Top five: “French Girl” habits I’ve kept up over a decade after living in France

 Good morning!

Today’s top five is inspired by my favorite blog writer’s recent post about things in Europe that she wishes she could adopt in her everyday life. 

Mix and Match Mamma’s 17 Ways I Want To Be European

I wanted something fun and light to end out the week as I’ve been stressing about the little things lately. (seriously inside out 2 could you please not be such an accurate representation of my brain!!!) I think it’s just from not having been in our routine for several weeks now and so the things that I normally wouldn’t have to think about are becoming front of mind and while it’s been worth it to let Leo fully recover from his most recent bug and to spend some quality one on one time with him, I like having structure and routine. I’m seriously looking forward to school starting for them because I know their teachers are amazing and they will have so much fun making friends this year. I’m also excited for all the fall activities that we’ll do as a family, Hello Hiking!!!

Next week is going to be focused on our end of summer vacation to visit my parents in Vermont and I’m thrilled to share some New England life as well as finally take the kids into Quebec to enjoy the unique culture there. I’m still bummed that we cancelled our trip to Grant’s cousin Thea’s wedding in Scotland, but after evaluating Jamie’s tolerance and after several setbacks including a flooded kitchen from an overflowing upstairs toilet it was the right call to make. 

Enough about that though, let’s get to the fun and light part of this post and not the word vomit over sharing! 🤦‍♀️😆

So here it goes:

1. Coffee from a giant mug/bowl. I don’t know why, probably because the surface area increased and so I don’t get scalded, but coffee from a giant bowl cup has always made me feel like such a Francophile and I’ve not really seen this outside of France.

2. Nutella. I know this exhausted before I went to France, but France started my love an Grant is convinced that a French person would bleed Nutella!

3. Walking to all essentials. Our current and hopefully forever home was strategically chosen so we could walk to the church, coffee shop, bakery, grocery store, library, schools*, and ride bikes to work. We still use our car daily as the school the boys will be going to this year is a bit farther out, but it makes us so happy to be able to walk everywhere and this was something that I loved about France.

4. Skincare. Slightly bougie spa feeling skincare feels very French as they do such a good job of taking care of their skin before adding on any makeup or anything. Not to say they don’t wear it or that I’ve done a great job of this, but it’s definitely something that my motivation comes from my time there. 

5. Flowers. France feels like flowers, walking around the streets with the sewer smell/lack of cleaning up after dogs does not, but just every picture and the nostalgia in my mind is of flowers. I’ve finally given in and went with fake for certain rooms to avoid the waste of buys fresh all the time and the worry about if they’re dying to quickly, but the feel is floral and happy and light.

That’s all for today!

💛 Jess