started with Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes, followed that up with Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, and rounded out the month with Michael Connelly’s latest, The Proving Ground; three completely different styles of book, and yet each was as enjoyable as the next! I’m officially taking a Stephen King break now that I’ve read all the books featuring my fave character, Holly Gibney, and am currently reading another Hoffman novel. They wouldn’t normally be my style of book, but I’m rather enjoying getting lost in her cosy witchy world! What’re you reading? To follow along with my reading in real-time on StoryGraph, click here.

*

Recipes from around the web: we recently found ourselves with a surplus of eggs, so naturally I had to whip up brownies! I turned to Cloudy Kitchen’s Forever Brownie recipe and was very happy with the results; fudgy and chewy in all the right places! I also whipped up another batch of the Ugly Scones from 64 Wine, and oof, they are ridiculously delightful. Nothing better than a warm and fluffy freshly baked scone!

And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: April 2026 post! I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you found something to take away with you — be it a hankering to make a homemade birthday crown, an urge to book a trip, or a new recipe.

Catch you next month,

Vicki xo

related posts

2025 // 2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021
2020 // 2019

Friends, hello! Happy Friday! I hope this post finds you happy, healthy, and, with some exciting plans for the weekend ahead! I’m dropping into your inbox to share my latest travel piece with you: One Week in Italy & San Marino | Our Itinerary for Baby’s First Trip! At the end of last month, Husband, Bean, and I set off on our inaugural adventure as a family of three and it! went! so! well! All in, the trip was a blissful 7-days absolutely chock-full of sunshine, pasta, and more gelato than I care to admit — it was perfect! Can I tell you about it?

Initially, when we were in the route planning stage of the trip, we toyed with going somewhere completely new-to-us; we hadn’t been abroad in close to a year, and the excitement of the unknown was ridiculously tempting. Eventually, we reined ourselves in and remembered that the biggest unknown for our first family trip would be seeing how Bean handles everything, and trying to figure out Greek signposts simultaneously would probably be too stressful. The itinerary we settled on (Bologna and Rimini, with a daytrip to San Marino) felt like a nice happy medium. Bologna is an old fave of ours — this was actually our seventh time visiting together! —, so it made sense for us to get our travelling-with-baby sea legs here. Rimini + San Marino, while still being two new-to-us places, are both located within the same region as Bologna, so they wouldn’t be that different, you know? The perfect mix of comfort and adventure!

Seeing as this was our first trip with our little bambina, I thought it might be fun to share a complete baby breakdown of our itinerary. I will, of course, be sharing individual city guides in the near future, which won’t have a highlight on baby, fear not, but this piece focuses solely on the baby-friendliness of our trip. How we got there, where we stayed, how we got around, and a note on eating out — all with a little 4-month old in tow. I tried to include all the relevant baby info I could think of, but hit me up if you have any questions!

Enjoy, friends 😊

Subscribe now

our itinerary at a glance

• day 1-3: Bologna

  • fly Dublin to Bologna

  • reacquaint ourselves with the city

  • base ourselves in an apartment in the quadrilatero district

  • take the train from Bologna to Rimini

• day 3-6: Rimini

  • base ourselves in an apartment in the old town

  • explore Rimini

  • take the train from Rimini to Bologna

• day 5: San Marino

  • take the bus to/from Rimini for a daytrip

• day 6-7: Bologna

  • base ourselves in a hotel in the city centre

  • soak up our last full day

  • fly from Bologna to Dublin

our itinerary in detail

day 1-3: bologna

GETTING THERE:

• we flew direct from Dublin to Bologna with Ryanair. Unfortunately, Ryanair doesn’t allow any extra baggage for lap infants — but does allow two free checked items and a 5kg baby bag. Our final luggage haul ended up being: x1 wheely overhead locker bag, x1 small personal bag, x1 baby bag, and x1 fully collapsible buggy. This was technically less bags then we were allotted — x1 more small personal bag would’ve still been allowed — but we didn’t want to be lugging around too much. More info on the Ryanair website, here.

