Monthly Musings: April 2026

ft. two important birthdays, my new favourite hobby, and our usual ramblings

Apr 12, 2026

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!

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