Monthly Musings: September 2025
ft. a birthday recap, a baby update, and the usual ramblings
Friends, hello! Happy Sunday and happy September! Welcome to our Monthly Musings: September 2025 post — I hope it finds you happy, healthy, and enjoying the seasonal shift in the weather. As some of you might know, I turned another year older since we last talked — the big 3-2, thank you very much — and getting to celebrate another whole year around the sun is something I will never take for granted, especially after the events of this past July! More birthday talk below, but tell me, how the heckity heck have you been? Did you get up to anything fun over the last month?
I basically spent the entirety of August recuperating and focusing on getting better. Which, in theory, sounds nice and relaxing — but I’ve never been more busy with medical appointments in my life! I’ve been back to the hospital twice for consults with my surgeons. I’m still seeing a nurse every second day to get the dressing on my wound changed. We were called into the NMH for a final follow-up ultrasound. I’ve been having weekly alternating appointments with the midwives/my GP… I’ve become one of those crazy calendar people and it has been a! lot! Thankfully everything is going the right way and the end is nigh, but oof what an insane chapter of my life this has been!
Anyways! Let’s get down to it, shall we? All the usual suspects — travel, recipes, movies, books — and some off-piste ramblings listed below. Enjoy, friends!
monthly musings: september 2025
New in the baby world: my family threw us the most incredible baby shower last month and we were totally overwhelmed with the amount of love and support we were showered with; it was so lovely! Other than that, we are essentially ready! Hospital bag is packed, car seat is in place, nursery is basically complete, and the antenatal classes are almost finished! There’s officially less than 3-weeks left until Baby Bean’s due date, and, after the whole hullaballoo that was July, I really didn’t think we’d make it this far — but now I’m hoping we’ll make it the whole way to the end of the month and then some!
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I had the loveliest birthday ever! My entire family spoiled me rotten, and I’ve basically been enjoying residual birthday perks for the better part of a week! Aside from all the well wishes and love I was shown, highlights include: flight vouchers, a Burger Boy birthday lunch, gorgeous flowers, a generous overnight stay at Brooklodge, birthday dinner at La Taverna Armento, and, obviously, a rewatching of my favourite film ever, Notting Hill, duh. It was the perfect last birthday before I officially become a mom — eep!
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My surgeons in SVUH have officially given me the all-clear! I feel very lucky to have had such a warm and caring team of surgeons looking after me, especially Dr Conor Toale and Mr Anthony Stafford. On one of the visits back to the hospital, we also dropped in a giant box of chocolates to the lovely nurses that cared for me during my nearly-three-week stint back in July, and it was so nice to see them again! They were so happy to see how much better I was doing, and chatting with them made me ridiculously emotional! This crazy chapter of my life is over!
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I’ve gotten a few more things knocked off my summer bucket list! The two biggies being: Baby Bean’s room is practically finished(!), and our freezer is plentifully stocked up! I fear we may have missed our window for picnic on a beach… but I'm not opposed to lowering my standards to “having a pastry & coffee in the car while parked on the edge of a rainy beach”. It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but I have a knack for making anything romantic. After that, the last remaining undone thing is to plan our first trip post-baby, and, although I have no official bookings etc., I have essentially the whole thing planned in my head, so it should be a breeze! How did you do with your list?
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In case you missed it, I shared two new travel guides last month: 7 Things to See in Gdańsk, Poland, and A Food & Drink Guide to Gdańsk, Poland. Between the two, the posts cover everything we got up to on our babymoon trip back in May: where we stayed, what we did, where we day-tripped, where we ate, and what we drank. They’re absolutely loaded with my very best recommendations, and I hope you love them!
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If you’re browsing around the travel index over the coming weeks, you might notice a few posts from a new series I‘m working on: Notes from the Archive. Basically, the series will share brief guides from some of my most well documented pre-blog travels. I’ve always been an avid journal-er and note-keeper on my travels, and it only occurred to me recently that, although not as thorough and in-depth as my note-taking of today, these notes could still be helpful to someone out there planning a trip. However, because the guides will be less glitzy & informative than the ones I share today, I’ll be back-dating them & quietly ushering them into the archives without sending an email out to subscribers. Fear not, if you’re interested in reading the series, I’ll be sure to mention any new posts in these monthly recaps.
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Did you watch anything good last month? We fell down a TV-show spiral, and are only starting to dig ourselves out. Highlights include: Untamed, which we both thought was great, Ballard, which I liked from the very beginning but it took Husband a few eps to get into, and, obvs, The Summer I Turned Pretty S3, which, yes, was slow to get going, but I am now obsessed with! I am assuming you too are watching it and are clearly Team Conrad?! Things have been slow movie-wise, but we did recently enjoy two differently cheese-tastic movies: The Thursday Murder Club and The Map That Leads to You. As always, if you’d like to follow along with our movie viewing in real-time, here’s the link to our Letterboxd.
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Since getting out of hospital, my reading has been very comfort-based. I eagerly set out to read the latest Taylor Jenkins Reid book, Atmosphere, and, sadly, it just didn’t do it for me! As someone who’s read every other TJR book in existence, I just didn’t think this one was the same caliber as the rest. Sorry/not sorry. From that, I bounced to Andre Aciman’s Room on the Sea, which I loved! A super easy read about two married people who meet during jury duty selection and accidentally + slowly start to fall for each other. Currently, I’m rereading Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind, which I have absolutely no recollection of reading in the first place, and am loving it! Are you reading anything great at the moment?
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Truthfully, it’s been months since I’ve had the energy to bake anything — but I really want to change this! I would love love love to whip up a batch of Violet’s Cinnamon Buns to add to our freezer stash, and this POY recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Apple Cake is practically begging me to bake it! I might have to enlist the help of my sous-chef — aka: Husband — but I think it’s doable. I shall report back!
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Related: our apple tree haul was so good this year! We have an overflowing fruit bowl on the counter filled with apples, we gave a literal laundry-basket-full away to family and friends, and the tree still looks as if none have been plucked! It’s crazy. If you have found yourself similarly overrun with apples, here’s some of my fave apple recipes: Classic Apple Pie / Apple & Raspberry Crumble Bars / Rustic Apple Cake / Caramel Apple & Pear Pie / Julia Child’s Tarte Normande aux Pommes. What’s your favourite apple bake?
And there we have it, friends, Monthly Musings: September 2025. I hope you found something to take away with you — be it a new recipe, an urge to book that staycation spot you’ve been eyeing up for years, or a hankering to watch the cheesy teen romance everyone’s talking about. I sincerely hope it’s the latter!
Let’s catch up again in October, yeah? Baby Bean might have made their appearance earth-side by then! Pray for us!
Have a great September!
My love to you,
Vicki xo
related posts
September 2024 // September 2023
September 2022 // September 2021
September 2020 // September 2019
