Cozy Vibes Found Here

Winter doesn’t need to feel brittle. We’re leaning into cozy, practical rituals that warm the body, soften the mind, and turn short days into a season of care. From preheating your bed so it feels like it’s waiting for you to low-glow lighting that makes rooms feel alive again, we walk through small choices that make a big difference when sunlight is scarce.

We share exact setups and habits of these cozy rituals. Scent takes center stage with simmer pot combinations—citrus and ginger for brightness, cinnamon and cranberry for depth, lavender and lemon for calm. For a hit of life and color, we bring bulbs indoors: hyacinths, pre-potted mini daffodils and muscari tucked into planters, and spectacular amaryllis treated like seasonal cut flowers for effortless joy.

If you’re craving a full reset, we revisit at-home spa ideas and hygge-friendly comforts, from warm baths to tea rituals and nourishing soups. We point you to deeper resources—past episodes on spa days and hygge—and invite you to our free newsletter for winter mocktails and cozy drink recipes. We also share what’s inside our seasonal “cozy time” subscription box, a collaboration with Petal and Pink Mental Wellness Boutique featuring guided meditations, a candle-making kit, and a comfort-ready mug, plus a mini meditation box if you prefer to try a smaller step first. The episode closes with a guided meditation preview, a reminder that peace isn’t something you chase—it’s something you uncover.

If these ideas help, subscribe, share the show with a friend who needs a warmer winter, and leave a review to tell us which ritual you’ll try tonight.

If you want more information about our seasonal subscription boxes, go to mycreateharmony.com

