What I love for when I have a day off
Is there anything better than a day off, whether it’s from work, errands, parenting duties or a busy social life? To me, one of my holy grails is a day where I have NOTHING planned. If I want to stay in bed all morning, I can! If I want to roam the grocery store isles for an hour or spend two hours studying the products at Sephora, so be it! If I want to try that workout class i’ve been eyeing that’s in the middle of the day, or go to a matinee movie, it’s all possible. Here are my “day-off” staples as of late.
SLOW MORNINGS!
If I know I have NOTHING planned for the next few hours, you already know i’m going to enjoy a slow morning, and this is a lot for me, considering I love to wake up by 7am on most mornings. My new ritual is to take Fridays as a slow morning, and sleep as late as my body decides, waking up with no alarm. There’s so much peace in waking up without a laundry list of duties for the day ahead immediately flooding my mind, and sometimes I even get up, wash my face and brush my teeth, put on a face mask, and crawl back into bed and journal. I feel like we’ve all been so conditioned to believe that it’s a sin to get back into bed after getting up, and while there’s a lot of validity to the idea of not doing anything other than sleeping or f*cking in your bedroom space (studies show that if you start working in bed or spending hours during the day in your sleeping space that your sleep cycles get disrupted and your body becomes confused), I think one day a week isn’t a big issue. Sometimes you gotta throw the rules out the window and do what makes you happy.
2. BREAKFAST AT A CAFE!
I am that girl that cooks almost every meal at home (or orders in occasionally), because of my dietary restrictions, as well as to save money, but it can be so lovely and enjoyable to have breakfast out once in awhile. I don’t know if it’s because it brings me back to weekends getting breakfast with friends as a teenager, or reminds me of being on vacation, but the idea of getting breakfast out is so fun! I feel like we always choose dinners out or lunch out and breakfast is either at home or skipped, so making breakfast the main event of the morning is something fun and different. Since I love a savory breakfast, it’s also fun to try different things.
My current breakfast obsessions for when I eat out are salmon or some form of fish with sweet potatoes, steak and baja cabbage, or a little chicken curry salad. A few favorite brunch spots of mine in LA are Gjusta (their salmon with dill is SO GOOD, and I also dream of their strawberry coconut flake and kale salad), Erewhon (this is so perfect for mixing and matching little dishes, and I just love how reliable the quality of everything is here. I also have a whole guide of hacks on how not to spend a billion dollars here - keep in mind, the food is priced by weight, so there are some tricks :) ), and Botanica, which is a little coffee shop/restaurant in Silverlake, right by the reservoir. I love to have a little brunch here (try their gf buckwheat scones - omg, or their breakfast sausage patty, sooo good) and then go walk around the reservoir.
3. BOOKSTORE BROWSING!
Whether it’s a day off or even just a few free hours, you can always find me spending hours in a bookstore. I am the type who truly has to feel out each book, and for whatever reason, when I see the book I end up choosing, I know right away that it’s what i’m feeling. Maybe it’s the aesthetic of the cover, but it has to look like something i’m interested before I even read the concept…. so what I mean to say is… I guess I do judge a book by its cover….oops. My favorite bookstores in LA are, Chevalier’s Books in Larchmont, Book Soup in West Hollywood, or good old Barnes and Nobles at the Grove (or in any city!).
However you spend your day off, I hope it’s a good one!
xx,
Sachi