A Chic Paris Lockdown – Part 2: Day 30 – Plan Ahead

 December 2, 2020

Day 30 is titled “Future plans” in 30 Chic Days at Home by Fiona Ferris. Fiona has made a list of fun things to look forward to for her near future. The spice of these fun activities gives her hope and the anticipation of interesting things to do even during a difficult year such 2020.

Like Fiona says in this chapter, large fun things like big holiday trips are probably not in my immediate future. But I can think of several smaller fun things that would be fun to do over the next few months as France (hopefully) slowly emerges from our second national lockdown of the year. Right now, the 1-km allowable travel radius that the government-mandated has relaxed to a 20-km allowable travel distance. I am surprised how freeing that feels! I can hop the metro again and go over to the 2nd arrondissement of Paris to purchase some specialty cooking supplies for our holiday cooking. (The second arrondissement is where all the wonderful cooking ingredient and supply shops are – so alluring!)

Some of the items on my “Fun Things to Look Forward To” list:

Cooking – I have already been on a recipe experimentation kick this past month which has been very satisfying and fun. (There have been a few, notable disasters such as the time I tried to create a cauliflower rice-based hummus that resulted in stinking up the entire building with waves of garlic and burned cauliflower. Note: my neighbors were amazingly gracious about the black smoke and stench filling the hallway.)

2020 holiday season plan:  I am working on designing a plan for this holiday season. Like many people, our holiday season 2020 will be a bit different than what we usually do. I’m rereading Fiona’s book, A Chic and Simple Christmas, and have applied one of her recommendations (“de-clutter before decorate”)  to help de-stress the season. My children are embracing the idea of coming up with words to describe their ideal Christmas season feeling. (My words are “elegant” and “relaxing”.) We are still working on a design for our “stay-cation” here in Paris rather than our usual big holiday trip.

Puzzle: We have a 1000-piece puzzle picked-out and waiting for the school holidays. (We love to work on puzzles.)

Movie List: Create a 4 item list of holiday movies we would like to watch for family movie night (Teen Titans Go: Black Friday and A Christmas Story  are already on the list. I’m also advocating for Phinneas & Ferb, Christmas Episode.)

Walk: Walk the Champs Elysees to admire all the lights.

Just the posing the questions brings energy into my mood! Stay tuned – more ideas coming…..