🎄 Cozy Calm Low-cost Christmas | Week 2: Food, Living Room & Hygge (FREE Printable)

Welcome back, this is week two of our Minimalist Christmas series for 2025. If you missed last week, don't worry, I've still got the printable for you. Last week we were talking about gifts and doing a reset in the bedroom. This week we are moving forward, so if you are ready for a cosy prep for week two, let's dive in. Diane and Emmerich here, yes here we go again. I'm your routines coach, your cheerleader here on YouTube, and if you're wondering why we were starting the Christmas prep so early, it's to take away some of the stress so that we are not overspending, so we're not buying stuff that we don't need, just getting the house ready, looking after ourselves. And I know many of you, you don't even celebrate Christmas, you can use the same planning series if you're doing a Sinterklaas, if you are doing Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Easter, whatever it is, it's just a little prep to get us into the mood and to take away the stress. So let's get straight into it. Let me grab my glasses. And once again, I have a printable for you for this week. It is on my blog, dianedenmark.com, absolutely free. And as always, make sure you are subscribed, notifications on, because each week we're moving focus, we're moving into a different area of our house. And as usual, I've got the self-care prompts for you too. So anyway, let's start today with a bit of housekeeping. Where are we this week? I hope you can guess. We are in the living room, which is fly lady zone five, one, two, three, four, five. And I'm going to give you some ideas of what you can do in this room this week. As usual, you know the ground rules. Use a timer before you do any kind of cleaning or watching YouTube videos. I don't want you going down that rabbit hole. I usually use a timer and I just spend 15 minutes at the beginning of the week doing something in this room. I've got a little idea list of things that you can clean and declutter. Remember, don't go overboard. But here are three things that you might like to do. And actually, these are three things that I'll be doing this week. Declutter the surfaces. Look around and see what is lying on the flat surfaces. Have we got anything in the living room that doesn't belong in the living room? Let's get those put back in their homes. Let's get those out of there. And once you've moved things back to their proper homes, give everything a quick dust. Number two, something I definitely need to do is I'm going to vacuum and I'm going to vacuum the sofa, like underneath the cushions. See if there's anything hiding in there. We no longer use coins in Denmark or cash. We're basically cashless society. So I'm not going to be finding any coins down there, but there may be a few crumbs. So I'm going to give the place a really good vacuum. Maybe you just want to vacuum the room, get right into the corners. And the third thing that I'm going to be doing this week is just to cozy up a little, maybe change over the cushions, shop your home. Have you got something in a different room that you could use? You know, I like to ring the changes and, you know, move around the vases, bring in some different candlesticks. Right, and then on to our Christmas planning. And then I'll give you the self-care for this week. Our focus for this week is on food. Now, this covers a lot of things. And what I want you to do this week is, you know, take a pen and a paper and I want you to brainstorm things. So food, where we're covering lots of different things. Are you having the family coming to stay? Are they coming for festive meals? What do you need for that? If they're coming to stay, remember things like lunches, breakfast, you know, if they're going to be here for a few days, let's start thinking about that. Are you going out for some festive meals? Do you have a tradition where you meet friends and you go out for something? Do you need to get that booked? Do you need to reserve tables, get the dates fixed up with friends? That's another thing. Also on the food side of things, are you, you know, are you a cookie baker? Do you go to a cookie exchange? Do you like to make homemade sweets or bake bread? Start thinking about that. What can we buy now? Start, you know, start your non-perishable shopping soon because whenever you see those things in the supermarket, you've got them written down, hopefully on your errand list, whichever day you do your errands, that you've got them down on your list. Do you need baking paper? Do you need extra flour or spices? And all the other kind of non-perishable things that you can get right now. Drinks. Are you buying wine? Do you need to buy some extra light bulbs, matches, candles? All of those things, you know, don't worry about it, but just get them out of your head and start planning because it's really when we've got that list, it makes everything a lot more easy, a lot more doable. And one of the things that I've started doing right now is when I'm doing my menu planning, you know, when I'm doing my kind of fly lady desk day on, you know, a bit of time on Tuesdays, when I'm planning our menus, I'm using up stuff that I've got in the freezer to kind of make space for the kind of Christmas things that are coming in. So anyway, that was it for food, all the different food ideas. If I've left out anything, you know, put it in the comments, let's help each other out here. And then my favourite part, let's move on to the wellbeing part of our planning. And why is wellbeing and self-care so important? Because when you get tired, if you're not looking after you, you can forget about everything else that you've got to do in the house. Everything just goes to pot. You've got to start with you. And you'll see that these self-care ideas, they don't cost any money. We're not going to the spa. We're not spending lots of money getting nails done. It's just little ideas that you can do for yourself this week, just to give yourself a wee hug, some little hygge things. So here I've got three ideas for you. Feel free to fill in the blank. Your pamper basket. Do you have a pamper basket? I keep a wee basket beside my favourite reading chair. And then there, you know, I've got a book to read. I've got some hand cream. You know, maybe your favourite candy bar or a healthy snack. And, you know, it's just so that when you run out of ideas, you can look in your basket and see what's there. You've got some knitting or some crochet stuff, crossword, sudoku. I just like to keep it all in my little pamper basket, you know, with my cordless headphones, because it keeps it all together and it's there for me. So maybe refresh your pamper basket. And if you're into journaling or maybe you want to do a little gratitude list, just sit quietly with a cup of tea or coffee in your favourite mug. And just write down a few things that you're grateful for when the weather changes and getting cosy. Well, what does that mean to you? Oh, and the third thing is something that I like to do. I'm not into playing games on, you know, the iPad or the computer on my telephone, but something that hubby and I do every day online is the New York Times Wordle. Do you play Wordle? And, you know, it only takes a few minutes, but every day, you know, in the morning when we're having a cup of coffee or after dinner at night when we're sitting here having a cup of tea, is that, oh, need to do Wordle. And the other one that I've discovered recently, also New York Times, is Strands. That's a really fun little quiz. They're free games. And the other one is Connections. And as I said, it just takes a couple of minutes, but it gives me that kind of breathing space. My head is completely out of everything else and just doing a little game. So anyway, let me know what's going to be of the well-being for this week's self-care. Maybe you have some different idea. And remember to grab this week's free printable, that this is last week's, but a free printable, it'll be attached to the video in the information. It will also be on my blog, diannedentmark.com. And you will see that there's a section here that says, why am I doing this? And I want you to write down why you're doing this planning with me, because that's a really great motivator. You want to have less stress. You want to spend less. You want to spend more time with the family or more time doing what is important to you. Get that written down on the paper. And as I said, make sure you're subscribed, notifications on, because next week we'll have a new focus and a new area in the house that we're getting clean and cozy and tidy. So anyway, I will let you get on your merry way. I'm going to blow out these candles. All I've got left to say is live long and prosper. May the ho-ho-ho-hooga Christmas planning be with you. And I shall see you very soon with a ra-ra-ra. Okay, bye for now.