Things to Love: The best of 2024
Better late than never - the wardrobe items I wore the most (and am still wearing most days), my top reads, most enjoyed series, most used beauty items and more...
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Hello! Hi there, how are you? It’s probably a bit late in the month to say happy new year, but say it I will and I hope you have had a great start to 2025. I had a very busy one. After de-Chrismas-ing our home - I love the holidays, but I also love the clean slate that a new year brings and like to take the decorations down as early as possible, so our space feels fresh, new and ready (and more spacious) for 12 months of new possibilities. I actually relish the routine of it - carefully packing away the ornaments into their boxes, removing Christmas-scented candles from shelves and throwing out the Christmas tree; a hefty and bitter sweet experience, but we feel much better once it’s done.
Usually I also spend some time reflecting on the past year and writing a list of what I’d love to achieve from the new one (finally finish An Artist’s Way, write more Morning Pages, destinations I’d like to visit, go to more exhibitions, make a reading list, create a self-care routine and more). In previous years I’ve also given the year a particular word or theme I will focus on (is this something that you do too?) - in the past it’s been words like execute or create. (Off the top of my head, this year’s theme would probably be self-care - the jury’s still out). But the start of this year has been so busy, this week is the first time I’ve had a moment to think about either - I feel like I’ve been on autopilot the last 3 weeks, wading (knee deep) through an enormous amount of work. Good work, but it’s been tiring, entailing days, evenings and weekends and I feel like I finally came up for air this week and could sit down and write this newsletter!
I took on a big client interiors project last autumn; demolition kicked off just before Christmas and I’ve been drowning in electricity and plumbing plans ever since. It’s my biggest project to date, hence the overwhelm, but I’m excited to have dived into another renovation. Somehow our Rouen Renovation (which is now finished in case you’re wondering, bar putting up the light in the kitchen, the mirror over the fireplace, the art and some paint retouching), didn’t put me off and I’m excited to work on more projects in the future! This current one will keep me busy for the next few months alongside my work for Substack and content creation, but once it’s done I’ll be looking to get stuck into more, hopefully on a slightly smaller scale. And so onto a little reflection..
2024 was a wild year - better overall and more positive than 2023, but as you might have guessed, I worked A LOT, hardly took any time off (four days over summer) and although Christmas in the UK was lovely, time spent seeing friends and family, visiting Rye (updated guide coming soon, I promise) and eating big heavy meals and copious amounts of chocolate, didn’t leave me feeling very rested and I was ready for a nap most days at 5pm! And nap we did and I still felt groggy going into January (I’m already looking into taking a week off over Easter to rest and reset, which will ideally involve staying in an Airbnb by the sea somewhere in France with Victor and Indy and doing not much but read and taking walks - one to add to my 2025 wishlist when I finally get round to writing it!). Anyway to the things I really enjoyed last year. Life has a tendency to move at such a fast pace (last year felt like it was on steroids) that I forget what I read, have watched, used and actually really liked and would recommend, so I’ve really enjoyed looking back at the things that I appreciated throughout the year. Here goes…
This newsletter is reserved for paying subscribers, as it’s a deep dive into my favourite things from last year and why I would recommend them - if you haven’t already, I hope you consider upgrading your subscription and supporting my work. In the spirit of the new year, I’m offering 30% (my biggest discount yet) off the annual subscription price for a year - I hope you’ll join the community!
Best books: