The holidays are quickly approaching and here at La Vie Creative, we couldn’t be more excited! We love supporting small businesses, local artists and our favorite inspiring creatives while gifting our loved ones the perfect handpicked present – what could be better? This holiday season we’ve curated a collection of amazing Christmas gifts from former podcast guests that are sure to wow.
Custom Experiences
Are you and a loved one heading to Paris this year? What could be more fun than a bespoke experience?
Garden Tours in and Around Paris
Do you have garden or flower-lover on your Christmas shopping list? Look no further! Garden Guide Paris offers 2 & 4 hour guided tours through dozens of gardens in and around Paris as well as half & full day adventures inside and outside of the City. Wether you are enamored with Monet’s waterlilies, a fan of André LeNotre’s designs in Versailles, wish to see the thousands of roses at Bagatelle or the breathtaking views in the Buttes Chaumont park – Amy has tours that will suit your interests and activity level as well as being filled with seasonal colors, historical context and stories that bring the gardens to life. For more info, check out Amy’s website here: www.gardenguideparis.com for more ideas and information.
Marie Antoinette Guided Shopping Tour, Personal Shopping, Hair and Makeup Services
Our favorite Hair & Makeup Artist Joleen Emory is offering gift certificates for several fantastic services including Hair and Makeup Sessions (perfect right before a night out, photoshoot or other special events), Personal shopping sessions (available online or in person), Makeup workshops (available online or in person) and a Marie Antoinette Guided Shopping Tour where you visit some of Paris’ most unique (and oldest) apothecaries, herbalists and a modern day pharmacy – that isn’t as modern as you might think! Get to know the famous queen through her beauty routine and favorite treats!
Online Pastry School Membership
Does your loved one like to bake? Do they want to improve their French Pastry skills? Our friend Molly Wilkinson has an amazing Online Pastry School full of great recipes, online bake-along classes, pre-recorded lessons and more. This year each month is themed around a different region of France!
Paris on Paper
If a trip to Paris isn’t in the cards this year, why not transport your loved one there with a book, planner or postcard? There is something for everyone, the food lovers, architecture buffs, the memoir-obsessed, plus Paris-themed calendars, planners and postcards!
2025 Paris Agenda
This agenda is adorned with captivating art featuring our beloved Paris. You’ll recognize the artistic style found in Janice MacLeod’s other books, but this time she adds photography and mixed media to her watercolor illustrations. It’s an artistic delight and you’re invited to the Paris-themed party. Immerse yourself in the charm of Parisian streets, cafés, and monuments as you plan your days.
2025 Paris Calendar
Each month of this 2025 calendar invites you to wander through the heart of Paris, with a hand-drawn map that celebrates the magic of everyday moments from our favorite map-maker Sonja Bajic. From savoring a delightful pastry at a boulangerie to discovering a charming boutique or relishing a beloved tradition, every page brings a piece of Parisian life to your home. Once the month passes, the beautifully detailed maps are perfect for framing, offering a constant reminder to embrace the simple joys that surround us. A truly thoughtful gift for francophiles, bon vivants, and anyone who cherishes the art of living well.
France Sketchbook Calendar
The France Sketchbook Calendar is 6.5” x 8.5” and features gorgeous travel sketches created in the City of Light and the French countryside by artist Janis Commentz. Calendars are printed on high quality semi gloss card stock in brilliant color and are spiral-bound – a lovely addition to any home office. Janis also offers beautiful sketchbook journals.
Paris Blue: A Memoir of First Love
PARIS, 1976: Twenty-year-old American student Julie Scolnik arrives in the City of Light to study the flute when, from across a sea of faces in the chorus of the Orchestre de Paris, she is drawn to Luc, a striking (married) French lawyer in the bass section. This deeply moving tale of an ebullient young American and a reserved Frenchman will transport readers to the cafés, streets, and concert halls of Paris in the late seventies, and, spanning three decades, evolves from deep romance to sudden heartbreak, and finally to a lifelong quest for answers to release hidden immutable grief. A deeply felt, bittersweet reflection on how youthful passion changes you and clings to you forever.