• before going through security at Dublin airport, we went to the Ryanair check-in area to get our baby bag and buggy tagged, as per the lap infant rules. This allowed us to keep Bean in her buggy right up until we boarded the plane, which was so nice considering she was on my lap for the rest of the day! You can also get these items tagged at the gate when you’re boarding, but the anxious over-thinker in me couldn’t handle not knowing if they’d be persnickety about the size of our baby bag. Spoiler alert: they weren’t.

• the flight took a surprisingly speedy 2-hours. Mercifully, we had no issues with Bean on the flight — she stayed seat-belted onto my lap for the entire journey, awake, but generally chilled out. To help with pressure in her ears, we fed on take-off and landing; she didn’t seem to notice anything. The return journey was much the same, except she was so uninterested this time that she slept for the entire flight — woo!

• from Bologna airport, we opted to take a taxi into the city centre for ease. It was rush hour when we landed, so the journey took around 35-minutes. Taxis in Italy are exempt from car seat laws, so I was able to hold Bean on my lap for the duration of the journey. Obviously not ideal, but seeing as it was such a short distance — 6km —, I didn’t think it was worth it to bring a car seat.

WHERE WE STAYED:

• a literal 1-minute walk into the heart of the quadrilatero district, we got really lucky with the apartment we found online: Cuore di Bologna Suites. It was easy walking distance to everywhere we planned to hit up, the building felt safe — complete with a friendly doorman until the evenings —, the manager was very agreeable, and our room was perfect.

• room-wise, we booked the ‘Superior Studio’: a spacious room with a large double bed, a single bed, a kitchenette, a dining table, and a private bathroom. The property also organized a travel cot for Bean, FOC, and there was a little basket of treats and coffee etc. It was perfect for our needs, and great being able to spread out all our stuff, especially with Bean.

• this location was also buggy-friendly! The building has a (claustrophobic, slightly scary, and totally old-fashioned) fully functioning elevator that was justttt big enough to fit one buggy, two adults + all our luggage. There are, of course, stairs — but seeing as the apartment is located on the third floor, it wouldn’t have been doable for us without the elevator.

GETTING AROUND:

• the city is delightfully easy to get around, so we walked everywhere! Most of the streets are flat and smooth, so it was relatively easy to navigate with a buggy.

• of course, there are a lot of cobblestones in Italy, and in our super compact travel-friendly buggy, Bean absolutely felt every single one of them. Thankfully, bumpy journeys have never bothered her — but it is something to keep in mind if your baby is fussier.

day 3-6: rimini

GETTING THERE:

• we took a direct ‘Intercity’ train from Bologna Centrale to Rimini Centrale. The walk to Bologna Centrale is very straightforward, and navigating our way through the station to the platform with the buggy was fine because there are elevators. The journey was around 1-hour and 15-minutes.

• to make our lives easier, we kept Bean in the buggy on the platform until the last minute — which, thank god we did, because the train was 20-minutes delayed —, at which point I held her in my arms and we folded the buggy up completely. Bean was happy as a clam on the platform, smiling at enamoured Italians blowing her kisses.

• we’ve never had an issue finding space for our bags on Italian trains, and this was no different; even though the train was jammed, there was plenty of room for Husband to stow everything in the overhead space.

• our tickets for this journey — which we booked in advance, online — had assigned seating, which was nice, because we didn’t have to worry about being separated. Our seats were across from each other with a table between us, so we were able to pass Bean back & forth. For more info about trains and routes, visit the TrenItalia website here.

• FYI: the ‘Intercity’ trains do not have any baby-changing facilities on board! This wasn’t a huge concern for us because our journey was relatively short, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind if going further afield!

WHERE WE STAYED:

• ideally located in the historic centre of Rimini, we were very happy with our accommodation: Corso51 Suite Apartments. It was easy walking distance to everywhere we planned to tourist — as well as both the train station and the San Marino bus stop —, the manager was very helpful whenever we needed her, and it was handily located around the corner from a CONAD CITY supermarket!

• room-wise, we booked the ‘Augusto - Junior Suite’: a spacious room with a large double bed, an extra roomy fold-out couch, a kitchenette, a little dining table, and a private bathroom. The property also organized a travel cot for Bean, as well as a high chair, baby toiletries + towels, and a handful of baby-friendly toys, all FOC! We already thought the room was pretty perfect, but these sweet little touches were just so lovely.

• the room also came equipped with a washer/dryer, which was so handy! Seeing as our stay here was smack bang in the middle of our trip, it was very helpful being able to do a wash and get everything dried before moving on.

• this location is also (mostly) buggy-friendly! There is a small elevator that we, the buggy + our luggage were all able to squeeze into, however(!), there are two steps down into it that wouldn’t really be doable if you were on your own. The apartment is located on the first floor, so it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to carry the buggy up — but not ideal for any solo-parent travellers out there.

GETTING AROUND:

• Rimini city is pretty compact, so we were able to walk everywhere! The city as a whole is relatively flat, so navigating with the buggy was a breeze.

• the cobblestone situation here is definitely more aggressive than that in Bologna, which Bean didn’t love, but if we took it slow it wasn’t really an issue.

day 5: san marino

GETTING THERE:

• for our daytrip to San Marino, we took a Bonelli Bus shuttle from the Arch of Augustus in Rimini, with a journey time of about 1-hour. The shuttle goes between the two cities once every 1.5-hours or so, and apparently they run every single day of the year! For more info, visit the Bonelli Bus website here.

• while you can buy your tickets directly onboard from the driver, we bought our tickets online in advance — and I’d highly recommend you do the same! Having a pre-booked ticket ensures you’ll be able to board the bus, even if it’s really full.

• on that note: although having a ticket guarantees your transportation, it does not guarantee a seat! We got on at the second stop and nabbed two of the only three remaining seats on the whole bus — I was so shocked! I’d definitely recommend getting on at the first stop if possible, and also trying to be some of the first people to board. They do allow standing passengers on the bus, but it wouldn’t be ideal on the bumpy and winding roads!

• to make our lives easier, we decided not to bring the buggy to San Marino, and instead opted to carry Bean in our BabyBjörn. Honestly, I am so glad we did this — she fell asleep against my chest basically as soon as I sat down, and stayed that way for the whole journey!

• for the return journey later the same day, we made sure to queue up early to get seats together. The bus pulled up about 15-minutes before the departure time, and, as some of the first people onboard, we were able to avail of the two spacious seats up front. After a cute game of peekaboo with the driver, we lay Bean across our laps and she slept the whole way home!

GETTING AROUND:

• in case you didn’t know — Husband, looking at you —, San Marino is perched very high up at the top of a literal mountain. As such, the streets through the historic centre are all extremely steep, with some feeling near vertical. I was so! happy! not to have the buggy with us, because it definitely would’ve been a pain to push it around all day.

• as well as the sheer steep-ness, there was also a LOT of steps dotted around the city, many of which were unavoidable. It definitely would’ve been a massive annoyance to try to navigate with a buggy.

• aside from all that, the city of San Marino is super compact! Everywhere we wanted to see was within easy walking distance of each other, and directions to the main attractions are well signposted for tourists.

day 6-7: bologna

GETTING THERE:

• on our return to Bologna four days later, we once more took the train — except this time it was a ‘Regional Veloce’. This differed from the above train in that there were a few more stops, so the journey was a slightly longer 1-hour and 35-minutes.

• also different from the above, our tickets for this train — which we booked in advance, online — showed unreserved seating. I was less nervous about this seeing as we already had one successful train journey under our belt, but thankfully we found seats together anyways. We were able to lay Bean across our laps again, and she literally slept the whole way. For more info about trains and routes, visit the TrenItalia website here.

• again, there was plenty of room for our luggage — wheely bag, backpacks, folded up buggy, etc.