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Chapters

• 0:07 Welcoming Joy In Small Moments
• 1:08 Winter Well-Being And Cozy Focus
• 2:02 Heated Bed Ritual For Rest
• 3:00 Lighting That Warms The Room
• 4:51 Simmer Pots And Scent Rituals
• 6:11 Bulbs Indoors For Winter Blooms
• 10:53 At-Home Spa And Hygge Ideas
• 13:12 Newsletter And Cozy Subscription Boxes
• 15:17 Guided Meditation Excerpt And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast. So our focus here is joy that is around us all the time that sometimes we forget to notice. This is joy that's nestled in little things. Things like curling up under a cozy blanket when it's cold outside, or maybe the street light and how it reflects off snow at night. It's the comfort of your favorite hoodie, or maybe it's getting a text that says thinking of you from someone that you care about. It's those fresh, clean sheets each week against your skin, and each of those things, and many, many more, hold a tiny piece of joy, and it only takes a moment to notice it. And together we make it a habit, maybe even a ritual, to pay attention to these tiny sparks of joy. And while we do that, we're settling our minds, we're relaxing our bodies. So join us as we find peace in our everyday routines. You matter here, and we are glad that you joined in. So this is episode 156, and I am your host, Sally Burlington. So today we are going to talk about all things cozy. So the title of this episode is Cozy Vibes Found Here. And it's the next installment in our winter well-being series. That's what we do in the winter. I've shared before that winter is a little more harsh, a little more brittle for me, and I have to really work at finding things to make me feel settled down and lift my spirits, bring a little bit more light into those colder, darker days during the winter months. So I have some cozy rituals that I use throughout the winter, and I use those for the purposes of lifting my spirits and making my environment more appealing because we spend a lot of time inside in the winter, and I like to make my environment feel good to me. So my first idea that I will share that maybe you will want to do at your house is that I have a heated mattress pad on my bed. So like under the sheets, what you use to protect the mattress. Mine is heated kind of like a heated blanket, like an electric blanket, except it's underneath the sheets and it warms up my bed. Now here's how I use mine. This same mattress pad stays on the bed all year long, but I only heat it up when days are cold. And I don't keep it on throughout the night. I don't sleep with it on because that would be way too hot for me. But what I do is late in the evening, late afternoon, early evening, I go in and I turn it on, and that heats my bed. And then when I get to bedtime, it feels like my bed is inviting me in. Feels like it was prepared for me. And I can just slip into those warm, cozy sheets and everything is warm. And then I just turn it off. I don't keep it on then. But at bedtime, it just that's just a little cozy ritual that makes me feel good. Um, another ritual that I use is lighting. I I'm really into winter lighting. I have some of those candles that they're battery-operated candles, and they're the kind that the wick goes back and forth and looks like a real flame. So I've put them in my bedroom. I have several of those in my bedroom, and they're on a timer. So in the late afternoon evening is when they come on, especially when these days are shorter. I only keep them on and on the timer in the winter. I don't really need them when we have days that are very, very long and very, very bright. But then they come on in the late afternoon evening, and it just makes the room feel pleasant and cozy. Just that little bit of light. It's a nice touch. It feels warm. Just feels like my bedroom has been waiting for me. I also have, I'm really a big um advocate of keeping up a little bit of your holiday lights. We put up a snow village in our dining room. And because it's not specifically Christ Christmas, it's snow, I keep it up all through the winter. I usually sort of decide when to take it down based on how the weather is. When we get, you know, into early spring and we start to have days when it feels like you could wear flip-flops, then I know, okay, it's time to take that snow village down. But when we're inside in the winter and the days are short, I have a ritual. I have it on or remote where I can turn it on by remote. So I walk around, I work from home, so I walk around and I turn on my snow village, I turn on the outside lights, and it just makes the house feel like it's prepared. It's it's warm. Um, I have some big lighted balls that were in some trees off of our porch outside. I keep those on all winter. And I even turn them on if we have a day that's like really drab, gray, rainy, maybe even sleety, snowy. We don't have a ton of that here in North Carolina. But if we have a day like that, I turn those lights on during the day and it just brightens up everything around me. It's just a nice winter ritual. So another thing I really enjoy in the wintertime is a simmer pot. So this is the idea of like putting a pot of water on the stove and putting different things in it that make your house smell good. You put it on low, let it simmer, hence the name simmer pot. And I've really been trying all sorts of different combinations this year. During the Christmas season, I did a lot with putting the cinnamon sticks in there, maybe some slices of lemon, some orange, some cranberries. I think I talked about this in one of our holiday episodes, but just it smells so good. I love that smell of cinnamon when you're in the holiday season. But after the holiday season, I've been putting, I did a citrus one the other day. So I put some limes, some grapefruit, some orange, some lemon, and just the brightness of those citrusy smells smells so good. And then one day I did a combo where it was sliced citrus and pieces of fresh ginger, and that gingery smell was very warm and inviting. Just love that. I've got planned to do some that have some fresh lavender in there, maybe a lemon and lavender. You can even use some essential oils in it if you want to put a little vanilla extract or some of your favorite, you know, maybe a little peppermint, whatever you like, whatever combination makes you feel good, you can put that on the stove and just let it simmer throughout the day. And it just makes your house smell so cozy and nice. Um, another idea that I've I think I've shared this in the past. I think we talked about this during winter well-being last year, but I'm a big advocate of growing bulbs because they flower. And just having something growing like that and not just green plants is just really a good cozy rhythm for me. You can get these at any garden center, and there's really a lot of different options. I've done these a lot of different ways. So in the past, what I did was hyacinths, and hyacinths smell delicious. They just have this sweet, bright fragrance that smells so good. So I would go to the uh garden center sometime in the fall, I would get the hyacinths, I would put them in my refrigerator because they need to be chilled for a certain amount of weeks. And then during the winter, I would get them out. I would take a glass jar and some like rocks, you know, like you use at the bottom of a plant for drainage, decorative rocks. I would put the rocks down in the glass jar, put the hyacinth bulb on top, and then fill it all the way to the top of the rocks, very bottom of the bulb with water. And what will happen then is that the bulb will start to grow some roots down into that water and it'll grow a plant up at the top, and then you get the bloom, and it just works super easy, no mess, whatever. You do have to be a little careful not to let the bulb sit down too far into the water because if it's like really covering the bottom of the bulb, it sort of starts to rot, and that doesn't really smell good. So that's not going to be cozy. Don't do that. But I've also done this some other ways last year. Instead of growing them with the water and the rocks situation, I just in the spring or sometime in the winter, I would go to our garden center and get bulbs already planted. You can get these sometimes in your grocery stores. And I got the ones that were like little mini daffodils and some of the little muscari or little baby grape hyacinths, little purple flower. And we have this planter between our sunroom and our kitchen, there's like this wooden planter. And it I have filled it with plants. It's the the outside is wood. Down in the bottom, there's a metal tray. And when we first moved into this house and there was a planter, I wasn't quite