There is always something so exciting about starting a brand new year, an underlying brightness in pressing the reset button and starting anew. The opportunity to refresh, especially after all the frenzy and fun of the festive season, is invigorating. To slow down, simplify and reflect on what has been working in our lives and what we’d like to change—this brings us joy and we can’t wait to see what lies ahead in 2025!

At partager la joie we can’t wait to inspire and be inspired by you as you embrace your aspirations and intentions for the coming year! It’s a moment to reflect on the past and think about what you would really like to see happen over the course of the coming year—learn something new, grow your business, get organized, travel, prioritize your time, reconnect with friends… starting fresh gives us a blank canvas to design. 

In planning for this time of renewal we love to create some sort of visual for our upcoming year—a pin board, collage, inspiration scrapbook, or illustrated journal that helps us see our ideas, goals and dreams. If you decide to join us in using this creative strategy, think about what inspires you. For example, if you're a design person or you love to cook, it could be as simple as starting with a new color palette or texture you’d like to capture in your home, a list of healthy ingredients you’d like to incorporate into your menus for you and your family this year. If you’re feeling adventurous, choose a regional or world cuisine whose flavor palette, skills, and techniques you’d like to explore this year in your kitchen—maybe a travel goal… 🤍

The most important thing, whatever your aspirations, is to keep your thoughts positive. Encouragement is empowering. Minimizing yourself is not at all helpful, so know that whatever it is you’d like to change, you’ll have much better success setting your intentions if you keep positivity as your priority.

At plj when we consider our hopes for 2025, we’re focusing on growth, wellness, and keeping a balanced life perspective. Here are some of our thoughts and plans for the new year:

• Creating our vision board and updating it to keep the inspiration fresh. 
• Maintaining a healthy mind/body balance. Nourishing our bodies with nutritious whole foods, drinking plenty of water, getting exercise and leading an active lifestyle are always our priority when starting a new year. 
• Focusing on positivity, especially in how we start our day, which does amazing things for setting the tone of everything that follows. What we say to ourselves is so important. We like to look to natural simplicity for inspiration, sipping warm water with lemon or an herbal infusion and taking a few minutes just to organize our thoughts. Meditating, listening to music, setting a diffuser with essential oils and trying to begin the morning with a calm and collected feeling—these are our intentions for starting each day of the new year with our wellness in mind.
• Being a good listener. Learning to pause in conversation with others allows us the opportunity to understand, process, and react better in stressful situations. It’s also a thoughtful way to let someone else feel seen, heard, and supported—facilitating deeper connections 
• Raising kind humans. Encouraging each other to be kind and appreciating differences and opinions of those around us is vital to being part of a supportive community. With the passing years, there is a wonderful sense of pride as parents to see our children grow into young adults. They have shown us what caring and generous individuals they are. It’s truly inspiring to look forward to seeing how they contribute to the world.
• Surrounding ourselves with people we love and holding them close. We all know that life moves quickly. So really trying to appreciate all our moments (even the challenging ones) will help us grow. Gratitude goes a long way toward finding our joy. One of our intentions for the coming year is to slow down and savor our time together.
• Finding our inspiration and experiencing fulfillment in what we do. Everyone needs to feel purposeful in their role and this is something unique to each individual. The more we keep learning and experiencing, the more we are nourishing our minds and hearts. 
• Practicing stillness. Let’s try to have greater patience with ourselves and prioritize our time. We can’t do everything well all at once. It’s essential to give ourselves the time to be quiet and calm.
• Practicing saying no! Our intention is to make small shifts in our lifestyle to help us find a healthy balance, leaving us room to grow. This year, let’s allow ourselves more freedom to decide how we spend our time by saving a little time for ourselves to find fulfillment each day.

Wellness Reset

Let January be your reset to reprioritize wellness in all of your daily routines. Reboot those good sleeping habits that went out the window during holiday season—we often underestimate the importance of getting a good sleep. Waking up refreshed in the morning will for sure lead to a more productive and energized day. Prepare nutritious meals and snacks, stay hydrated with plenty of water, and add a new year’s boost to your fitness program. This may be a great moment to try a new class, participate in a new recreational activity, or schedule a few sessions with a trainer, for added effectiveness and accountability. 

Be sure to take time to unplug, too. Your body and mind need down-time at this restorative, regenerative moment. Now is the perfect time to make a mindfulness practice part of your new year—we’ll be highlighting more on this throughout January.

Mindfulness Matters: the Power of Positivity

Incorporating mindful moments into your already busy day may seem like an overwhelming task. However, what it really means is taking the time to be in the present moment. Give yourself permission to think about how you feel, appreciate your surroundings, and enjoy the little moments of joy that occur each day. Setting aside a few moments every day for some form of meditation (there are many guided meditation apps available if this practice is new to you) is key to recentering your mind-body balance. Journaling helps to organize your thoughts. Remember, it’s ok to be still—in fact, we are prioritizing this as part of our new year plans. Give yourself a chance to relax and enjoy some well deserved time to sip your tea, take a walk, watch the sunrise/sunset, or get lost in the utter relaxation of reading a good book. Shop our wellness collection 

When we look at life through the lens of positivity, we’re able to see beyond the daily bumps in the road and open our minds and hearts to the many possibilities in front of us. This gets at the essence of our mission at plj—we founded this brand with the idea that joy comes in many forms, and the more we do to welcome joy into our own lives the more we are able to share it with the ones we love. As you renew the year, think about how you can mindfully appreciate joyful moments in your life, focus on holistic wellbeing, and surround yourself with people you love—surely a way to accentuate the goodness around you. 

Energize your Environment

Look closely at your living spaces for an inspired New Year’s edit. Adding some light and a sense of airy expanse is an amazing way to refresh all aspects of the home. January is the perfect moment to organize, declutter, prioritize, and reset your wellbeing by brightening your home.

