Monthly Musings: June 2025
ft. a bump-date, a babymoon recap, and the usual ramblings
Hi friends! Happy weekend! Welcome to our Monthly Musings: June 2025 post! I hope this finds you well, with a coffee nearby and some relaxing plans for the afternoon ahead. I had every intention of getting this post sent out to you last week — the first weekend of the month, as per usual — but Husband and I didn’t get back from our babymoon until late Saturday night, and the rest of the weekend just whizzed right past me! Please accept my most sincerest of apologies. Excuses out of the way, how the heck have you been? Did May treat you well? I had the most lovely month - filled with sweet little outings, seafront strolls, and, bittersweetly, our last trip pre-baby. It was delightful!
Our musings for the month ahead are listed below, filled with all the usual suspects: baby news, travel talk, recipe musings, books, movies, and whatever else was floating around my head. While you read on, I’ll be over here, working on a little summer bucket list for myself — my last one before Baby Bean arrives! Eeep!
monthly musings: june 2025
In baby news: everything is going great! Bean started kicking just before we hit the 20-week mark, and has been thumping away regularly ever since; it’s both weird and amazing. We had our 22-week anatomy scan recently, and thankfully everything went great. Bean was moving about during the whole thing, stubbornly covering their face whenever the sonographer tried to go near it, and, similarly stubbornly, refusing to reveal their nether region. We were going to keep the sex a surprise anyway, but I enjoy the fact that Bean wouldn’t even give up the goods for the sonographer. Only three and a bit more months to go!
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As previously mentioned, we’re just back from our babymoon! We were in the gorgeous Polish city of Gdańsk for five days, and we had the best time ever! I’m definitely more of a city break traveler than a beach holiday or chill by the pool girlie, and Gdańsk has been on my hitlist for so! long! We explored the beautiful old town, spent an afternoon at the nearby seaside town of Sopot, and ate allll the food. Namely: donuts, pierogi, and more donuts! Not to worry, I’ll have a complete recap of everything we got up to coming soooon 😉
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Related: now that the babymoon is over, Husband & I are officially grounded until Baby Bean makes their appearance earthside! Before we found out about Bean, our travel plans for September involved heading back to Canada for another family wedding, and, while I’m definitely bummed we’re missing out on another visit to the Land of Maple Syrup, Bean’s arrival is infinitely more exciting. However, with that said, I’m not exactly ready to give up my travelling ways just yet! I’m scheming up ways for us to hit a few different spots around Ireland this summer, maybe write a guide or two about some local foodie spots — we shall see!
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In case you missed it, An Afternoon in Uppsala, Sweden hit the blog last week! A short yet sweet guide detailing everything we got up to in the Swedish university city just outside Stockholm. We spent a handful of hours exploring everything Uppsala had to offer, and it was so lovely!
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I shared my first official recipe in my An Ode to… series: Torta de Santiago! This first recipe is an ode to a cake I sampled when Bestie & I were walking the Camino eleven whole years ago — and I can still remember that first taste! It’s light, spongey, almondy, and citrusy… aka: perfect for all occasions! I also feel like it could be a perfect breakfast cake, because it isn’t too sweet? Any excuse to eat cake for breakfast 😉
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This is so random, but I’ve organized all of my Instagram posts into easy-to-find country specific hashtags! If you’re ever looking for all of my posts from a certain country, they can handy dandily be found under the hashtags #PBTin___ or #PBTgoesto___; most of them are under the #PBTin___ variation, but if there were already posts under that hashtag then I had to branch out to the latter. If you’re interested, here’s a country by country cheat-sheet: Denmark / Italy / Germany / England / Scotland / Portugal / France / Austria / Netherlands / Spain / Luxembourg / Canada / Monaco / Japan / Norway / Vietnam / Sweden. This is likely something that no one except me will find useful, but I’ve always loved exploring location specific hashtags from some of my fellow travel bloggers! One standout fave is Sydney’s #WCBBdoesjapan, which we literally used to eat our way around Japan! Am I the only one who thinks this is useful?
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Did you watch anything worthwhile last month? Movie-wise, things have been pretty slow around here. Our Letterboxd diary for the last four weeks varied wildly from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to The Great Gatsby to Charlie & the Chocolate Factory to A Complete Unknown and Nonnas. No rhyme or reason per se, unless you count the fact that they’re all somewhat comforting. TV-wise, we saw that Dawson’s Creek was added to Prime recently, and, well, one thing led to another and before we truly knew what was happening we were finishing up the first season again. The lure of over-scripted love sick teenagers is just too much to resist!
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Wallowing in a pit of re-reading despair, I recently dove back into William Golding’s Lord of the Flies for the second time, and, honestly, it was such a slog to get through. It had been a long time since I first read it, and while thought-provoking and sad and heartbreaking, I’m finally ready to donate my copy once and for all. From LOTF I leapfrogged into my old copy of My Sister’s Keeper, which I totally devoured over the course of our trip to Gdańsk. You know, just some light babymoon reading — not! The storyline had me bawling, obvz, but it’s still great! Apparently I’m a Jodi Picoult mega-fan?! What books do you have on your summer hitlist? I’m always looking for a good recommendation!
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In baking news, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last month perfecting my next recipe in the An Ode to… series, and I think it’s finally ready! I’ve already let slip that it’s a shortbread inspired by one we ate in Bristol, and, not to toot my own horn or anything, but it’s bloody delicious! I’m hoping to get the photos edited and post written up asap, so watch this space! Other than my shortbread trials, Husband recently whipped up Vallery Lomas’s blueberry buckle — which is easily one of our most favourite & comforting easy bakes! — and I restocked the freezer with Rav’s ultimate chocolate chunk cookies. Is there anything better than a freshly baked cookie right after dinner? I think not.
And there we have it, our Monthly Musings: June 2025 post! Better late than never! I hope you found something to take away with you, be it a hankering to fill your freezer with cookie dough balls, reread that old book, or revisit an old favourite TV-show. Let’s catch up again next month, yeah?
My love to you,
Vicki xo
PS, Bristol guide coming next weekend!
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