sure how to use it or what I was gonna do with it. And I decided toyed with the idea of planting something like putting dirt in there and planting plants into the planter. And I decided that that that didn't really work for me. So I just nestle plants in their pots. I just buy them like house plants, nestle them down in there altogether so it looks like they're planted in there. But then if some of them start to look a little bit bad and I just can't bring them back to life, I just jerk that out and I throw it away. I get some new plants. So, all that to say, going back to our bulbs, last year I just bought the little bulbs in a tiny little like two-inch pot and I nestled them down in between those plants in that planter, and it felt like little, you know, pops of spring were growing up throughout all of that, and it was so refreshing and so nice. I did it sort of later in the season. And since that went so well this year, I took the same idea, except I did it much earlier, and I did it with amarylla spulbs. So amarylla spulbs, you buy those all throughout the holiday season. They're available, you've seen them. They're like a bigger bulb, and they grow up a tall stalk, and then they have like bright lily-looking flowers, you know, trumpet type flowers that come out. I am not a it comes in lots of different flower uh colors. White, red, pink. I'm not a red person, so we didn't really do a lot of red, but I bought four amaryllis bulbs, two were white, two are pink, and they came like with a little kit. So it had like a little bit of dirt and a small pot, whatever. You can get them in all sorts of situations. Some of them are dipped in wax, and I just nestled them down in there to get them to start growing. And then the amaryllas came up and they bloomed beautifully, and it was just so nice, it was such a little spark of joy. So almost all of the amaryllas have bloomed, and I think the the blooms stay up for like maybe 10 days, two weeks about, and then I just, you know, got rid of that. Some people try to plant them in their yard or keep them for the next year. You can do that if you want. I don't, I use them almost like cup flowers. But now I have bought some more hyacinth bulbs and I've tucked those down in there and they just smell wonderful. And I'm just gonna keep doing that throughout the winter. I like I said, I just do them sort of like cup flowers for me. And um, I may, if I feel if I'm feeling really spunky this spring, I may pop some of them into the ground outside. But anyway, that's what I do to bring a little bit more light into our world and give us something to look forward to. And now as we are talking about all things cozy, we're gonna move away from bulbs and plants. And I want to remind you about something we've talked about in the past. If you've been a listener for a while, you might have already heard of this. We did a create your own spa at home episode, the past two iterations of winter well-being. And the idea is that you draw inspiration from the experience of going out and getting a specialty spa treatment, but you can do it on a leaner budget with a little bit more flexibility. You can do it right there at home. This involves a lot of lighting and ambiance, and just kind of taking a few minutes to gather together your special self-care items, like you might have a special bath soak or a face mask. You get the idea. And we're revisiting that idea right here to remind you of it because you may want to create a wonderful winter self-care ritual for yourself, or maybe you want to prepare it for a loved one. It could be done for your kids in a in a fun-loving way. It could be done for a partner, maybe a Valentine, whatever you like to do, however you like to do it. But if you want a more detailed description of that process, if you want to know exactly how that works, you can go back and listen to episode 109, which is from last year's winter well-being, and you'll get all the details of that. And we also did an episode last year as we're talking about things cozy. We also did an episode about hoogah, which is a Danish concept that literally means like finding joy and coziness in the world around you. And this was filled with some of the things we do, like the types of soup we make, some hot drinks, things we enjoy during colder months. So if you want to hear those ideas, you can go and listen to episode 112. So 109 or 112 also have some more expanded versions of finding ways to be cozy in our winter months. We also just put out our January issue of our newsletter, and that was filled with all sorts of spa-level self-care ideas that can be used in the winter. We're gonna do some some of those same types of things in our February newsletter. Our February newsletter will be a lot a lot about winter mocktails and cozy drinks and things that you might want to make for yourself during the February time frame. So if you are not already a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that at mycreateharmony.com. It doesn't cost anything. Just go there and you can follow the prompts to sign yourself up. And if you want even more ideas or another great idea about how to make your life more cozy, I'll remind you about our seasonal subscription boxes. I mean, our cozy time theme for the winter is on sale right now. This is a collaboration with Petal and Pink Mental Wellness Boutique, and there are five guided meditations in each box, and each of those meditations take you to a place that is all about uplifting your spirits in the winter. There's a walk through a winter wonderland, there's baking bread, there's making a cup of tea, all of that you'll be listening to, and that really enhances your coziness. And what else is in the box are like a mug that you can make tea in and a candle making kit, things that make your life more hooga. And you might not have realized one thing I want to mention as I'm talking about that is if you are not ready to go all in on the subscription box, but you're think you're a little interested and you'd like to try that out, we do have a mini meditation box that's for sale. It's not part of a subscription, it's just a one-off. So it's one little box. There is one meditation in there, and then there is a simmer pot kit, so you don't have to come up with your own combinations. You should just buy this and then put it in a pot and let it make your house smell wonderful. And there's an affirmation stone and a little candle. So just a much smaller version, just a a a little small step in. So maybe you want to get one of those and just try it out. And if it works for you, if you think that was wonderful, then you could subscribe to our seasonal subscription and you'll want to do that while you can still get access to the cozy time box and then get ready for the box that will come in the spring. So for our closing today, I thought it would be nice for us to sort of take a sneak peek into what is offered in our subscription boxes. So what I have is a recording of the beginning. And at the beginning of all of the guided meditations, I sort of orient you a little and get you into the mindset that you would experience if you listened to that meditation. So I have included a little excerpt of that here for you to get a sense of what you can expect. So take a listen. Now we're gonna start out as we always do, taking a few moments to orient you to what is getting ready to happen. So, what's gonna happen is that I will be your guide. My voice will be guiding you through a peaceful experience. And you might have a life, this might be a little bit difficult for you because you might have a life that's filled with lots of responsibilities, lots of things that you have to do, and people that are counting on you, and maybe in addition to those responsibilities, you might tend to feel a little unsettled at times. Maybe you are a few steps towards anxiety, but don't worry, you don't need any special skills, you don't need any training. All you have to do is listen. I'm going to guide you, and more importantly, even if you feel exactly as I just described. What we're going to be remembering is that you already have peace inside you. Your mind already knows how to be peaceful, even if it doesn't seem like it in your day-to-day routine. This is just going to be the process of rediscovering that peace and reawakening that part of your brain. And it might be a part of you that's been dormant for a really long time, but it is still there, and today we're going to reconnect it too. Thanks so much for joining us and hope you'll come back next week and get some more installments of winter well-being. We're so glad you're here. Glad you chose to join and lift your spirits during the winter months. And until next time, peace.