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!
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!
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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!
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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!!
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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.
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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.
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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
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oooh what a lovely month! I love StoryGraph too but haven't used it in ages! Bookwise... I've just read A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck - it's super short and just helped me get my reading mojo back after struggling to get my brain in gear.