Creating Your Seasonal Bucket List: A Three-Step Process
Step One - The Beautiful Mess of Inspiration
Yesterday I shared my philosophy about making living itself an art - that beautiful practice of curating seasonal joys rather than just letting life happen to us.
Today, let's talk about how this actually works in practice. Because let me be transparent - it's messier than you might think.
While I love pretty journals and Pinterest-worthy planning sessions, my process begins with the iPhone Notes app and random thoughts that occur to me while walking the dogs over the course of a few days, weeks, or even months.
And while much of this blog post uses Paris trip-planning as inspiration, this process can be used for truly any season, anywhere. Do you feel like time passes so quickly on the weekends and you never got to do anything for yourself? Try this out. Maybe you’d like to do a staycation this season. Or visit a nearby city that you haven’t been to in ages. Or somewhere else in the world!
Curating a seasonal list of joys is a process and activity for anyone, anywhere, for any budget, and at any time.
The Dumping Ground Method
I immediately note the obvious things first - the ones that make my heart skip a beat when I think about the season. For autumn, that's coffee shops with cozy corners ☕️, chai lattes (all of them, everywhere 🤣), shopping for seasonal teas, and anything that involves a chunky sweater and a good book.
Is it organized? Absolutely not. Are there repeats? For sure. Does it matter right now? Not even a little bit.
Here's what I've learned about my creative process: if I try to force ideation in concentrated, scheduled bursts of work, the results are often lacking.
My best thoughts come sporadically - while showering, during methodical chores like mopping, or when I'm driving. So having this master dumping ground on my phone means I can capture ideas the moment they surface, not when it's convenient.
The Slow Cooker Principle
Think of your brain like a slow cooker. If I made coq au vin quickly, it would be fine. But if I let it simmer all day? The depth of flavor, the way those ingredients marry together - you just can't replicate that intensity in a rush.
I start compiling my seasonal lists a month or two in advance, sometimes even longer. Right now, as I'm sharing this autumn planning with you, I've already started my Christmas 2025 and Spring 2026 lists. 😅
Not because I'm obsessive 🤪, but because setting that intention early means my subconscious starts hunting for magical moments.
You know that weird thing that happens when you get a new car, you suddenly see that same model everywhere? Same principle! When I tell my brain, "We're looking for cozy autumn experiences," it starts flagging every perfect café corner, every exhibition that catches my eye, and every moment that screams, "This belongs on the list."
Where I Actually Find Inspiration
Pinterest bucket list graphics are goldmines. Those cute illustrated posters that pop up every season? They're perfect reminders of things I might forget - like making cinnamon honey butter (childhood favorite, hello!) or that perfect rainy afternoon I want to recreate.
But also: favorite movies from the season, books I'm reading, YouTube creators I love, even going back to what the same creators posted last autumn to get back in the seasonal mood if I'm doing this planning in the middle of July.
ACTIVITY: The Most Important Questions
Before you start dumping activities and locations, ask yourself:
How do I want to feel this season?
Picture your perfect Sunday afternoon in your ideal version of autumn.
How do you want to feel? Cozy? Comfortable? Warm? Surrounded by the smell of cinnamon rolls baking?
What do you want to see, smell, taste, touch, hear?
Write it all down - not in full sentences, just let it pour out.
Because here's what I notice: people create these elaborate location lists without filtering them through their personal desires.
Paris Trip Example: If you want to feel cozy and comfortable but pack only structured clothes because they look "Parisian," that's a red flag.
Another Example: If you crave intimate, book-filled spaces but your plans are filled with cavernous museums - pause. Ensure that your activities genuinely evoke the feelings you're seeking.
This is your season. Make sure every item on that messy, beautiful list represents you.
Step Two - The Art of Organized Chaos
Okay, so we need to talk about when to stop. 😅
Personally, I could keep adding to this Paris autumn list forever - there's always another café to discover, another exhibition opening, another perfect corner of the city calling my name. But at some point, like any good gardening project, you have to stop buying more plants and actually tend to what you've chosen.
The Calendar Reality Check
I start with my journal and my Google calendar. The non-negotiables go in first: work commitments, doctor's appointments, birthdays, and that deadline that absolutely cannot be moved.
Why? Because these constraints aren't limitations - they're the framework that makes everything else possible. I need to see the real shape of my time before I can dream into it.
Organizing the Beautiful Mess
Remember that chaotic iPhone notes list from step one? Time to make sense of it.
I organize everything into categories:
Hard dates first - anything with unmovable timing goes to the top. For me in Autumn 2025, that includes exhibitions and events like The Palais Garnier's 150th anniversary exhibition, European Heritage Day (September 20-21), the Château Chantilly Garden Festival they're calling "Bulb-o-mania" (I cannot wait to buy all the bulbs!).