Invigorate your senses

Using a diffuser to add a bit of aromatherapy to your living space, especially during the winter months, is a great way to add freshness into your day. If it’s calm you’re looking for, add a few drops of lavender essential oil. If you need an invigorating lift, try citrus oil and a few drops of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus essential oil also works like a charm if you are experiencing cold symptoms. 

Lighten up your home

The start of a new year is the ideal time to declutter your closets, pantry, and other indoor spaces. As you pack away your holiday decor, take time to organize your home. Give yourself a fresh start and contribute to a worthy cause by donating clothes, coats, and any gently used items that have been taking up space in your closet. Restocking your pantry with nutritious items is also a step in the right direction toward your healthy lifestyle goals. This is the time we love to refresh our spaces with crisp crisp linens, softly textured neutral throw blankets and new tableware to usher in a sense of casual, calm elegance to our home.

Warm up from the inside

We have found that sipping a warm herbal tea helps to encourage us to slow down. Besides the noted health benefits of ingredients like ginger, turmeric and lemon in digestion, anti-inflammation and overall wellness, the deeply hydrating ritual of drinking non-caffeinated teas has become part of our daily routine and we think you're going to enjoy making it a part of your day, too. 

On Our Epicure Agenda

Brunching

Speaking of rituals, Sunday brunch has become a tradition we look forward to, especially during the winter season. Gathering at home or meeting up at a favorite spot is a great way to catch up with loved ones, relax, and enjoy our weekends. See this month’s epicure for plenty of inspiration for planning a brunch. We love to share in your creativity and success—tag us in your next recipe post and we’ll share the joy with the plj community!

Food for your Soul 

Soup season means it's time to enjoy a comforting bowl full of goodness anytime. Flavorful and packed with nutritious ingredients, soup can serve as a dinner staple during the winter months. Take a break from elaborate meal planning and keep your cooking simple this month with our classic chicken, roasted vegetable minestrone, coconut curry butternut squash, lentil, and spinach recipes. 

January’s Menu—Light and Fresh 

Turning the calendar page to a new year gives us an ideal moment to  balance our menus with plenty of healthy vegetables and bright citrus notes. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables are part of our winter meal planning—we just can’t get enough of leeks, carrots, kale, ginger, lemons, oranges, grapefruit, and pineapple this month.

Our morning glory muffins are a handy, nutritious on-the-go breakfast for the whole family as we go back to work and school after the holidays. Jump-start the day with a warm glass of lemon water as a simple hydrating tonic. A green juice with ginger, lemon, and kale is also a great way to reset and boost our immunity after the holidays. A warming turmeric latte or a bright ginger tea is a perfect, non-caffeinated afternoon treat.

For winter weeknights, soups and stews are both nourishing and comforting, but we like to create balance by keeping them light and fresh, with extra emphasis on vegetables. Planning a special weekend gathering? Whatever the occasion, we’ve got you covered with plenty of inspiration, from Belgian waffles with cinnamon whipped cream to our roasted chicken with root vegetables, our sumptuous tomato and burrata pasta, or a fresh and zesty stir-fry.

 Winter Epicure

Citrus Juice

Ginger Tea

Turmeric Latte

Banana Pineapple Smoothie

Morning Glory Muffins

Nut Butter Energy Bites

Simply Sweet Scones

Eggs Benedict

Belgian Waffles

Coconut Lime Chicken and Cabbage Salad

Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup

Roasted Minestrone

Coconut Curry Butternut Squash Soup

Carrot Ginger Soup

Classic Chicken Soup

Stir Fry with Ginger, Shrimp and Snap Peas

Roasted Chicken with Root Vegetables

Roasted Tomato and Burrata Pasta

Grapefruit Bellini

Looking for inspiration for your next winter gathering? Reach out here to learn more about our personalized Inspiration Workshops and let us help you design a gathering that is perfectly and joyfully you! 

Winter Design Notes

At partager la joie, the winter months are all about letting life bloom at its own pace by keeping things simple, clean, and streamlined. After all the hectic joyous bustle of the festive season, we like our space to feel airy, light, and bright—a different and more restorative kind of joy. 

Keep your design palette for table settings and flower arrangements simple and clean. Winter bulbs and branches accented by sprigs of greens can go a long way toward creating a winter tablescape or an arrangement in your home. Mix in assorted votives and candles to reflect the natural elements of the season. Use simple blooming green branches like eucalyptus, olive or lemon leaf in your vases. Monochromatic flower arrangements—like orchids look beautiful when styled in your living spaces. 

Fill your home with clean, warm scents—a fresh bunch of eucalyptus in your shower, lavender bath salts, lightly scented candles with warm and luxurious fragrance. Textured, soft throws in your living spaces will keep the mood light and bright. Try our Sunday Morning Candle to set a tone of fresh and relaxed living on your January mornings. Shop plj. 

Finding Joy in Renewal

Our intention for the New Year is to inspire and encourage each other to move forward with a sense of hope and positivity in our new beginnings. January is an opportunity for a healthy reset, to start fresh and find our joy as we edit our lifestyles, take stock of our possibilities, renew what strengthens us, and cultivate kindness and find inspiration in each other. Keep learning, make time for connection and conversation, and always continue to evolve…

At partager la joie, a new year means it's also time to reflect on our heartfelt mission of inspiring our community to cultivate beautiful spaces and occasions to cherish one another. It seems like a small intention but over time has come to resonate with many. And so, as the year begins we want to say how profoundly grateful we are for the journey of sharing our joys with you! We look forward as well to all the exciting goodness to come in 2025 and wish you the happiest New Year🤍  See you then!