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.

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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

Number 5 in my Rereading Books Before I Give The Away Part 1 series is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. This book has been around for a while and I forgot how much I liked it the first time I read it. There is also a movie adaptation to this book that is pretty good too. Check out the rest of the books in our series Rereading Books Before I Give The Away Part 1  where I do a small drawing and a brief review of each book. I only have three left to read and two more to review after Memoirs of a Geisha so look for another set of books for me to read soon in Part 2!

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.

I will be completely honest with you, I put off writing this review for many, many months because I could not think of what I would draw for this one. For some reason this kept me from finishing the review and starting on the next few so I now have eight or so book reviews to write before the end of the year. My goal is to post one a week until the end of December but I will definitely need to read way more books to complete that goal!

I really like Memoirs of a Geisha. I read it many years ago and again earlier this year and it is very well written. The book is about a young girl named Chiyo pulled from rural Japan who is sold to a Geisha House. The book is her telling her story in her own words and how this affected her life both post and pre-World War II. Life as a young girl was hard for Chiyo but she persevered and a lot of insightful writing helps the reader through the story. Chiyo is a beautiful girl and this causes rivalry and conflict amongst her peers. Does she come out on top? Read it to find out!

I really enjoyed reading this book again but I am on the fence about keeping it. My middle daughter will probably be ready to read it in a few years and I feel like this book is a great one for high schoolers to read. It is also easily available from the library so my verdict is…keep for now and reassess once I unpack all of my other books. We are in the middle of moving and I want to see what else I have before I decide on this one since it is such a good book!

VERDICT: Keep for now…

Our next book will be “the namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri

Resources:

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

We’ll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark

When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka

Rereading Books Before I Give The Away Part 1

Eight years ago when we moved into our house I pared down my book collection by about 25% and put the rest into boxes. Until a few months ago those boxes largely remained untouched as we navigated life and I stopped reading all together while we raised young kids and also worked. During this time I was also given a large quantity of newer books over the many holidays. Most of these books are unread as well. Do you see where I am going? I have tons of books I don’t read and nowhere to store them.

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.

I used to read a lot, voraciously as some say, up until we had our second child when reading adult books pretty much halted. My middle child is a huge fan of reading so I was definitely reading all day long, but it was all kids books and my spare time was spent cross stitching or sleeping. Many of the books I had stashed away got me through some rough times and I have many fond memories of reading them. My Dorothy Dunnett series are tucked away in their own box and I fully intend to read the Lymond Chronicles again next year but during our giant clean out of everything in our house this year I discovered some books that we straight up gave away and others that I wanted to read one more time before making that decision so I am making this list of books with what I remember about them to get myself started. I will say that I am in the middle of A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley so I do need to finish that first but my intention is to get through this list by the end of 2023. All of these books are a quick read and I am confident that if I read a little bit every day I will be able to achieve that goal.

Here is a list of the books with links and what I can remember about them. It will be interesting to see if what I remember is accurate and whether or not I still like these books after so many years. I will post reviews of the books as I go and link them in this list.

Pearl Cove by Elizabeth Lowell

My first book is Pearl Cove by Elizabeth Lowell and when I went to link it I noticed it is the third book in a series so now I want to read the first two. Maybe this project wasn’t such a great idea. Ha! This book is very much a fun summer read about a lady that goes pearl diving and there is some sort of mystery if I am remembering correctly. I really liked this one so I might have to read the other two from the library when I am done.

Book Review: Pearl Cove by Elizabeth Lowell

We’ll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark

This book is a mystery about a lady that runs into someone from her past and there is a murder of some sort. I mainly remember there is a plot twist revolving a door bolt and the killer tries to murder the main character as well. This book was pretty good but I also don’t particularly remember it being so good I would read it multiple times but I did keep it when I was pairing down my books so maybe.

The Beach House by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge

I honestly don’t remember what this book is about, but clearly it is about a beach house. Now that I am thinking about it this may be the one with the floor bolt in the door that involves the plot twist. I am interested to see if my memories of this book flood back in after I start reading it.

Book Review: The Beach House by James Patterson and Peter De Jonge

An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne

Confession time. I love this book and I am not sure why it is in the give away pile but maybe it got mixed up with the I want to read it again pile? It is set in Hollywood about an affair between a wealthy man and a poor waitress and very well written, at least as I remember. Maybe it isn’t as good as I remember any more? We shall see!

Book Review: An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I have two books by Jhumpa Lahiri on this list and Interpreter of Maladies is the first one. I don’t remember which book is first or if they are related but I do remember that they were good books. My dad gave me these when we were still swapping books and they are very him if you know what I mean. I may pass these back to my dad if he wants to read them again.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake is the second book by Jhumpa Lahiri that I have in this list and I don’t remember what it is about either. I will also see if my dad wants this book back when I am done since he is the one that gave them to me.

And now we enter the more mass-market phase I went through were I bought bestselling books instead of just getting them from the library. My goal was to build my collection. Why I thought buying mass market paperbacks was a good idea I will never know but rest assured, I now try to get books like this from the library.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

I fully remember what this book was about but I haven’t read it in so long I would love to read this book one more time before I give it away. I would highly recommend getting this one from the library instead of buying it. This is a very good book about a young girl coming of age as a Geisha before WWII.

Book Review: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

This book took the world by storm at some point and I bought it. I remember it being a great book but I also don’t remember exactly what it is about and I am ready to pass it on once I read it one more time. I think it is another coming of age story or something like that but I don’t remember. I just remember it is a good book. I am trying really hard not to read the synopsis of these books when I link them so I don’t get any spoilers.

When the Emperor was Divine by Juliet Otsuka

Last but not least is When the Emperor was Divine by Juliet Otsuka. I don’t really remember what this book is about but I think it might be the one where the main character is in a work camp and has a relationship with another woman there but I may be mixing that up with another book.

Well, that’s my list of books I am going to read before passing them on in 2023. I will write brief reviews of each one when I am finished and link them in this list for those that are interested. I am positive I am forgetting most of what I read in these books and it will be interesting to read them and see what I remember. Maybe I won’t want to give them away? Maybe I will do this with the rest of my collection? Time will tell!

I didn’t plan it but it looks like I have 10 books to read before the end of the year. Do you think I can finish them all? Leave a comment below.