Blog
Thoughts from the day.
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 10 – Investment Cooking
December 12, 2020 Holidays and holiday food seem to enjoy a close relationship, at least in my traditions. If only my preferred holiday food enjoyed a good relationship with words like healthy, slimming, and EASY! Fiona Ferris proposes a good plan to manage holiday food in her book, A Chic and Simple Christmas. She does several “investment” cooking meals either right before or early in the season. She prepares a double or triple size meal (like a casserole or a meatloaf) that survives freezing and reheating deliciously. She and her husband eat their usual serving. After dinner, Fiona separates out the remainder and stores it in meal-sized containers and…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 9 – Reduce Resentment
December 11, 2020 In A Chic and Simple Christmas, author Fiona Ferris briefly mentions feeling resentment when her unspoken expectations for a particular holiday experience were not met. Resentment seems like a strange topic to bring up when we are contemplating the supposedly festive and joyful holiday season. But as I look at my list of what I like about the holidays and the things that I don’t like, I can certainly remember past holidays when I felt quite a bit of irritation and resentment. I don’t like to admit even to myself that there were (many) instances when I begrudged even minimal effort for holiday activities that either were…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 8 – Schedule the Fun
December 10, 2020 It’s a cold and grey day here in Paris. The temperatures hovered all day around freezing (32 F/0 C). Even though I sometimes feel like I’m a grinch-in-training when it comes to the holidays, I was positively chipper this morning on my morning coffee-gratitude walk. I was beautifully warm and I felt pretty stylish with my thick socks worn inside my tall boots (waterproof) and my spiffy heavy wool coat. I wore a pale pink, very wide scarf and my shearling gloves. Here in Paris, quite a few women wear very wide scarves (about 3 times wider than a typical scarf) wrapped almost blanket-like around their neck…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 7 – What IS My Chic Christmas Style These Days?
December 9, 2020 In Chapter 1 of A Chic and Simple Christmas, author Fiona Ferris has a topic heading titled “Christmas style versus your personal style.” In this area, Fiona writes about how what she likes to view in a magazine photoshoot may be quite different from what she would actually enjoy living with in her own space. The trailing greenery decorated stair railing, the entry hall packed with giant nutcrackers statues and a Christmas tree in every room may look merry and bright in someone else’s house but Fiona finds that, in her own space, she feels uncomfortable with too many things crowding her. She feels festive and happy…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 6 – Declutter Before Decorate
December 8, 2020 In chapter 1 of A Chic and Simple Christmas, author Fiona Ferris has a topic heading titled “Declutter what doesn’t fit your vision of a chic Christmas.” In this section, Fiona writes that each year, she donates those of her Christmas decorations that no longer “feel right” for her house. That way, someone else can use and love the items. Fiona also benefits because she has the joy of having only those decorations in view that truly are meaningful and beautiful to her eye. I didn’t have the challenge of evaluating my collection of Christmas decorations this year to see which ones “spark joy” as Marie Kondo…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 5 – Fun and Holidays?
December 7, 2020 Fiona Ferris in her book, A Chic and Simple Christmas, advises us to list out what we truly enjoy about the holiday season (so that we can be sure to maximize those experiences). On a related note, Gretchen Rubin in her book, The Happiness Project, devoted an entire month to the idea of play and fun (the idea is that happiness contains a component of fun in it.) Even with Fiona and Gretchen coaching me, I’m sad to say that I’m more like Dr. Seuss’s grouchy Grinch than the Dickensian generous, exuberant Ghost of Christmas Present. I once said, with absolute sincerity, that I wished I could…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 4 – Breath
December 6, 2020 In 30 Chic Days At Home, author Fiona Ferris writes “Take the Wins.” She encourages us to focus on the good things that we are doing. When we pay attention to what we are doing well and to those things that we enjoy, we enjoy them even more and, more importantly, we do more of whatever it is. Today is the day after my family’s “Thanksgiving” celebration. (We celebrated a week later than the actual American Thanksgiving holiday because my husband was traveling over the actual day.) I detail how the day actually progressed in yesterday’s post. (Hint: it had its ups and downs, as far as…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 3 – The To-Do List Goes Rogue
December 5, 2020 In Fiona Ferris’s book, A Chic and Simple Christmas, she explores different ways to create a beautiful holiday season that respects and nurtures her needs and preferences. In other words, she has thought about specific holiday activities and expectations that make her feel happy and comfortable and what holiday things make her feel stressed out and exhausted. Like many of us, Fiona would prefer to feel like she has plenty of relaxed time to enjoy the holiday season. Holiday seasons introduce special activities that come in on top of our already existing daily and weekly to-do lists (hint: doing the laundry does not stop for war or…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 2 – Challenging the To-Do List
December 4, 2020 In Chapter 1 of A Chic and Simple Christmas, author Fiona Ferris writes that she wanted to feel peaceful and calm as the season progressed. One way she decided to accomplish this was to pare down her December to-do list and get as organized as possible. She also wanted to think peaceful thoughts and let those thoughts set her mood. Here in early December, my to-do list has been considerably shortened courtesy of France’s and my home nation’s (USA) recommendations to limit travel as much as possible. (France is quite strict about it.) The travel ban has both positive and negative aspects. On one hand, there will…
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A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 1 – What’s My Vision?
December 3, 2020 It is the beginning of December here in Paris during France’s second national CoVId-19 lockdown. There is quite a different feel to this holiday season than there was during last year’s Christmas & New Year’s seasons. Happily, the government just relaxed some of the “lockdown” rules this past weekend so shops are allowed to open and we residents are allowed to travel up to 20 km from our residence (with the appropriate paperwork showing proof of identity, address and reason for being out.) Although I’m delighted to be able to move about Paris again, I don’t quite have that festive, joyful holiday feeling. This has been a…