Angels in Paris
Angels are sculpted everywhere in Paris, not just on churches but in unexpected places: holding a lightning rod atop the Théâtre du Châtelet’s roof, adorning a seventeenth-century gilded sundial inside a courtyard at the Sorbonne, hovering above a railroad headquarters where a beautiful stone frieze features young angels flying in to work on the tracks. Subtly, subliminally, the angels are a part of the fanciful and romantic spirit of Paris. Angels of Paris is the first book to explore this intriguing and extraordinary subject.
Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to The World’s Most Delicious City
From the city’s most fabulous food podcaster, cook and guide, Andrew Prior, this food guide is more than a restaurant guide; it takes you on a journey through Paris’ food streets, to boulangeries, pâtisseries, boucheries, fromageries, épiceries, as well as food halls, food markets, cooking equipment stores, bouillons, bistros, wine bars and its famed passageways.
A city of 13 million people, Paris’ size and diversity is the reason the visitor needs a curated guide like Andrew Prior to do the hard work. Andrew has dined in and shopped at every single recommendation.
A former Masterchef contestant and operator of a food tours business, Andrew has a deep affection for all things French and especially French food. This guide is the product of his years living, studying and working in Paris and France, running tours and producing his popular French food podcast, Fabulously Delicious: The French Food Podcast.
More importantly, it’s his love for everything French food – its tastes, traditions, secrets, complexity and diversity – that has brought this book to life.
Get 10% off with code LAVIE when you purchase on Andrew’s website before the 21st of January!
My Paris Story: Living, Loving and Leaping without a Net in the City of Light
You’ve sung the tunes in your head, you’ve seen it come alive in films, you’ve often dreamed about it. Now the time has come to read the real stories from real women who took the leap to transform their lives in the most dreamed about city in the world.
My Paris Story is the much-anticipated anthology that combines the stories of twenty-two authors from around the globe who have made their dreams come true. It is the result of harnessing the extraordinary creative energy of an exuberant, passionate, and motivated group of women who actually did pick up everything and take the leap to follow their hearts desires in the City of Light.
Transforming their lives with real purpose, lofty goals, and a good dose of dreams, each author shares her secrets, challenges, exhilarations, disappointments, and victories of living, loving, raising a family, starting a business, and succeeding as an entrepreneur and businesswoman in the mythical city of Paris.
Eye Prefer Paris Door Postcard Sets
Photographer Richard Nahem captures the iconic doors that line the welcoming streets of Paris from romantic Montmartre to the historic Marais to the chic streets of St Germain des Pres. He is offering a holiday sale of free shipping on Eye Prefer Paris Door Postcards. In addition, if you want to send them as a holiday gift, he will handwrite a personalized card for you!
Each postcard is printed on a heavy matte-coated card stock, similar to traditional vintage postcard stock, that enhances the vibrancy of each image. Paris Door Postcards come in classic postcard size (6”x 4.25”), perfect for collecting, framing, or sending to that special someone.
Each order is specially hand-wrapped with love from Paris and mailed in an elegant, French blue envelope. Postcards take about 4- 7 to days to arrive in the U.S.
Must be ordered by December 10th for arrival before Christmas!
The Fire Within by Chiara Maxia
For the poetry lovers in your life, Chiara Maxia is a Paris-based poet who has written a new book of poetry.
Throughout The Fire Within, Chiara Maxia’s searing debut collection of poems, the reader is invited to engage with a range of feelings and emotions they might not otherwise be able to tap into were it not for this poet’s deft artistry. Her masterful acumen when it comes to appraising and describing the human condition. In this fiery world, events both mundane and cataclysmic are given the same razor-sharp treatment, with Maxia cutting to the core of our strange existence.
Creative Inspiration
OVERRIDE! What if there was another way?
Anne S. Ditmeyer has just published OVERRIDE! What if there was another way? It’s a pocket playbook for possibility to help shake up the status quo. Full of reflective prompts, mindset shifts, and creative exercises, this pocket-sized book feels like the support of an amazing friend. It’s chock full of resources that will save you time and jump-start the path to what lights you up.
