Inspiration Diaries With Michelle Dufflocq of Handle With Care

This week, I’m so excited to share the Inspiration Diaries of my friend Michelle Dufflocq! She has inspired me for longer than I’ve known her personally; I watched her YouTube for a couple years before she happened to follow me on Instagram. I slid into her DMs… and I guess you could say the rest is history. 🥹

It was a truly surreal moment for me: that someone I felt so inspired by was inspired by me, too. And now, I’m so grateful for our friendship and for the constant inspiration I still get from her – most recently being her new snail mail club. It’s adorable! You have to check it out here.

I hope you enjoy a week in her life through everything inspiring her!

xx Brianna

Twice a week, I work at a stationery store in Brooklyn. It’s been such a delightful way to take some of the pressure off of my creative work to pay the bills and to shake up the monotony of working from home. I also help create content for the shop, so I spend my shift working on a video about the new stickers we have in the store that week.

As much as it’s sometimes difficult to work on the weekends, I still pinch myself when I take my break by the water, sip on a free iced oat lavender latte, and marvel over the fact that I get to work with stationery all day and get paid for it.

When I work over the weekend, I try to take things slow on Monday mornings. My Breville Bambino is my very favorite way to start the day, especially since I’ve cracked my perfect iced oat flat white recipe — ¼ teaspoon of honey, ¼ teaspoon of vanilla bean paste, and a pinch of sea salt. I enjoy cheesy eggs on toast and catch up with my sister and her partner before getting started on the work day.

One of my favorite social media clients is Garmentory, a curated marketplace featuring independent designers and boutiques. I love making content for them because, as a lover of slow fashion and small businesses myself, it doesn’t feel like I am crafting posts for a hypothetical persona but rather for kindred spirits.

I’m not naturally a morning person, so instead of taking a walk first thing, I typically aim for right after breakfast but before lunch. I’m the luckiest girl in the world and live equidistant between both Central Park and Riverside Park, so I try to take advantage of this as much as I can.

After my walk, I make some lunch. I love a Mediterranean bowl, especially during the warmer months, so I throw a can of chickpeas in the oven to crisp up, heat some leftover rice, and make a sauce with Greek yogurt, tahini, salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. I assemble my bowl with arugula, tomato, cucumber, and red onion, and return to my desk to finish the work day.

On Monday evenings, I love booking a workout class through ClassPass. My go-to is usually SoulCycle with Alex Frost — it’s the perfect combination of challenging but still achievable, even on a low-energy Monday. My sister (who is also my roommate) and I typically pick up Sweetgreen for dinner on Mondays to start off the week with a nice, nutrient-dense meal that we don’t have to cook ourselves.

Not every day can be a slay, and Tuesday is proof of that. I had planned on packing orders for my snail mail club, but it turns out I have the wrong paper for my new label printer. I spend hours troubleshooting, Googling, watching YouTube videos, and eventually texting my illustrator friend Laura, who has been my north star throughout this launch.

I make my way to my local Staples, where I buy more paper, which will also turn out to be The Wrong Kind, only to eventually order The Right Kind online and scrap my packing plan for the day. Something that starting a snail mail club has taught me is the importance of practicing patience and learning how to pivot.

I spend the rest of the day working on my Creative Curriculum for July, my partner comes over for dinner, and we catch up on Love Island. Before bed, we read our corresponding books side by side (I’m currently toggling between Sex & Rage by Eve Babitz and my dear friend, Sally Blakely’s newest release, Summer People.) Tomorrow is a new day, and we can always try again.

I commute to Brooklyn for another day working at the shop, and I am running very early. I end up popping into Sephora on my walk from the train and pick up my new favorite product, the Huda Beauty Easy Bake Setting Powder. It’s so perfect for long, sweaty summer days, especially if you find your makeup sliding off your face throughout the day.

On weekdays at the shop, there’s typically a lot of new products delivered, so my co-worker and I catch up and process inventory between customers. After a bit of a crash out over thermal paper the day before, it’s a welcome break to get off my laptop, leave my apartment, and work with my hands while around other people.

I get back home around 7:30 pm, and my sister has made cold sesame noodles for dinner. In case you didn’t know, my sister is an incredible cook. My very favorite thing in life is trying the food she’s cheffed up while watching a show together, and I’m so lucky to get to do just that so often. Recently, we’ve been obsessed with The Other Bennett Sister, Season 2 of Rivals, and are trying to get into this season of Love Island UK. If you couldn’t already tell, we were raised on period dramas and have a weakness for British media.

Before bed, I try setting up my label printer with the proper paper that has arrived by that evening, and it’s a success! Seeing all of my labels in one long strip makes everything start to feel real. I still can’t get over the support I’ve received this first month of this project!

Something I tend to do quite a bit as a freelancer that perhaps would put the Wellness Community into a coma is getting back into bed with my laptop and diving right into work after making my morning coffee. I find that sometimes I get the most focused work done this way, before my attention span becomes fried by endless scrolling.

After finishing up some freelance work, it’s time to get ready to film. I recently started my own YouTube channel after closing the collaborative channel I’ve run with my sister for over a decade, and I have been having so much fun filming videos again. I film a little segment packing my snail mail, and then finish packing the rest of the orders that need to be mailed out.

After work, I drop my envelopes off at my nearest USPS and head to the West Village to meet my friend, Lauren, and catch the new Mary Oliver documentary, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, at the IFC Center, followed by a Q&A with the director, Sasha Waters. The film is absolutely breathtaking — I find it so inspiring to hear stories about female artists who were successful later in life. Afterwards, we grab gelato, chat about the film, and I head home to take a cold shower.

It’s a holiday weekend, and I have plans with some friends to go to brunch and do some window shopping downtown. The city is so quiet, which almost makes not having access to a vacation home worth it. We meet up at The Commerce Inn with no reservation and are seated within 15 minutes — unheard of!

We go around the table sharing our latest updates, and I order the farmer’s breakfast and the blueberry pancakes to split. After brunch, we make our way over to Hightide to oggle at stationery and then the Camper store to browse their summer sandal selection (I have my eye on the Dana!)

Our final stop is La Cabra for a pick-me-up, and I order an iced cardamom latte that brings me back to life. Once the temperature hits its peak, we part ways, and I head back uptown. I make a quick stop by the grocery store for some essentials before parking myself in front of the AC for the rest of the day to officially finish out work for the week.

The heatwave is beginning to break, which is perfect timing because I’m meeting some friends at Rockaway for a beach day. I spend the morning packing my beach bag (which you can watch in my latest vlog) and making caprese sandwiches for my sister and me.

I stop by the coffee shop where my sister works to pick her up after her shift, and she gives me an iced pistachio cardamom rose latte to sample. I’ve somehow hacked the system and have built a life that includes complimentary coffee wherever I go, and that’s on living the dream!

Besides the lifeguards being on Shark Watch, we have a quintessentially perfect New York beach day. The water is cold, but it’s been so hot out lately that it feels like coming up for air. We eat our sandwiches with toes in the sand and snack on fresh mango from the bodega. It’s sticky and sweet, and it feels like summer can now officially begin.

***

Connect with Michelle here:

Instagram: @michelledufflocq

YouTube: Michelle Dufflocq

Snail Mail Club: patreon.com/cw/MichelleDufflocq

Substack: Michelle Dufflocq

Thank you for reading The Mood Board! It means so much to me that you are here, and I hope you found bits of inspiration here today. Say hi on Instagram here, shop my faves here, and read my other writing here. And if you want to buy me a coffee, you can do that here. :)