2024: A Year in Review

Believe it or not, another year has come and gone! So to commemorate that, I’m wrapping up 2024 with my year in review post, just like I do every year on Teaspoon of Adventure.

These are truly some of my favourite posts to write. They harken back to the days when a blog was just an online diary.

And even though this post probably won’t help you plan your next great trip, I hope it gives you a nice peek into the life of your favourite travel planner (that’s me, right?).

If I had to sum up 2024, I think it was a year of preparation and making the most of the small moments. It’s going to be hard for me to talk about this year without sharing some personal news, so I guess I’ll get that out of the way now…

I’m pregnant!

This has been something my husband, Colin, and I have been wanting for a long time and we’re very excited (and only slightly terrified) to enter into the wonderful world of parenthood.

I’m planning some more personal posts that will get into our whole fertility/pregnancy journey – because it’s been a doozy – so I’ll save all of the details for those posts. But suffice to say that pregnancy played a pretty big part in my 2024.

All right, let’s dive into the year!

2024 travel

2024 was actually a pretty quiet travel year for me, with pregnancy postponing a few travel plans.

We started the year strong with a trip to the South of France in February. We visited Provence (with my favourite stops being Arles and Avignon) and then moved onto the Cote d’Azur (with day trips to Antibes, Eze, Monaco and more!).

Unbelievably, I still haven’t finished blogging that trip!

Next was a little trip over Easter to Birch Bay in Washington. I didn’t blog this trip – though I did share about it in my newsletter (sign up here to receive monthly updates from me).

It was super low-key. Colin, our dog, Ellie, and I enjoyed walks on the beach, binging Netflix, and eating at local bars and cafes.

After that was a trip back to my hometown of Toronto at the end of June.

We got to attend my little brother’s high school graduation, plus see lots of family members over the July weekend, and share our pregnancy news with a few people in person!

Lastly, we spent a week road tripping around Vancouver Island for our babymoon.

We decided to plan a babymoon close to home and really made the most of a week of short hikes, delicious seafood, spa days and water views!

Life at home in 2024

While I didn’t get on as many airplanes in 2024, I think I made up for it with lots of stuff happening on the home front.

In January we got a fresh dumping of snow, but warmed up by trying some delicious udon and sushi at new local restaurants.

After we got back from France in February, we took our moms out for dim sum, took ourselves out for a fancy steak dinner, and I worked on my Mixbook photo collab.

In March, we celebrated Colin’s birthday by seeing a Canucks hockey game and a Warriors lacrosse game. It was my first time watching a lacrosse game and it was a ton of fun!

Home highlights of April included seeing the musical Hairspray and going on a behind the scenes tour of Rogers Arena, where the Canucks play.

In May we headed back to Rogers Arena, this time to watch a Canucks playoff away game. Meaning there was no one on the ice, but the atmosphere was awesome and the tickets were cheap!

We also went to a comedy show, busted out our patio furniture for the season and dealt with a broken dryer for a few weeks in May.

But the best news of May? That’s when we found out we were pregnant! (Get ready for baby updates to dominate the rest of the year.)

In June we got to see our little one and hear their heartbeat for the first time. We had our first midwife appointment and then headed off to Toronto.

July and August saw us going to local shows and concerts (Bard on the Beach, Candlelight Concert, Ben Platt, Theatre Under the Stars), having fun meals with family members, and hosting my siblings for a long weekend.

We also squeezed in a baseball game – who knew my 2024 would be so sporty?

Before heading out for our Vancouver Island trip in September, we did our first anatomy scan and got to see our baby looking like more than just a jelly bean.

We hit the halfway mark of pregnancy, tested out strollers and carriers, enjoyed a few delicious brunches out, and learned we were having a baby girl!

We had a few medical hurdles in October but the month also involved seeing lots of family over Thanksgiving and receiving lots of gifted and secondhand baby gear.

That continued into November when we had two baby showers and spent about a week clearing out our house to make room for all of the new stuff.

Of course, we also saw Wicked in November, and it was phenomenal.

December started out quite busy… and just continued to be busy all month long. It felt like I had a baby-related appointment or phone call every single day, plus all of the holiday social events.

At the same time I was trying to wrap up work projects, get ready for baby’s arrival and enjoy our final holiday season pre-parenthood. So it’s been busy, but productive!

What I read in 2024

Here’s a quick recap of my reading evolution: Like many, I grew up as a reader but fell out of the habit in university. In 2019, I bought myself an e-reader and began reading voraciously, which saw me through a lot of the pandemic.

