Sandra Lee Spends Final Day in Home She Once Shared With Andrew Cuomo: ‘I Cried and Cried’

Lee reportedly sold the home for $1.85 million, and will now live in California

Following the emotional experience of moving out of the beloved New York home Sandra Lee shared with her former partner, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the celebrity chef relocated to her native California. Now Lee has her sights set on 2021.

“Sandra has had a rough few weeks but is trying to focus on herself after years of putting others first,” a source tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.

“She’s got many different big TV projects she’s working on, including cooking segments with the Today show and Lifetime,” the source added. “She’s excited to get back to herself and to work next year.”

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Amy Sussman/AP/Shutterstock Andrew Cuomo and Sandra Lee in 2016.

The Emmy winner, 54, who dated Cuomo, 63, for 14 years, traveled from her new Malibu home to Arizona to spend Christmas with her family. She shared a dispatch from the Grand Canyon State on Sunday that she was out doing some last-minute holiday shopping with loved ones.

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“We were all doing everything we could do to make it better,” Cuomo tells PEOPLE

Before making the journey to the West Coast, Lee admitted she “cried and cried” during her final moments at the Westchester County, N.Y. estate, dubbed “Lily Pond.”

Sandra Lee/Instagram; Inset: Leon Bennett/FilmMagic

And the tears kept coming when she flew to California. The cookbook author “cried all the way home,” she Instagrammed Tuesday, but she has since embraced her “Aunty Sandy Claus” persona and shared with followers tips for holiday baking, decorating cookies and gift-wrapping, which Lee called “a form of mediation.

For more on Sandra Lee, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

“Getting back to decorating and crafting is a great way to spend the day,” she wrote on Instagram Saturday.

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