As a christmas gift to myself, I picked up volume II of Kinfolk Magazine, released earlier this month. The essays and photos this edition focus on spending winter months gathering with friends and families over good food and in front of cozy fire places.

It sounded like the perfect thing to read while curled up with a blanket and hot coco. (photos from volume II below)

The husband and I have spent the last few weekends de-cluttering our house. We’re not pack-rats, but it’s amazing how much you can accumulate over a fear years without even trying. We packed up a lot of books to give to the library (thanks to the Kindle, we’re buying less paper books these days) and threw out 5 bags of random things we didn’t need or want anymore.

You see, when we decided we wanted to move to France and bought our house over there, one thing we knew was that we were making a conscious choice to value experience and a way of life over things. We know that when we move overseas, it will be easiest to do if we don’t have much to take with us, and we’ve found that we love the sparseness of our home there.

Which is why this video of a simple and stripped down life speaks so much to me:

COFFER from thismustbetheplace on Vimeo.

Via the lovely folks at Three Potato Four.

Not for the first time, spotted amazing UK design that is strictly off-limit to us in the States (unless you have a creative way of getting it over the pond). Frustrated, but still in love:

The Legion Pallet Table is one of the pieces available on the UK site, MADE, which features high quality, independent design at decidedly reasonable prices.

The table is reminiscent of all those factory carts that have been the rage lately, but it seems like you could actually knock this one off without too much trouble, which is exactly what I may wind up doing since I can’t order