Since then, my reading has been inconsistent, but I’ve decided not to judge myself too harshly. Anytime I choose a book over my phone is a win, even if it’s infrequent or if the book I’m reading isn’t high brow.

2024 was actually a pretty great reading year for me; I read 48 books this year. I guess I still have a couple of days to get to 50 books before 2024 is officially over, but I’m not going to force it.

I mostly like to read travel memoirs (go figure!) with a few other non-fiction or contemporary fiction books thrown in. This year I also added in some YA novels, true crime books, cozy mysteries and essay collections.

My top books of 2024 were:

• Congratulations, The Best Is Over! by R. Eric Thomas
• Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad
• We’ll Always Have Paris by Jennifer Coburn
• Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez

If you’re after more book recommendations, check out my list of favourite travel books!

My 2024 freelance work

If you’re new around here, you might not know that I work full time as a freelance writer, a job I’ve been doing since 2017. I have a few long term clients that I work with and pick up the occasional commissioned writing assignment.

2024 started off pretty status quo with my freelance work. I continued working with my long term clients, onboarded a few new ones and finished up work with a few.

The biggest change to my freelance writing work is actually that it’s coming to a (likely temporary) end. In anticipation of our baby’s arrival, I’ve been wrapping up most of my client work, including saying goodbye to clients I’ve had for almost eight years!

I’m sure I’ll get more into this in a future post, but we’ve planned and saved so that both Colin and I can take extended parental leaves away from our regular jobs. That means little to no freelancing for me in 2025.

But don’t worry, I still plan to blog as much as I can!

Blogging in 2024 on Teaspoon of Adventure

2024 was a HUGE year for this little travel blog of mine.

As I shared in my 2023 Year in Review, I took the plunge and started running ads on my site in the summer of 2023. I was working with a mid-tier ad network, with the hope of transitioning to a higher tier one by summer 2024.

But thanks to some big blog changes, hard work and a lot of luck, I qualified for that premium ad network in early 2024 and was able to make the switch in the spring.

That means that what was once a hobby blog actually became a huge – probably the biggest – portion of my income in 2024 thanks to ads, affiliates, sponsorships and brand deals.

But mostly, thanks to YOU! None of that is possible without lovely folks like you reading this blog, so thank you for letting me live this dream.

In January 2024, I switched over my blog theme, which I think helped a lot with the growth I saw. I started working my way through years worth of edits, though I didn’t get as far as I would have liked.

While this was the biggest growth year for my blog and blogging income, it certainly wasn’t consistent. I saw great growth over the spring and summer, but fell pretty sharply thanks to one of Google’s algorithm updates in early fall.

Luckily, their November update started to pull me back up. But as you may have heard from other bloggers and web creators, Google has been a pretty fickle beast for the last year and a half, so who knows what’s coming next?

Thanks to my blog, I also got to have some cool opportunities this year. I was featured in a beautiful print magazine and was on a radio show talking about my cross Canada road trip itinerary.

I didn’t publish as many posts in 2024 as I usually do. I used to publish a new post every Tuesday, but allowed myself to take a week off each month this year.

That sometimes extended to a few weeks off, meaning I published a grand total of 36 posts in 2024 (including this one!).

For context, I published 46 posts in 2022 and 43 posts in 2023. But in my defence, I did make a few major updates to older posts this year, essentially rewriting and republishing them, which really could count as new posts.

Also, I’ve been a little preoccupied with this pregnancy and all of the appointments!

Still, I wish I had been able to get more new posts written and more old posts updated in 2024. I’ve got a big backlog of things to do on the blog for 2025!

In case you’re curious, my most popular blog posts of 2024 were:

• Which Photo Book Maker Is the Best? (Real Book Reviews!)
• The Ultimate Cross Canada Road Trip Itinerary
• How Much Does a Trip to New Zealand Cost?

Funny enough, all of those posts were originally published before 2024, but I made extensive updates to them this year and republished them. Which just goes to show that I really need to prioritize my updates!

Looking back on my 2024 predictions from 2023

We’ve arrived at my favourite part of these review posts! I’m now going to look at the predictions I made at the end of 2023 for 2024 and see how well I was able to predict the future.

Spoiler alert: Not very well! This might actually be the year where my predictions were most off from what really happened.

2023 prediction for 2024 travel

In 2023, I predicted that in 2024, “I will go on an epic trip to Asia with my husband, mom and mother-in-law in November and a solo or friend trip in the summer.”

Nope! Neither of those things happened.

