When I first say the concept of a Personal Curriculum on YouTube it was like something clicked in my head and I finally had a name to what I was trying to accomplish in the next few years. I have been trying to find things to learn while I am unemployed as I do not function well without new and exciting things to learn. I was roughly planning out what I would work on for 2026 when I came across a video on something called a Personal Curriculum and everything fell into place.

The concept of a Personal Curriculum was first coined by TikTokker Elizabeth Jean at xparmesanprincessx and has become more popular this fall. I do not have a TikTok account but it has made its way over to YouTube where I first heard about it. The idea is similar to homeschooling where you pick a few subjects to study over a period of time and complete projects or “assignments” that you have created. Some people do monthly or quarterly and I am going to go with quarterly because following the seasons seems wildly appropriate and is what I am used to with the colleges in the United States that I attended. I am not going to be very serious with it and assign large projects as I am doing this more for personal growth and I don’t want to stress myself out to the point of abandoning the project entirely but I do want the accountability of it so I will keep track of what I work through and post regularly on the Cozy Oscoey channel.

This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

For November and December of 2025 I am going to continue with the French studies I started in September by adding in a couple of more formal textbooks such as the one pictured above “Learn French Fast for Adult Beginners” and Short Stories in French for Beginners. I will be working on a few chapters a week for the main book and reading one story a week from the short stories book. I am hoping to push hard through the end of 2025 with French so I can learn it pretty fast. I do need a lot of repetition though and I am absorbing it very slowly. We are thinking of visiting France at some point in the next couple of years and it would be very helpful to know some of the language.

I also got a copy of the dual language version of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll with both French and English next to each other so we can practice our reading out loud. We have been casually taking turns at dinner once a week or so just for practice and it has been super helpful. Sometimes we run it through Google Translate afterwards to see if we were correct. We will eventually go to the library and check out a bunch of books in French to practice but I thought this would be a good beginning or us. Fun fact I learned when we started reading this book was that my kids have never read Alice in Wonderland or seen the movies! We are also going to read it in English as I am sure this in an abridged version.

We are also as a family taking French Lessons with a tutor once a week through the Preply app to help with pronunciation and boy do I need it! My kids are both taking French in school now so they get plenty of pronunciation help there but I really need to work on it. The sounds definitely do not come naturally to me at all and we are very lucky to have a fabulous tutor that has embraced the chaos of our family trying to learn at all different levels. I do have a sharable link for it and do get a small amount back if you subscribe to lessons but it gives you a coupon code for 70% off your first trail lesson linked with the following link: Trial Discount for Preply Lesson. I highly recommend finding a naturally speaking French teacher and checking out the reviews before you settle on someone. We picked someone based on the reviews and it has been such a good fit for us!

This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Another class I decided on for the end of the year was Art. In November and December I will be working on creating original diamond painting art for these blank notebooks I bought from Amazon. I have the blank diamond painting canvases I bought over a year ago to use and tons of extra diamond drills from projects I have already completed so I am super excited to get started on it sometime next week. I have already started taking French notes in this book but it will still work to add some sparkle to it! I picked these notebooks because the outside paper is a little rough and I was hoping the glue would stick better when I glue my finished pieces onto it. I will post updates to this project both here on the blog and on the Cozy Oscoey channel as I work through it.

The last class I want to focus on for the end of 2025 is Fitness or Physical Education. I am still taking it slow through the end of the year with my fitness as I continue to recover from my many foot and knee issues along with leftover asthma issues from our run in with Covid last June. It will probably be spring again before I can fully get back into the swing of things and return to my triathlon training but for now I am just going to continue to do slow gentle exercise and maybe add in some core work. My eventual goal is to do a small triathlon and I will be focusing on swimming this winter with possibly some stationary bike riding and snowshoeing. My goal is to check back in with myself mid-January  prior to starting to intensify things or start running again but I am an impatient person so we shall see if I make it that long!

Looking ahead to 2026 I will be continuing with French, reading through a list of books, working through some of the above Historic Sampler book, learning some sewing and working on my piano technique. I would love to eventually learn the cello but that is pretty far out there in terms of time commitment. There are so many topics and directions my 2026 learning could go it is going to be hard to chose. I may end up just choosing something for the first quarter of the year and then adapting as needed.

What types of things do you want to learn in the future? How are you going to make that happen?

Great Videos to Inspire you to Start a Personal Curriculum:

Building a Personal Curriculum for Fall by Liane Likes

My Personal Curriculum: Books, Cooking & Cozy Projects by BIBLIOLIFESTYLE

Planning a personal curriculum for September by Ruby Granger 

Self Education: Your Best Defence Against Brain Rot by  Thought Couture

Thank you for reading and I hope you find something you enjoy to learn about this year!

