Working on my personal curriculum for the end of 2025 was both fun and a good way for me to judge how much I could get through in a month. I am a chronic setter of large unrealistic goals so doing a trial run for the end of the year was a great way to help me be a little bit more realistic. I have however set lofty goals again for 2026 but I am also doing a low pressure personal curriculum so my main goal is just to make progress and adjust from there. Winter quarter will be January through the end of March with 12 weeks in total and five or so classes. Three of them will be my main classes of French, Spirituality and Writing and the last two of P.E. and Embroidery will be more loosely cultivated and not tracked with set weekly assignments.

For French I will be continuing with my books I used for fall 2025 with Learn French Fast, Short Stories in French and my dual language English and French version of Alice in Wonderland. All three are linked below.

Learn French Fast

Short Stories in French

Alice in Wonderland duo French and English

I got through most of chapter 6 in Learn French Fast for the end of 2025 so my plan for Q1 2026 is to finish chapter 6 and work my way through the end of the first section which is chapter 15. I want to do some reading in French each week so I will probably switch back and forth between Alice in Wonderland and the Short Stories book. I need some work understanding French when it is spoken to me so I will be watching at least an hour of television a week in French with English subtitles. I will listen in to more if I can but having the subtitles and actively trying to figure out what is being said requires a little more work and I can’t be stitching or working on my diamond paintings at the same time like I usually do when I am working on crafts.

One of the biggest helpers for pronunciation for our whole family has been our hour a week with a French tutor. I set this up last fall as a family activity and although the kids are taking French in school, having a tutor each week has been helpful for them as well. We are doing lessons online and she is covering a lot of the same things as the beginning section of my Learn French Fast book but having a resource for French has been super helpful. We are using the Preply app for lessons which I have linked a discount code below in case anyone is interested. We really love our tutor and the flexibility of having lessons online. She has been a huge resource for our family and well worth the cost!

Preply 70% off a trial lesson – I get a small comission at no cost to you if you book additional lessons.

Writing has always been a passion of mine and lately I have had a strong urge to get back into a more formal writing vibe so I decided to focus on reading about writing for Q1 2026 and practice some freehand with prompts to get the brain juices flowing.  For Winter quarter I will be reading through On Writing Well, Write Your Novel in a Month, and The Writer’s Journey. I found these three books at the used book store but I have linked them below in case you need a reference for the ISBN and such. I have also linked the free resource I found for creative writing prompts.

On Writing Well

Write Your Novel in a Month

The Writer’s Journey

Writer’s Digest – 100 Creative Writing Prompts for Writers

For winter quarter I will be reading at least all of On Writing Well and Write Your Novel in a Month as well as reading as much as I can of Writer’s Journey. Writer’s Journey does have some questions and activities in it so I may do a slower read of that one and work through any activities at the same time. I have started reading On Writing Well and it so far is a good book. I am also going to complete 10 writing prompts over the course of the quarter with hopefully about one a week done. I don’t have a specific word count in mind yet but I am going to aim for at least 500 words. My goal with this is to get the creative juices flowing and see what works for me. As there are 100 prompts in the list I am using I can also work through more over the year as needed and either leave them as a draft or rework them into something more depending how it goes.

I do also want to summarize On Writing Well and see if there are activities in the novel writing book but really this reading is prep work for when I start writing my own book. I have always wanted to write my own book ever since I got the bug after reading Baby Island when I was in third grade. And yes, I did start my first novel after reading it and I am sure I have the handwritten draft stored somewhere. If I can find it maybe I will post some photos but trust me, as a third grader I was very much into my friends and I believe it is just a list of them doing the same things as in the book but every writer has to start somewhere and this book inspired me like nothing else. I am going to try and find a used copy of it to read but below is the link to it Amazon. The older version I read with the green color looks like a collector item and is listed super high priced! Who new my cheap Scholastic paperback version would be worth something some day? Interestingly enough the author, Carol Ryrie Brink also wrote Caddie Woodlawn which I loved.

Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink

Spirituality is something I have never been really in touch with as my family did not participate in anything besides worshiping the land in a weird sort of way that only meant doing woodsy chores, learning about plants and taking care of “the land” which was my grandparent’s place on Whidbey Island. I did go to church quite a bit with my grandparents by choice but it was an off and on again thing and I never really got any sort of religious training on the regular. I have been feeling like I need to learn more about spirituality and religion so I am going to learn about different types throughout 2026. For winter quarter I am going to focus on more natural practices such as witchcraft although the more I look into it, the more questions I have as there seem to be so many types and ways of doing things. I did watch a video from Thorn Mooney which was very helpful. Her YouTube channel is located with this link and there are other YouTubers that cover witchcraft but she seems to be a long time YouTuber and very genuine. She also has a great video called Witch Books for the Absolute Beginner which has some great resources I need to look into as well. The three books I am reading are linked below.

