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A Chic Paris Lockdown – Part 2: Day 21 – Self-Starter
November 23, 2020 “Make do and mend” is Fiona Ferris’s title for Day 21 in her book, 30 Chic Days at Home. She writes that the activity of doing a small “fix-it” task lifts her mood. She likes the sense of control that it gives her to be able to make a small improvement or come up with a creative work-around to an issue. I used to think that dropping an item of clothing off with a tailor or at the dry-cleaners was the easiest thing to do when I found a small tear or loose button. I hated waiting around all day for a service person to come look…
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A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 14 – Elegant and Active At All Ages
May 3, 2020 Fiona Ferris titles Day 14 “Grow Better Every Year” in her book, 30 More Chic Days. She writes about aging as “growing better each year.” Fiona definitely has a good point about how our attitude and our actions have a great deal with determining how we experience any of our years. Our later years are likewise heavily influenced by our mental perspective and habits. We’ve all seen inspiring examples of people who move with grace and vitality through different stages of life. And we’ve seen the sad opposite. Our best option, as Fiona writes, is to create a chic vision of the people we want to be…
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A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 4 – Full-Time Rose Colored Glasses
April 23, 2020 Day 4 is titled “Live a Five-Star Life” in 30 More Chic Days by Fiona Ferris. This “Day” is pure Fiona – how to up-level one’s exterior and interior without breaking the bank! Fiona writes about how she has added a luxurious feeling and fun to her daily life through some small-but-daily actions. Here is one of her tips that I am currently implementing: 1. Read and speak only 5-star discussions. Let’s avoid the Debbie-Downers of the world and hang out with our bubbly, upbeat friends! This includes the books we read and the movies/shows that we watch. Fiona even skips reading 1 & 2 star…
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A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 23 – Money Sense
Day 23 is “Be Financially Chic ” in Fiona Ferris’s book, 30 Chic Days. In this chapter, Fiona explores how money, life and freedom intersect. She has a very thoughtful discussion on how she is working to achieve a life full of daily beauty and ease, with a future of prosperity and freedom. The underpinning of it all, of course, is our perspective of ourselves. At first, I was about to write “..the underpinning of our present and future life is our perspective on money…” But before we get to money, we need to know ourselves and what we want in our life. Fiona goes on to discuss the things…
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Inspiration and Creativity as Springboards to a Beautifully-Lived Life
Want to add a sparkle to your day? Read Thirty More Chic Days: Creating an Inspired Mindset for a Magical Life by Fiona Ferris. Ferris offers a month of ideas that will turbocharge your inner Parisian chic-ster (and upgrade your daily life experience.) Each chapter represents a day in the month. And each day, the author presents an idea to “up-level” the reader’s ordinary life experience. Whether it’s an idea to free one’s creativity or an idea to set aside a little time for additional self-care, each nugget of advice is gently and persuasively described. One cannot help but be inspired by the author’s sense of enthusiasm and ingenuity! Her…
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Old Money and New Blood
The Old Money Book by Byron Tully. Humorous, tongue-in-cheek but VERY spot-on advice for thinking about money and our relationship with it. I had the mental image of a visiting great-uncle (looking eerily like an older Winston Churchill) sitting back in a wing-back leather chair in an old English country estate library. In between puffs on his cigar, he acerbically mutters little gems of great financial management advice to the “younger niece or nephew” (us, the reader.) One of the best pieces of advice is that there is quite a difference between “appearance of wealth” and “reality of wealth”. We’ve all heard the idea expressed before – but it is…