I used to say that my travel predictions were the most likely to come true, since we usually make travel plans pretty far in advance. But this time, I was way off!

We were planning an epic Japan trip with my mom (to celebrate her 60th birthday) and my mother-in-law (to celebrate her retirement) in Nov 2024.

But based on how pregnancy was going and the advice of my care providers, we decided to forgo that trip this year.

I’m still really desperate to get back to Asia; I haven’t been since our Southeast Asia trip in 2019. We had planned to go in the fall of 2020…but we all know how that worked out!

As for the friend or solo trip in the summer, I think I need to accept that I like to stay local in the summer. It’s a busy, hot and expensive time to travel, plus there’s lots of fun stuff to do here in Vancouver.

But I would still love to go on a solo or friend trip in 2025, as it’s been a while since I’ve done that. Though I’m not sure the newborn phase and solo travel go all that well together!

2023 prediction for 2024 life at home

In 2023, I predicted that in 2024, “I will choose how I spend my time at home intentionally, not just defaulting to a screen.”

I’d say I got a B+ on this one. For the majority of the year, I went to bed with my phone plugged in out in the living room.

Going to bed without my phone – which means I read before bed instead of scrolling endlessly – has been a goal of mine for years. I’d say 2024 was the year I was most successful at this, but it still wasn’t 100%.

I continued to not be on Instagram this year, after removing it from my phone in the summer of 2023. I also deleted Facebook and Twitter (X) off my phone for a while, but did add them back on.

Though with Twitter on its final legs, I’m actually creeping back onto Instagram but only following friends/family. So much better for my mental health!

I also picked up cross-stitching this year, though pretty quickly put it back down. My friend, Emilie, introduced me to the stitching world and encouraged me to give it a try.

I actually had a lot of fun working on patterns and felt better doing that while I was sitting on the couch rather than being on my phone.

But at one point, I put the cross-stitching away and kind of forgot to pick it up again? I think because I wasn’t taking my phone to bed, my lizard brain wanted to get in some good phone time dopamine hits while I could.

Cut to: Me spending far too many hours playing ridiculous phone games on the couch. Which isn’t as bad for my mental health as scrolling social media, but certainly isn’t as good as cross-stitch!

2023 prediction for 2024 freelance work

In 2023, I predicted that in 2024, “I will publish 12+ freelance travel articles and land at least one in a big name publication.”

Another prediction that I got dead wrong!

2023 was really the first time I decided to pursue actual freelance writing commissions – one-off writing assignments where my work would be published online or in print – rather than just taking on long term writing projects with steady clients.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the kind of writer who makes my living off of commissions – that world is just a little too volatile and rejection-heavy for me – but it was fun to dip my toe in. I also got to do a lot of travel writing, which was awesome!

I thought I’d take that same energy into 2024 but to be honest, I actually eased up on the pitching. According to my pitch tracker, I only sent 18 emails/messages with pitches all year, which landed me three commissions.

And no shade to any of the publications I wrote for in 2024, but I wouldn’t classify any of them as a “big name publication.”

Instead of pitching a ton, I definitely put more energy into my long term clients and securing new clients and project work. I don’t regret that move. I got to work on a lot of cool stuff this year and a steady gig is nothing to sneeze at.

Still, I do wish I had upped my pitching game a little bit in 2024, especially as I plan to pitch more in 2025!

2023 prediction for 2024 on Teaspoon of Adventure

In 2023, I predicted that in 2024, “I will double my page views and triple my blog income.”

I’m thrilled to report that I got this prediction wrong…because I blew it out of the water!

I more than doubled my monthly page views. On average for the year, I’m at about 2.5x the monthly page views I ended 2023 with. And some months I was as high as 4.5x.

As for income, I’m very grateful and humbled to say that I much more than tripled the amount my blog earned last year. I may have earned as much as 8-9x the amount, which is wild.

For the longest time, Teaspoon of Adventure was just a hobby for me. If you read the origin story of my blog, you’ll see that this whole thing started as an online escape from my boring university dorm room.

It then transformed into a diary to let my parents know I was safe while on the other side of the world and eventually became a helpful travel resource for thousands of readers each month.

Still, in my wildest dreams, I didn’t think TOA would ever be something I could make real money off of. But 2024 proved me wrong!

I say this knowing that 2024 was a very tough year for many people. I know in the blogging world, many people have had their sites unfairly decimated by algorithm updates.

So while I’ve worked hard over the years and am proud of my blog’s growth, I also know that I am extremely lucky and privileged to be in this position.

Looking ahead to 2025

After all that looking back, it’s time to look forward and make some predictions for 2025.

