“Life is short and absurd and run through with pain and sorrow. But even in the face of real suffering, gardening can make our days shine with joy.” —Monty Don Today is Earth Day, and so I chose today’s topic as a way to celebrate the good fortunate we have to live on our amazing […]
“For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.” ― William Wordsworth, the final stanza of his poem I Wander’d Lonely as a Cloud The arrival of the daffodil with its pronounced trumpet, strong, […]
“Vitality means moving through life with energy and vigor, making deliberate choices and putting to good use the time and energy that we have been granted.” —Twyla Tharp, author of Keep Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life Knowing how to care for our body which we must not forget includes the mind is […]
“Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes lessons can only be understood in retrospect, but I am thank for those who have passed along their insights so not every lesson in life must be acquired from first-hand experience. Reflecting on the times of my life when I have felt peace of […]
“Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.” ― Nora Roberts Snow in September. Magic waltzes into our […]
“Dreams we have as a child, dreams we pack in a box for college, dreams you unpack when you move into your first apartment, who you’ll meet, where you’ll work, who you’ll fall in love with. Think you have it all figured out. Life has better ideas. A bigger imagination takes bigger chances than someone […]
“A well-designed life is a life that makes sense . . . a marvelous portfolio of experiences, of adventures, of failures that taught you important lessons, of hardships that made you stronger and helped you know yourself better, and of achievements and satisfactions.” —Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans At the heart of choosing and the actively living a simply luxurious […]
If you Google “self-care”, more than two billion posts, articles, books and videos pop up. For a variety of reasons, many valid, self-care is topic of discussion in the world, and the reality that stress levels in America have increased for the first time in 10 years is evidence that perhaps we all would benefit […]
The everyday has the potential to be a joy and full of pleasure each day if we live consciously as we go along each of our journeys. A prominent part of living a simply luxurious life is paying attention to our everydays and designing them to nurture us as well as be 24 hours we […]
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~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #196 ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio | YouTube “Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.” —Jean Cocteau With the collections for Fall 2018 being revealed this month, I am always on a treasure hunt to find unique and worthwhile takes on the classics. At the same time, I am reminded as […]
~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #188 ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio “But I love New Year’s Day, because I can never get over the generosity of the fact that we all get a BRAND NEW YEAR, totally for FREE — with no dents, or dinks, or mistakes yet. It’s the ultimate REFRESH button.” —Elizabeth Gilbert With 2018 […]
Last October TSLL underwent a major redesign, and an important component was curating French-Inspired resources and destinations for readers to easily navigate, enjoy and visit year round. Did you know that TSLL has a City Guide of Paris, map and all? Discover each destination I highly recommend based on my first-hand experience and learn a […]
~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #160 ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio “‘How does one become a butterfly?’ she asked pensively. You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” —Trina Paulus In a blink of an eye, in an unexpected, ordinary moment, the unimaginable can materialize before our eyes. […]
As children and young adults, and possibly even as adults, we hear from innumerable persons the axioms of living a happy life: marry your best friend, live like today is your last, or life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Okay, seriously? Didn’t Diane von Furstenberg tell us to be […]
~Pôilane bakery in Paris is one of my favorite French IG feeds to follow and this image is precisely why. Along with their stunning pics of the boulangerie artistry they craft, you learn something about the French culture as well. “We love the idea of giving thanks by breaking bread with those dear to […]
“As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.” —Joan Baez ~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #131 Life in many ways feels as though it is a treasure hunt. However, I have good news. If my experience is any evidence, Joan Baez’s quote above certainly rings true. Case in point, stumbling across British philosopher Bertrand […]
~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #114 One of the most popular requests from readers for topics to discuss here on TSLL blog and the podcast is time management, especially my approach to time management. And while I do not profess to have figured it out, as I am regularly tweaking it and the onset of unnecessary […]
“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” —Jane Austen ~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #97 As the twenty-first century begins to unfold, and gradually we climb out of the Great Recession, the hope would be that we apply the lessons learned and refrain from making the same mistakes. For example, one of the […]
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” ― Charles William Eliot Much like travel, reading provides the opportunity to open up our eyes to another world, another way of thinking, another way of living that brings us closer to our […]
—The Simple Sophisticate, episode #85 Many times here on the blog I have compared the struggle a butterfly must traverse through to the journey we embark on when we seek the life of our dreams.(See here, here and here). And as important as it is to understand that there will be a struggle to break […]
“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.” ― Ernest Hemingway ~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #64 Did you know […]
“Women have never had so many options. Yet we often experience a kind of paralysis, an unconscious willingness to follow societal dictates rather than become the CEOs of our own lives. When we mindlessly follow the dots, we smother our innate gifts and miss opportunities to fulfill our true potential.” -Shannon Ables, Choosing the Simply […]
“When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.” -Napoleon Hill ~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #31 Alison Gopnik shared in a recent article, the power of exposure to fear: depending upon when during our lives we are exposed […]