• FYI: the ‘Regional Veloce’ trains do not have any baby-changing facilities on board! This wasn’t a huge concern for us because our journey was relatively short, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind if going further afield!

WHERE WE STAYED:

• looking for ease on our final night, we booked into Hotel Cavour. Centrally located off Via dell'Indipendenza, this was an easy walk to the few remaining spots we wanted to squeeze in before leaving. The building felt very safe — complete with a 24-hour reception desk —, the staff were friendly enough, and it was very handy having them organize a taxi for us to get back to the airport!

• room-wise, we booked a ‘Deluxe Double Room’: a spacious top-floor room with a large double bed, a little table and chairs, a desk, a private bathroom, and a travel cot for Bean, FOC. Our room rate also included breakfast the following morning, which was the usual European spread of meats/cheeses/yogurts/pastries, etc. All in all, perfect for our 1-night stay!

• this hotel is buggy friendly! There was a relatively modern elevator towards the rear of the building that was very spacious, so we were able to travel up and down to the room with ease!

a note on eating out

• pre-trip, we decided to forego any evening meals in restaurants in favour of lunch-time outings instead. Firstly, if the worst case scenario happened and we had a fussy baby on our hands, people are generally more understanding of that during the day. Secondly, Bean is just a more chill and happy baby during the day, so our chances of fussiness were slim. Lastly, seeing as we have a somewhat regular night time routine that works, we figured it was no big deal to eat in for dinner. We usually ended up getting takeout, but also — thanks to our carefully chosen apartments with kitchenettes! — Husband was able to whip up something once or twice.

• generally speaking, we tried to time Bean’s afternoon nap to coincide with the approximate time we planned to go out for lunch at. Most of the time, we nailed it and she slept through the whole meal in her buggy! The odd time she was awake, she was happy to chill in her buggy, playing with a teething toy, making friends with fellow diners, or watching the busy waiters go about their business.

• drinks-wise, it just wouldn’t be a trip to Italy without heading out for an aperitivo in the early evenings, so we tried our best to make it happen. Again, about half the time we got lucky and she was asleep — as in the third photo, above — so we tucked her buggy into an unsuspecting corner while we enjoyed a spritz! Other times, when she was wide awake, we’d opt for a seat outside where a) she could people-watch or b) we could make a speedy getaway if she started fussing.

And there we have it: One Week in Italy and San Marino | Our Itinerary for Baby’s First Trip! What did you think? I hope you found it helpful, and if you have any questions please drop them in the comment box below.

Ciao,

Vicki xo

related posts

The Bologna Diaries, Vol. 05
A Quick Guide to Rimini, Italy
One Day in San Marino

Ciao, friends! Happy Sunday! How the heck are you? Welcome to our Monthly Musings: March 2026 post — I hope it finds you well! Not to show my Irish-ness by talking about the weather, but can we please talk about the weather for a second? Isn’t it nice that the rain has finally stopped? Can you actually even believe that Tuesday just gone was the first day of the! whole! year! without a drop of rain? All the way to March without a single dry day; how insane is that? How Irish! It’s been so nice the past few days to be able to go out and enjoy the sunshine, even if it’s been accompanied by a crisp fresh wind — I’ll take it. Weather talk aside, shall we get down to business?

Our musings for the month ahead are below. All the usual suspects are there — travel, recipes, movies, books — with a few additional tidbits thrown in for good measure.

Enjoy, friends!

Subscribe now

monthly musings: march 2026

Baby update: Bean is officially 5-months old and things are going so well! She still loves going for walks in her chariot — aka: buggy —, still sleeps through the night, and is still super easy-going. Her current favourite things are holding onto her feet, which is the cutest thing ever(!), kissing her Big Bird teddy goodnight, and being around us when we’re doing even the most boring things. Milestone wise, she rolled over for the first time last month! It was both very exciting and wildly anti-climactic.

