2025: a year in review

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Another year down and I’m here to recap the year that was 2025!

I swear I say the same thing every time this post appears; Where the hell has the time gone? This year has flown by, but there’s a good reason for that, which I’ll get to very soon. Every year, this last post of the year serves as a good way for me to remember how much I accomplished, how much we’ve done as a family, and share some of my favorite images from the past 12 months.

For once, I’m writing this before Christmas and New Year this year, so I hope you all have a lovely festive period. I love preparing for Christmas, even more now that we have children.

This isn’t necessarily for everyone but if you have the time and feel like delving into my thoughts and photos over the years, I’ve shared all of my previous posts. Seven year in the review posts below.

2025

If you’ve been here a while, or at least since last year, you know that we were expecting our second child the day after Evelyn’s third birthday. Being our second child, we felt like we were just waiting and preparing for the day to come instead of enjoying the pregnancy as much as possible. See, having done everything before, it becomes more of a practical pregnancy; Do we keep all of Evelyn’s clothes, what can we auction off around the house, etc.?

Fortunately, our second girl, Elise, arrived on February 15, 2025, safe and sound. However, I think I was the one who panicked more during the birth than Emma, but no matter how many midwives and doctors came into the room and no matter how many beeps went off, everything was fine in the end.

So this year everything has revolved around family and adjusting to life with two children. It’s definitely been an eye-opening experience as Evelyn progresses through the next three sixteenths, but we loved it. almost every minute of it. You certainly forget many aspects of the newborn stage, that’s for sure; We’re in the teething stage now, so even though we have Elise in her own room, we’re still going up and down (why we bought a three-story house!) quite a bit. So while we feel like we maybe haven’t been able to focus 100% on everything that comes with a little one’s first few months, it’s still been amazing to watch Elise grow into a cheeky ten-month-old.

In terms of travel, we’ve certainly been a lot braver this year than we were with Evelyn. Partly due to the lingering effects of Covid-19 and partly due to the simple fact of being new parents, we didn’t travel abroad until Evelyn was 13 months old. This year, however, we have been away with the family three times; to Cyprus in June (Elise was only 16 weeks old), to Copenhagen in August for my birthday and to Malta in November to soak up the winter sun. Each of these trips was amazing and it’s hard to believe we accomplished them all with two little ones and really enjoyed them!

Of course, we have taken many trips here in the UK and consumed endless amounts of coffee. The highlights were Wallington Hall in Northumberland and Lapland UK in Manchester – the best Christmas experience we have had so far for the children.

I also traveled a bit separately thanks to working with Jet2 again; Benidorm precisely in May (I was pleasantly surprised, I really enjoyed it) and Budapest at the end of September.

My highlights of 2025

Here are some of my favorite blog posts of the year:

On The Streets: Benidorm
Fujifilm 16-55mm f/2.8 II Lens Review
Hotel Review: 25hours Hotel Copenhagen Indre By
On the streets: Budapest
How we spent 14 nights in Japan (with a toddler)
Hotel Review: Malta Marriott Resort and Spa

My favorite photos of 2025

This section is new for this year and I’m wondering why I haven’t done this before. A place that’s all mine to share some of my favorite photos of the year without the pressure of likes, engagement, etc.

The year as a travel blogger

Well, I can finally say that, in 2025, I finally achieved the goal I set for myself on the first day of my travel blog: in May, I finally received the coveted 50,000 monthly sessions that allowed me to join Mediavine. In the world of travel blogging, this is a big deal. Mediavine is a premium ad network that I believe is considered the pinnacle of blogging. This finally meant that I could make some real money from my blog, from my passion project, and I felt amazing when that first payment hit my bank account. With the increase in blog views also came a huge increase in income from affiliate marketing and therefore, at the end of the fiscal year, we are talking about numbers that could probably, with more work, be converted into real income.

I’m still experiencing a drop in traffic with the seasons, although not as much as normal thanks to it being summer in Australia for example, but I really need to start working on fall/winter content for 2026! In total, I think I’ll end up with around 800,000 page views, which is incredible. I would have loved to have hit 1 million page views, but that may be next year’s goal!

So it all sounds fantastic, right? Despite this achievement, starting my own business and upgrading my home office equipment (hello Mac mini and MacBook Pro), I’m still a little disappointed. I’m always striving to improve and what disappointed me this year has been how little time I’ve spent creating new blog posts. I typically expect to see results from the blog posts I write in about 12 months, and so if I’m expecting a good year in 2026, I should have prepared throughout the year. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess because I have another lovely son, I only created 23 posts this year, well short of my goal of 52 posts a year. However, I have diverted much of my attention elsewhere; I’m sure you’ll see it soon once there’s a tough launch. I also took the first steps to ride my own Etsy store where you can finally buy my travel photography prints. More on this coming soon!

Nowadays it doesn’t take much to feel like you’re falling behind, but I have to keep reminding myself that firstly, “comparison is the thief of joy”, secondly, I still achieved an incredible goal and am earning income from my passion and have a beautiful family. Everyone goes their own way and I am very happy with mine.

What’s next?

When I wrote this post last year, I knew things would be quiet on the travel blog. Fingers crossed we can build some momentum in 2026 and have a really good year here. Maybe if it’s really good I can start taking some concrete steps toward doing this full time. It would be a dream come true for me. As long as I can take care of my family and the non-negotiable bills that come with it, that would be enough for me!

In terms of our family life, we will soon have a four-year-old and a one-year-old, which seems crazy to say that. It doesn’t really deter us from traveling having two kids, you know? I know some people probably think we’re a little crazy, but we’re going to try to have some more exciting adventures in the years to come. If you didn’t know or don’t remember, we never managed to escape on our honeymoon in 2020 and we can’t stop talking about planning something similar back to Melbourne and New Zealand. Although it is obviously quite far away by plane. That, or the interrail, who knows!

Thank you very much to everyone who takes a moment to read what I share here; That’s exactly why I keep doing this.

See you in 2026!

Jamie