This is going to be a strange year to predict. It’ll be my first year without my regular freelance jobs and my first year adding a baby into the mix! I hear babies can be quite unpredictable, so we’ll see how I do at telling the future.

Below are my predictions/resolutions/hopes for 2025!

Prediction for 2025 travel

We actually have some pretty big travel plans for 2025, despite it being the year we become parents.

I’ll get into all of the details in a future post, but suffice to say we’re hoping a newborn doesn’t slow down our travel-loving lifestyle!

The prediction: In 2025, we will go on a local trip with our baby in the spring, spend the summer in Toronto with my family, and move to Europe in the fall!

Yup, you read that right: The plan is to MOVE TO EUROPE!

Not permanently, but we are planning to spend a big chunk of 2024/2025 living abroad again and I can’t freaking wait. More details to come!

Prediction for 2025 life at home

I think 2025 will see the biggest change to my life at home, since we’ll be adding a new person into our lives.

As a first time parent, I don’t really know how it’s going to go, so my prediction is probably going to be a little vague (and overly optimistic).

The prediction: In 2025, I will embrace the changes of parenthood, get into a good groove with our baby, and find moments to prioritize myself and my marriage.

Sounds kind of lofty, doesn’t it? I guess we’ll see if I can make it happen!

Our doula told Colin and I we have “second time parent energy” and that’s exactly what I want to channel going into 2025. I’m sure parenthood will be hard and full of unexpected moments, but let’s go in hopeful.

Prediction for 2025 freelance work

As I mentioned above, I wrapped up most of my freelance client work at the end of 2024, so 2025 is the first time in eight years where I’m not going to have steady freelance work.

That thought both terrifies and thrills me!

I’m excited to take a break and have the time to focus fully on parenthood and this big change in my life. But I’m also scared about the loss of income, loss of purpose, and that I won’t be able to find clients again when/if I want to.

But that sounds like a problem for 2026 Riana, since the 2025 plan is for me to not take on more long term client work. Instead I plan to jump back into pitching!

The prediction: In 2025, I will take a break from steady freelance work and focus more on pitching. I will land 10 commissions.

10 commissions sounds like both a lot and a little. It’s more than I’ve ever landed in a year, but this is also the first time I won’t have other client projects to work on.

However, I will have the huge project of first time motherhood and moving abroad, so it’s not exactly like my schedule is clear!

Still, I’m hoping that my new life as a mom and our next move abroad will make for lots of great pitching inspiration, helping me to land those 10 commissions!

Prediction for 2025 on Teaspoon of Adventure

Similar to my freelance work, I could see Teaspoon of Adventure going a few different ways in 2025.

Because I won’t have my steady freelance gigs, this is actually my chance to be a “full time” blogger. I put that in quotes, because my actual full time job will be mom-ing, since 2025 is my year of unofficial maternity leave.

But because both Colin and I are going to be off work for a long parental leave, and because blogging doesn’t have set hours, I’m ambitiously hoping I can still dedicate a good amount of time and energy to my blog!

(Cue all of the experienced parents laughing at my naiveté. “Time? As a parent to a newborn? Yeah, right!”)

Despite knowing that even parents with live-in nannies and personal chefs find they lack time, I’m going to choose to be optimistic with this prediction.

Who knows, maybe if I really can continue to grow my blog in 2025, I actually can be a full time blogger when we get back from our parental leave!

So in the spirit of that, I’m going to create an actionable prediction for Teaspoon of Adventure in 2025 and hope that these actions help lead to that full time blogging dream!

The prediction: In 2025, I will finish my backlog of new posts, finish my backlog of updates, create regular (2-3/month) new posts, make better use of my newsletter and diversify my traffic sources.

That’s likely biting off way more than I can chew, but I don’t mind. I more than surpassed my blogging goal for 2024, so why not dream big in 2025?

And even if I didn’t put all of those things into a prediction, they’d still be nagging me on my blogging to-do list.

See ya, 2024 & hello, 2025!

And with that, I bid adieu to 2024! It was a pretty significant year for me, even though I didn’t travel as much or publish as many blog posts.

And it was all in preparation for 2025, which is going to be a HUGE year of change as we bring home our new baby, move abroad and step away from our jobs.

I’m ending 2024 feeling very excited for what’s to come and very nervous for all of the change. I’m someone who loves change though, so I think the excitement is winning out over the anxiety.

Thank you so much for reading this post and any other posts you read around here this year. I hope 2024 was a good one for you and that 2025 is going to be even better!