The Witch’s Path

The Wheel of the Year

Scorpio Witch – Book 8 of the Witch’s Sun Sign Series

I bought The Witch’s Path and the Wheel of the Year as they were both highly recommended. I am going to read them and do a reflection paper on them, maybe try a few of the activities out or celebrate a major holiday just to see what they are about. I love the idea of celebrating the turning of the seasons in a meaningful way so maybe my final project will be something with the spring equinox? I am so new I don’t even know what to expect so I am kind of winging it with this class. I do plan on learning about Celtic myths and legends along with the Druids for spring quarter and possibly indigenous myths and legends for Western Canada in the fall. My goal this year is just to learn as much as possible about other ways of seeing the world and see if something sticks.

On a side note I did also by Scorpio Witch as a recommendation from Amazon but it might be a little too out there for me. I bought it on a whim to have three books to read and I will see how it goes. It is part of a series for each astrological sign and as you have guessed it, I am a Scorpio so there is that. They have one for each sign in the series and I am interested to see what it is all about. I will be reading it and writing a reflection on it for winter quarter.

Another class I am doing for my winter quarter curriculum is my Blue Birds embroidery project from the Royal School of Needlework. I started this last fall and I am loving working on it. My goal is to finish this piece by the end of March or be very close so I can start the next one for spring quarter. I want to take a bunch of classes from RSN to see if I want to pursue their BA in Needlework eventually and my goal is to finish three or four courses this year. This is an intro course as I am a very beginner and this is my first needlework piece. I also have the online class Introduction to Embroidery – Tulip as well and since these have a time limit on when you can access the online classes I want to finish them before the deadline. They have several other courses offered with the link below. I am going to try crewelwork next after I finish the tulips.

RSN Online Classes

I have found the videos and instructions very helpful and clear as to what I need to be doing. They are well thought out and I love how they show each stitch and let you know when to pause while you finish the section they just went over so you aren’t scrambling to pause and rewind to just the right spot to continue. RSN also has in person classes in England and if I ever visit there I would love to take some!

I am continuing my P.E. curriculum for winter quarter with the goal of upping my walking distances and frequency as the weather warms up. I was in downtown North Vancouver this weekend and captured this beautiful photo of the sun and fog across the water. We were so busy this fall we really didn’t get a chance to explore any of the local hikes in Canada and I am hoping to continue to explore everywhere we go and find some great places to walk around in nature!

I am pretty excited for winter quarter as I feel like it has a little more meat to it than what I worked on in the fall. I have a lot of goals though this year so I am not going to let this stress me too much, just enough to move along with the plan but not enough to cause any sort of anguish. I will do periodic check-ins on my YouTube channel, @cozyoscoeyhobbies so look there for more updates before the end of the quarter.

Happy learning!

Additional Links:

Personal Curriculum Playlist

Personal Curriculum Wrap Up – End of Q4 2025

Last year while I was still working in an office I started diamond painting during my lunch. At the time we had hour long lunches and I wanted something easy to work on while I chatted with my coworkers. A lot of my coworkers were also crafty and it wasn’t unusual for everyone else to be knitting or crocheting during breaks and lunches so I brought in a small Diamond Art Club painting Plumeria to work on while we socialized. This was one I had bought to work on with my mom but she wasn’t interested so I brought it into work since it is only 13″ x 17″ and a quick project that wasn’t so complicated that I would get lost if I could only work in 15 minute bursts. It is fabulous to work on by the way!

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I made some decent progress before a couple of my coworkers got super interested and we decided to do a diamond painting together. They did not want to spend Diamond Art Club prices but I did not want to by an unlicensed painting off of Amazon so we settled on the cheaper version of Stained Glass Flower Diamond Art Club sells on Amazon for beginners. They had a bunch of great paintings but we all loved the colorful flowers in Stained Glass Flower by Peggy Collins so that is what we ordered.

This is still a smaller painting with round diamonds at 13″ x 13″ with 13,689 drills but at 53 colors including 3 ABs it has plenty of sparkle to go around! I also bought a small case off of Amazon to store my drills and tools so I could leave everything at my desk on a shelf and didn’t have to schlep it back and forth. This was super helpful and gave me time to focus on just one painting at a time.