Food experiences - these are easy to slot into different parts of any day, so they get their own category.
Activities with locations - the specific places with addresses that I want to visit.
General activities - things like "shop for seasonal tea" that need research to find the perfect spot. These items usually come from your Pinterest exercise from step one, favorite activities you like to repeat every year, and perhaps inspiration from others’ bucket lists. But you don’t have EXACT locations yet.
Feelings audit - those broader desires like "cozy afternoon" that help me check whether my final list actually matches what my heart wants.
The Game-Changing Tool: My Google Maps
Here's where I'm going to share something that might be new to you - My Google Maps, which is completely different from your regular Google Maps app.
“My Google Maps” lets you create custom maps on your computer. I make one for each season because cramming everything into regular Google Maps would be absolute chaos (at least for me, as I use this app almost daily).
Every location from my list gets a pin on my seasonal map. New coffee shops, forgotten favorites I want to revisit, specific museum wings, that bookstore I walked past but never entered.
Want to learn more about this tool? Search “Google MY MAPS” on YouTube for tutorials.
Why This Changes Everything
Once all your locations are pinned, you'll start seeing patterns - for example, concentrated clusters in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, a handful in the Marais district, several around Île Saint-Louis.
These clusters become your natural itineraries. No more zigzagging across the city, trying to figure out metros and taxis, and navigation, wasting precious time on transportation instead of actually experiencing what you came for.
The visual makes decisions easier too. If there's only one pin in Montmartre but seven in Saint-Germain, I can choose: either find more Montmartre experiences to justify the trip, or admit that single location wasn't really that important and focus my energy where my heart clearly wants to linger.
This is curation in action - not just collecting experiences, but choosing the ones that deserve your irreplaceable time.
Step Three - Plans A, B, and the Weather Gods
At this point, you’ve created a master list of everything your heart desires (step one), you’ve organized the list and found all of the locations (step two), and we're in the final stretch now - this is where good intentions meet reality.
The Neighborhood Strategy
Looking at my custom Google Maps, those location clusters I mentioned yesterday become my natural building blocks for creating an itinerary.
For Example:
Day one: Everything I saved in Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Day two: Île Saint-Louis and Île de la Cité
Day three: The locations saved in the Marais district
Day four: All the Montmartre adventures
If a neighborhood feels thin - maybe I only have one location in Montmartre - that's my cue. Either I dive deeper and find more reasons to make that journey worthwhile, or I honestly admit that single spot wasn't crucial enough and save it for next season.
This is where brutal honesty serves you. Your time is finite and precious. Spend it where your excitement is genuinely concentrated.
The Essential Plan A vs. Plan B
Here's what I learned living in the Pacific Northwest and now in Paris (and especially Bretagne… omgoodness the coastal weather can change so fast there!! ☔️) - expect the unexpected. In Portland, when the Cascades socked us in, we'd have the same gray for weeks. However, Parisian weather changes rapidly, sometimes shifting completely between morning and evening.
So every location on my map gets sorted into two categories:
Plan A (Sunny Day Magic): Garden strolls, outdoor markets, that perfect café terrace I've been saving, walking tours of hidden courtyards, picnics in unexpected park corners.
Plan B (Rainy Day Bliss): Museum exhibitions, cozy bookstore browsing, that coffee shop with the perfect reading nook, covered passages I want to explore, the hammam I've been curious about.
The Calendar Tetris
My final calendar now has three layers:
Layer one (step one): Personal and professional non-negotiables
Layer two (step two): Those hard-date events that can't be moved
Layer three: My flexible Plan A and Plan B itineraries, ready to slot into whatever spaces remain
When the weather app shows sun, I know exactly which neighborhood adventure to choose. When rain appears in the forecast, I'm not scrambling - I'm settling into a different kind of perfect day.
The Reality Check
Let me be honest about something else - you won't do everything on your list. Weather will interfere, energy levels will fluctuate, jet lag calls for a nap, something unexpected and wonderful might derail your perfectly planned Tuesday.
That's not failure. That's life being more interesting than our plans.
The magic isn't in checking every box. It's in having thoughtfully chosen experiences waiting for you, organized in a way that makes the most of whatever time and weather, and energy you actually have.
You've done the work of identifying what feeds your soul. You've organized it geographically and practically. You've created flexibility for real-world conditions.
Now you get to live it - one perfectly imperfect autumn day at a time!
Your seasonal dreams, ready to become seasonal memories.
Happy planning, darlings.
Love,
Shannon