Links:

Cozy Oscoey YouTube Channel

Check out our video on Cozy Oscoey: Introduction to Personal Curriculum

Preply: Get 70% off a trial lesson: Preply Trial Discount

Elizabeth Jean on TikTok: xparmesanprincessx on TikTok

Books:

Learn French Fast for Adult Beginners by Speak Abroad Academy

Short Stories in French for Beginners by Olly Richards

Dual Language Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Author), John Robert Loehr (Translator)

Stitch by Stitch: Learning to Sew, One Project at a Time by Deborah Moebes

Alfred’s Basic Adult All-In-One Piano Course : Lesson, Theory, Technic by W.Palmer, M.Manus, A.Letheo 

Historic Samplers: Selected from Museums and Historic Homes by Patricia Ryan and Allen D. Bragdon 

Items I Bought:

Blank Notebooks for Added Sparkle 

Blank Diamond Painting Canvases

I am pretty excited about our January 2024 shop update! We have some great pinks and red this month with new holographic stickers and a new cross stitch design. I am so in love with my Dahlia photos I had to make postcards out of them. Let me know in the comments if you would like to see more of the Dahlias or our cute little heart man. I was thinking of doing greeting cards, a calendar or maybe something else. What do you think?

Oscoey Shop Link

This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Our first new item is our beautiful Dahlia postcards. These 6″ x 4″ postcards feature a soft touch front and matte back for easy writing and are priced at $10.00 for a pack of 10 with a bonus mini-sticker sheet. I really love the photos I took of these flowers at Volunteer Park last fall. There was a slight drizzle going on and most of the petals were covered in drops of water which added depth to the photos.

My favorite one has got to be the one of the two orange dahlias. I am not sure what variety these were but they looked like fluffy cushions and I could totally imagine a fairy sleeping in the petals on a warm day.

Next up we have our Holographic Heart Gifting Pink and More Pink Sticker. Whew. That is a mouthful! I wanted to heavily feature our Heart Man from our original Holographic Bright Rainbow Flowers Sticker design that was the precursor to our popular Holographic Midnight Rainbow Flowers sticker. Our Heart Man is giving his lover a heart across a pink landscape with our signature lined rainbow in the background. This sticker is great for Valentine’s Day or anyone who loves pink!

Speaking of our Heart Man, I also made a Holographic Heart Man sticker this month to celebrate his cuteness! This sticker is about 2 inches tall by 1 inch wide and sells for $3.00. It is the first of many stickers in our Heart Man line with muted colors and a shiny holographic effect. Do you have any ideas for how I should dress him up in the future? His wine barrel look may need some updating!

Next up we have our five pack of Mini Pink Holographic Rainbow Hearts selling for $4.00. This one inch hearts are sparkly, shiny and all things pink! They are great for planners, closing envelopes, and decorating hard surfaces such as your phone case, laptop, helmet or water bottle. These fit right in with our Hearts and More Hearts collection and have inspired me to think about releasing a holographic version of our other mini hearts.

Last we have our Mini Heart Man Earrings in a teeny tiny one inch hoop on 25ct fabric. I really like my tiny Mini Heart Man cross stitch design but I am not selling the pattern yet because I am going to make a larger pack of mini patterns so it is a better value for people purchasing them. I am also working on making mini pillows for miniature fans and have a separate listing of them with just the hoop so you could hang it on a dollhouse wall.

Thank you for joining us in our exploration of self-care, art and doing things we love! I have really appreciated everyone’s support over the past year and look forward to doing more creative things for 2024!

Links:

10 Pack Dahlia Postcards

Holographic Heart Gifting Pink and More Pink Sticker

5 Pack Mini Pink Holographic Rainbow Hearts

Holographic Heart Man Sticker

Mini Heart Man Earrings

December 2023 Oscoey Shop Update

We are excited to announce a small shop update for September of 2023 with three new stickers and a mini cross stitch pattern in the works. All of these items can be found in Oscoey Shop found here.

My favorite item for the new shop update is this Midnight Holographic Pumpkin Sticker which shines and sparkles in the sun. This was my first attempt at freehand drawing digitally with just the mouse. I am pretty happy with the result but definitely want to invest in an iPad when I am able to so I can use the pen that goes with it.

I put one in my planner this week to get me motivated to start using it again. I fell off the planner bandwagon towards the end of the summer after my classes finished and I am now determined to get back in the habit before fall quarter starts again in a couple of weeks. I am taking 10 credits and working part-time so I will be super busy and need to stay organized.

This is one of my favorite pictures of our newest pumpkin sticker. It really shows how beautiful the holographic effect is in the light!

Our next sticker is our Midnight Holographic Bats sticker which can be found here. I spent a lot of time on this one figuring out where the bats would go and although I really like this sticker I may revamp it for next year. I was trying to get the effect of the bats flying out of a tree in a sort of abstract way. Let me know what you think of this one down in the comments. I will be making a cross stitch pattern out of this one and getting it posted up in the shop by the end of September.

Our last new sticker is our Fall Rainbow Heart which can be found here. I love the fall colors on this one and this shade of purple is one of my favorites.

This Fall Rainbow Heart is smaller than my other stickers and looks great in a fall planner. I am going to use one of these next week in one of the corners as an added decoration.

I also thought these would be great as an envelope sealer. They match perfectly with our bronze envelopes that we use to ship out orders and would be great for fall cards. I may try and do a sticker sheet of these for the holidays as well.

Thank you for reading about our September 2023 shop update! I am starting to get ready for our first winter shop update coming up in the next few weeks!

Please note: Prices in the Esty shop may be higher to cover increased fees. If you are in the U.S. and Canada I recommend shopping our regular site.

Shop Site Links:

Oscoey Shop for U.S. and Canada

Oscoey Shop on Etsy for Outside of U. S. and Canada

Oscoey Shop Update #3