Notes On: How to Romanticise April

it's giving ✨ fresh start ✨

Hannah Connolly

Apr 01, 2025

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“April is made of anxious moments and quick surprises” — Virginia Woolf, Diary, April 1919

“Outside it is warm and blue and April”— Sylvia Plath, Journals

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything” — William Shakespeare, Sonnet 98

Let’s be honest: April is what January wishes it were. It brings with it the energy of the new: crisp bedsheets, yolk-yellow suns, tulips bursting from market stalls, laundry dancing to the breeze in gardens, blossom falling like confetti.

Let’s start, as always, with a vibe check. April is for soft pastel pinks, for that first sip of rosé after a long winter. It’s for ballet pumps and sunglasses and refreshing your wardrobe to find beloved, crinkled clothes. It’s for dancing to Gracie Abrams, for making iced lattes at home and sitting on the grass to read for a whole hour because it’s finally warm enough. April is for toasted hot crossed buns with melted butter; for no make-up make up; for dungarees and dried flowers and the matcha-green-pastel-pink colour combo. For butter yellow everything: sunlight, cardigans, daffodils.

This is your comprehensive guide to spice up this month: from fashion to reading to playlists to recipes - because it can feel particularly hard, right now, without a little bit of glimmer. I hope it inspires you to view your life as your very own piece of art.

Notes On: Spicing Up April

It’s time to enter your cherry girl spring era. This one’s for the girlies who *need* to enter a new era right now. It’s for pastel painted nails and juicy lip oil and SPF-tinted cheeks turned upwards to the sun. It’s for sucking on cherries by the river under dappled sunlight and not taking a photo of it because you left your phone at home.
Cherry girl spring is also for finding joy in the small things: for the fruit around the stone. It’s for holding your arms out when it rains, for hand-writing notes to friends, for creating cherry-splashed Pinterest boards on Sunday afternoons and remembering that there is no opportunity for growth, for blossom, without loss.
When it comes to fashion, my take is always the same: wear what you love. The t-shirt your sister used to wear as an oversized look as a child, which you now wear as a retro crop top and which fits into none of these trends. Maximalist handmade cardigans and your oldest skinny jeans because you love how you feel in them.
However, trends are also fun - and according the fashion girls, SS25 is all about butter yellow, denim on denim, bold accessories (oh hey, hair cuffs), nautical coastal vibes, textured layers, and – of course – light pinks. (A huge thank you to @mmekonnen on TikTok, from whom I got this information – go follow her for more!).
Try and eat as much in-season food as you can, this month. Radishes with salt and butter. Spring green risotto. Pea shoots and spring onions and roasted cauliflower with paprika. At some point this month, make a rhubarb cake. Decorate it with edible flowers (they’re in season right now too). Surprise your best friend, or your sister, or your mum. Tell them you made them a cake ‘just because.’ You might just make their week.
Set yourself a reading challenge. Read for 10 minutes more than you usually do, per day. It’s so much easier than it sounds (I promise). These are some of the books coming out this month. I hope they inspire you to turn your phone on Do Not Disturb and lose yourself in the magic of words.
April is the month for spring cleaning. But this doesn’t just mean mopping your floors and cleaning your sheets and squirting bleach down the loo. It also means taking stock of how you’re feeling: an emotional spring clean, if you will. It means setting boundaries and putting your phone on Do Not Disturb and writing down one goal (just one!) that you want to complete by the end of month - and really sticking to it.
April is the perfect time for—if not a glow up—then a refresh. If you’re wondering about whether to get a bob, or a fringe, or whether to invest in that cherry-red bag, or those clogs you’ve wanted for years, this is your sign to just do it. Book the hairdresser, the nail salon, the dentist. The appointments might feel like north stars in your calendar. Something just for you. A promise you’re upholding for yourself. A secret message: I love you, you’re worth this.

Your April Soundtrack

From songs that feel like spring to your very own click-flick-inspired playlist (because you are the main character).

Your April Reading List

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Expectation by Anna Hope

Spring and All by William Carlos Williams

Some recipes

One Final Note

If the sun makes you feel low, or you feel burnt out or grief-stricken for any reason at all, know that this is okay.

You are the sum of every wonderful thing and every terrible thing and every boring thing that has ever happened to you. Which is to say: you are a patchwork of contrasting emotions, stuck together, mosaic-like. You are not the product of a capitalist system that expects happiness, all the time.

This month, I hope you eat some really good chocolate. I hope you witness at least one moment of love between strangers; I hope you read at least one thing that moves you and listen to your favourite song lots and lots of times. I hope you clean the bathroom and change your sheets and text someone how much you love them. And if you feel overwhelmed, at points, know that this is normal. Our lives are kaleidoscopic: they contain it all, and still, they are beautiful.

P. S.

I wanted to put this out on the 1^st, so there won’t be a newsletter this coming Sunday. Paid subs – let me know what you’d like me to write about for the following week!