Unfortunately with my most recent move I had to leave my job and my beloved coworkers. We still keep in touch though and they are both working away at their copies of Stained Glass Flower. I finished mine recently after a big push to get it done and it turned out amazing! I was taking it to sports practice on the regular and all of the other moms and kids were asking about it and loved the sparkles. I don’t know how long this ended up taking me but I had just done the bottom right corner and some of the outlining before my big push and I spent about 15 relaxed hours on it after that.

I absolutely love the rendering of this one and the whole things sparkles amazingly. The AB drills were the white, pink and some of the green and they made the piece sparkle even more. The blending of the colors was well done and it made the flowers really stand out.The yellow outlines brought all of the flower colors together and this piece really cemented Peggy Collins as one of my favorite artists to do diamond paintings for. I have since bought a couple of other diamond paintings from her collection on Diamond Art Club and I can’t wait to get started on them. 

One of my favorite sections was the top right corner with a blend of all the shades of flowers in a small space. I loved the purples and the dark blues which were a change after working on the large red and pink toned flowers. It is crazy how in the red and pink flowers you would have several colors that looked similar but when you placed them next to each other on the canvas you could immediately tell they were different but blended well together for shading and depth.

I was curious to see if the quality was much different for the Amazon DAC pieces versus the more expensive ones you buy on their site. Although the tray that came with it was smaller and not as nice, I did not see any other differences in quality on this one. The drills did not have a lot of trash and sparkled just as nicely as a regular DAC piece.

One difference that was noticeable was far fewer extra diamonds included in the kit. I did not run out at all but there were a few colors where there were only a few left and I could see that if you had a small spillage you would have not had enough but overall it was great. I actually enjoyed not having a ton of extra drills to find a home for. In contrast, when I finished Joyous Ladies I had a whole large pack of 310 leftover and some of my bottles are still half full of drills. Joyous Ladies is a much larger piece though and the kit came with 5 or 6 full bags of 310 total I believe as it had a black outline everywhere in the artwork. I tried to get a picture to show how few drills were left overall but I know it is kind of hard to see.

Overall I was very happy with this diamond painting and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves flowers and bright colors. I am thinking of doing the full version at a later time but this one was enough to scratch my itch so I may not. Check out the links below to find both the Amazon version and the full version of this piece. Let me know in the comments if you have completed this one and how you liked it!

Final Verdict:

Links:

Stained Glass Flowers Review on our YouTube Channel Cozy Oscoey

Stained Glass Flower Small Diamond Painting (Amazon)

Stained Glass Flower Garden Large Diamond Painting (DAC)

Plumeria by Renjitha Anoop at Diamond Art Club

Diamond Art Club Referral Code: Get $10 off your first purchase 

Small Diamond Painting Storage Kit With Tools

This week I am reviewing The One Kingdom: Book One of the Swans’ War by Sean Russell which is not the next book I listed in my last review of On the Beach.It has been a year since my last review and I wanted to review it while it was fresh in my mind. I found The One Kingdom while I was packing up to move and it called out to me so I knew I had to read it immediately. Do books call out to you like that too? When I was much younger I used to go to the library and run my fingers along the books until one called out to me and then read that one and most of the time the book hit the spot I needed to itch immediately.

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 do not remember when I bought this book but it looks like it came out in 2001 and is now out of print. I am finding that a lot of books I bought around this time are now out of print or hard to find so I will link the Kindle version which is available with this link: The One Kingdom. You can probably find it and the other two books in the trilogy at the library or a used book store. I am not going to give these away since it looks like they may be hard to find elsewhere.

This book is a fantasy book set in another realm where there was a past war that current groups of people are still grappling with. Intrigue, succession, plotting and even cold blooded murder are afoot in this book as we follow three friends from a small hard to reach village as they travel down the river which twists and turns and takes them down paths both known and unknown. On their way they meet a mysterious stranger who changes their lives forever.

I will not say much more about the plot except that it is exceptionally well written and I loved reading it another time through. I had completely forgotten about these books as they were in boxes from my big move over a decade ago but I am definitely going to finish the series now that I have started it. They are so well written and the plot is unique from other fantasy books with a similar premise. I highly recommend them! If you want to know more about the author, Sean Russell I did find a link to their website that outlines some of their other works listed below.

Sean Russell Website

A little late, but our next book will be: Bringing up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman

Resources:

The One Kingdom by Sean Russell

Book Review: On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Part 1