Thinking in Watercolor: A Daily Practice to Unlock Your Creativity & Discover Your Inner Artist
Preorder Thinking in WatercolorKick off 2025 with a fresh perspective on the creative process with artist Jessie Kanelos Weiner. With 30 days of prompts, it guides readers through foundational watercolor techniques and how to adapt them to share their personal experiences. For more information about the book visit here: https://jessiekanelosweiner.net/portfolio/book.
This book is available for pre-order and will be published in March 2025.
Complete Sonatas for Flute
When Johann Sebstian Bach composed his flute sonatas, the flute was in it’s infancy as a replacement for the popular recorder. Nevertheless, his musical genius rings out as richly layered harmony and emotions exude from each fluently written piece on J.S. BACH COMPLETE SONATAS FOR FLUTE & PIANO. On this two-disc recording, the mother-daughter duo of flutist Julie Scolnik, lauded by the Boston Globe for her “urgency full of fire that melts into disarming delicacy,” and pianist Sophie Scolnik-Brower further amplify Bach’s expressiveness, swapping the usual harpsichord for piano to deepen the dynamics and phrasing throughout the compositions.
For the Art Lovers
Paintings, Classes and Workshops from James Pouliot
James is an American artist who travels the world and is based in Europe. His paintings are an ode to summer nostalgia and ocean escapes and his work is all about finding personal freedom through the beauty of nature. He also offers online art classes, manifestation workshops and more!
Stained Glass Suspensions, Portraits & Workshops with Alison Koehler
These small stained glass windows are made from fragments of colored glass, copper foil, and soldered tin . They can be hung in front of a window or even on a Christmas tree. Alison accepts commissions as well, including hand-painted portraits on glass and wearable art. It is possible to look at available stained glass in person at her studio in Cachan, accessible via line 14. For a studio visit, a commission piece, or other inquiry contact Alison via her website : https://alisonkoehler.com/contact/ and if you’d like to make a stained glass window of your own, her workshops can now be reserved via Wecandoo: https://wecandoo.fr/atelier/paris-alison-vitrail-tiffany-initiation.
Watercolor prints and postcards from Jessie Kanelos Weiner
Jessie Kanelos Weiner is a bilingual artist, illustrator and author living in Paris for over 15 years. Illustrating for a wide range of clients, Jessie’s signature watercolor style is commissioned from luxury houses (Cartier, Free People, Fragonard), food brands (Nespresso, Great Jones, Elle à Table) to editorials (Vogue, The New Yorker, T MAG). Check out her watercolor prints and postcards on her Etsy!
Clothing and Accessories
Bags from Kasia Dietz
Stylish and sustainable limited edition tote bags and clutches designed by travel writer Kasia Dietz and made in Paris. These are the perfect gift for the fashionable France lover in your life! Kasia makes clutches, tote bags and more.
Hand Painted Silk Scarves from Mariló Martin
For a one-of-a-kind gift, check out the hand painted silk or wool scarves made by Paris-based artist Mariló Martin. The scarf pictured is a silk chiffon scarf measuring 35x165cm called “Water Lilies” and is on a dark green background. For more information on prices and availability send Mariló a direct message to her instagram or visit her stand directly at the Marche de la Création Paris near Montparnasse.
Mariló will not be at the Marché de la Création on Dec 8 and may not be there on Dec 15, for confirmation, send her a message on Instagram.
Little French Girl Designs from Lilianne Milgrom
Attention Fashionistas and Bookaholics! Two years ago, La Vie Creative interviewed Paris-born artist and author Lilianne Milgrom about her award-winning debut novel ‘L’Origine: The secret life of the world’s most erotic masterpiece‘ – a saucy, entertaining and eye-opening novel about one of France’s most famous painters, Gustave Courbet. Now she is launching a collection of wearable art created from her popular artworks, and we’re here to help her launch Little French Girl Designs! You won’t find these anywhere else! Guaranteed to make heads turn!
The absolute BEST collection of gifts I have ever seen ! BRAVO ! I wish Santa would bring me all of these unique gifts.