*

It’s official: we survived our first trip away with our little bambina! We spent one week soaking up the vibes — aka: eating and drinking to our heart’s content — in Bologna, Rimini, and San Marino; it went so well! Bean was an absolute angel travel companion: very adaptable, super chilled, and had no problem moving from city to city or settling into different travel cots etc. The journey had us taking trains, buses, planes, taxis and shuttles, and I’m pleased to report she didn’t go ballistic even one time! Her easy & cheery nature made the whole trip so much easier for us; we feel so lucky to have had everything go off without a hitch. I’ve already started dreaming up our next escape 😉

*

Aside from the win of traveling with our piccolina, it just felt so good to get out there and travel again! We hadn’t been away since our babymoon trip to Gdańsk last May, and I cannot even begin to explain how wonderful it was to leave the country for a bit! We spent four days in Bologna, three days in Rimini, and did a day-trip to San Marino from the latter; it was perfect. Bologna still fits us like an old glove, and it was surreal to revisit some favourite spots with our baby in tow. Rimini and San Marino were both new-to-us, and I can’t believe we finally made it to either — we’d been planning and failing to visit both since 2022! Travel guides coming soon!

*

I mentioned last month that I want to bring a little more fun/joy to boring everyday stuff, and I’ve been making a few small changes to achieve this. One of these things has been to colour code my calendar. Orange for family, pink for friends, yellow for holidays, red or green for appointments, and blue for birthdays. It’s such a tiny thing, but looking at the rainbow of colours makes even the mundane a little more fun! Other small but joyous things I’ve been doing: being more proactive in organizing to see friends, painting my nails fun colours, and treating myself to an iced latte every now and then.

*

I also mentioned last month that I wanted to get back into scrapbooking and, omg, it is the tonic I didn’t know I needed! I ordered some fun little scrapbook bits and bobs — deco paper, round-edge cutter, paper guillotine, many stickers, etc. — online and I could lose hours in the scrapbooking zone! I’ve been focusing all my energies on Bean’s baby book, and it’s turning out so cute! I’m almost up to date on that, and then I’m going to turn my crafty attention to making felt birthday crowns — I’m so excited!

*

What’ve you been watching lately? Movie-wise, things have been pretty slow for us. New watches include The Housemaid, which we both thought was so overrated and long, and Bones and All, which, while gross, I found weirdly romantic? We also watched The Thomas Crown Affair, which reignited my desire to become an art-thief. Don’t the movies just make it look so easy and cool? Fun rewatches include My Best Friend’s Wedding, Knocked Up, and Wedding Crashers. TV-wise, we’ve found ourselves rewatching Seinfeld lately. It’s just such a comforting watch, it is literally the perfect thing to put on at the end of the day when you’re brain is too tired to comprehend anything else!! I refuse to be sorry about this rewatch! To follow along with our movie watching in real-time on Letterboxd, click here.

*

Did you read anything great last month? I continued down the Stephen King rabbit hole and read If It Bleeds, a collection of four short stories. I wouldn’t normally go in for short stories, but it was actually quite fun! My favourites were Rat and If It Bleeds, but the other two weren’t half bad either! All of them had a supernatural element, which, again, I wouldn’t normally go in for, but those parts weren’t overtly in-your-face supernatural, so I was able to accept it, you know? Either way: fun! To follow along with my reading in real-time on StoryGraph, click here.

*

Recipes from around the web: Husband has made this gorgeous soda bread recipe a handful of times over the last few weeks and it is so good! It tastes just like McCambridge’s, but the resulting loaf is much larger, and it’s so fresh and lovely! Would definitely recommend if you’re looking for a nice healthy homemade brown bread recipe.

And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: February 2026 post! I hope you found something to take away with you, be it a hankering to start scrapbooking, a recipe, or an urge to book a flight. Catch you again next month!

Hugs,

Vicki xo

PS: the photo above was taken in Bologna last week! Wandering around our beloved quadrilatero district, sometime between eating gramigna alla salsiccia and nocciola gelato, pondering our Aperol spritz spot for the evening, with the sun beaming through the market justtt right. Sigh, I miss Italy already. Ugh.

related posts

2025 // 2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021 // 2020
2019