You can find the podcast posts archive here.

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Show Notes:

Favorite scene:

Elsie – Puppet show

Emma – When Maria makes play clothes out of the curtains

Decor inspiration (really break this down) Anything you would use in your own home? Loved, hated, strong reactions etc…

Reverend Mother’s office – dark and moody lighting and fancy wallpaper

Captain’s house – Mansion, gold leaf everything, and puppet theater

Other cozy inspiration (fashion, food, drink or anything?):

Love all of Julia Andrew’s outfits

Boat scene and all the kid activities

Rate this movie from 0 to 5 do-re-mi:

Elsie – 10

Emma – 5

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #233: Update on Life Bucket List
• Episode #232: Created Colorful
• Episode #231: A Rug Episode

Episode 234 Transcript:

Emma: You’re listening to the Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen, and today we are re-watching the 1965 movie the Sound of Music, directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews. 

Elsie: This is, yeah, one of my top two, Julie Andrews. 

Emma: Also Christopher Plummer

Elsie: Yeah, Christopher Plummer is everything in this movie. We’ll talk about him a lot in this episode, probably too much. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, just Google pictures of the Sound of Music Christopher Plummer and you’ll see. He’s just like beautiful, gorgeous, beautiful, gorgeous, like we’re in love with him. He really is. And he sings softly, like you know. Yeah, so I love the Sound of Music. It is one of my childhood memories because our mom for her these two Julie Andrews movies, Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music, were a big part of her childhood. So she made them a big part of our childhood and now I’m making them a big part of my children’s childhood. And so, yeah, if I’m passing down anything, it’s Julie Andrews. I think she’s everything. And the movie I just watched it last weekend with my kids and it definitely stands the test of time. 

Emma: Oh, yeah, I mean, if you were like doing some kind of word association game and you were like the first word that comes to mind when I say Julie Andrews, I’d be like my mom, yeah, just a strong association right there and it’s yeah. Those two movies, Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, yes, yes, okay, so describe the movie for those who haven’t watched it, because, honestly, for such a happy musical, family-friendly, sing-songy musical, this movie takes some turns. So, yeah, just describe the movie. I feel like everyone’s probably seen it, but just give them a lowdown. 

Elsie: So it’s a World War II movie. I feel like everyone’s probably seen it, but just give them a lowdown. So it’s a World War II era movie. So it has a lot of Nazi stuff in it. But, it’s also like a happy family movie, so it’s about people living in. Is it Austria? 

Emma: Yeah, I think they’re in Austria. 

Elsie: During the time of the occupation, and so it has a lot of political things. I think it was made in the 60s and that was in the 40s, so it’s like it was, you know, commentating on a very important time in history. And also it’s a musical. It has like a ton of songs. I think that it’s an iconic musical with like I don’t know a dozen songs and you probably know most of them songs and you probably know every song. 

Emma: You probably know, yeah, they’re very famous, yeah. 

Elsie: So it is a movie with a lot of emotional ups and downs. It also has like the, the other woman, the other girlfriend. Um, I like that. It has kids who range from like a little kid to a teenager. My daughter, who’s eight, just loves the kids and the kids singing. Anytime the kids are in it, she’s very engaged, which is most of the whole movie, pretty much everything but the nuns is very exciting for my kids to watch, already at ages six and eight. So, yeah, did I synopsize it well? Yeah, would you add anything to that? 

Emma: I think the only other thing I’d mention is that it is a somewhat true story. Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah, as a kid I didn’t know that at all. You know, they take some liberties I mean, it’s a musical, so it’s not 100%, but it is a somewhat true story, which I think is pretty interesting, like there’s a real Maria Wow. This is kind of her story. So it’s a wild, wild story. So then when you know it’s somewhat real, I’m like that is really wild so there you have it. So anyway, do you have any memories of when you first watched this movie? I feel like we were little, so I’m trying to even remember. It feels like just a movie that was always in the ether yes for children, okay. 

Elsie: So for me, brutal honesty when I was a child I thought Mary Poppins was awesome and the sound of music was boring and I I get it. I get how I felt that way. So I think more as an adult I think I started re-watching it a lot like five years ago or so. It’s become a lot more engaging for me now. I think as a child it does have a lot of long dialogue scenes between adults and things like that and like just things that I didn’t understand. You know a little bit more of a mature movie. 

Emma: It’s pretty political too. Like we said, there’s World War II, and until I really learned about that in school as an older kid I don’t think I totally was like why are there military people? I don’t know what this means. You know like you don’t really. It goes over your head when you’re little. 

Elsie: Yeah, no, in brutal honesty, I think most of it went over my head until like last year. So it, I mean I’m just telling the truth, but it is a beautiful movie, my favorite part, I think, for as a child I remember like her sitting like on the hills with the children where she has the guitar and they’re singing their first swiss alps yes I remember that really well, but as an adult my favorite part of the movie is the puppet show.  I love that puppet show. It is so like high intensity, 10 out of 10. Puppet show, puppets are just great puppets are just amazing. I love puppets are just amazing. 

Emma: I love puppets so much. Yes, as a kid I think my favorite part was the curtains when she turns the curtains into the play clothes. She’s like they need play clothes and then she sews all these clothes out of the curtains and I think I loved it, in part because our mom sews and would periodically make us stuff when we were kids and we also neither of our grandmothers sew, but our grandmother Karina had some friends Mary Robinson, yes who would sew us stuff as kids, and so there was something to me about homemade clothes as a kid that I thought was really like special, Not in the way that I view it now. Like now I’m like, wow, that’s really special. They took the time to sew. Yes, you know, like. To me it means a lot as an adult, but as a kid I did love the feeling of like I could see it on a pattern, like those paper patterns that you would get it like Joanne or Michaels or wherever, and then they would make it for you out of something you would pick out. And it was just really so in the movie when she takes the curtains down and makes the play clothes and all the kids kind of have these matching clothes all of a sudden out of the curtains. I loved that part and it just felt semi-relatable but in a weird way, it’s extremely iconic. They even have little bandanas and like matching accessories. One has a lederhosen type, you know. Yeah, overall sort of vibe, it’s really cute. 

Elsie: Yes, it has everything. It has music, it has puppets, it has sewing and Julie Andrews Nones. Yeah, Julie Andrews singing, it’s amazing. 

Emma: Well, let’s talk about some decor inspiration. There’s a lot of inspiration in this movie for a bunch of different things, but let’s just talk about decor for a second, and a couple of the spaces we could talk about is Reverend Mother’s office and also the captain’s house. Thoughts and feelings. 

Elsie: So the captain’s house is like straight mansion and it’s very like gold leaf everything Double staircase Not double staircase, but like you, know the staircase that goes two directions yeah, yeah, yeah the top, which is like to me, that’s like mansion mansion, it’s like there’s levels of mansions right and like-. 

Emma: No, that’s like a hotel that I’m not sure I would stomach the price to stay at Right. You know what? 

Elsie: I mean right, it’s like whoa, exactly. So I don’t know if it’s like cozy inspiration as much as like some of the Nancy Myers vibe. It’s different inspiration, it’s different, but it is extremely beautiful. And I would say the thing I’m most inspired by visually about this movie, besides the songs but is the outfits. I love all of julie andrews, like cute little it’s like. She’s kind of like homeschool, kind of like homeschool-y kind of wholesome. 

Emma: It’s almost like an apron, but it’s like a dress that’s made to look like an apron, but she also looks really hot all the time. She does. 

Elsie: Yeah, so it’s very suspicious and I absolutely love it. So, yeah, and the puppets Did I mention? That’s probably the puppet theater is as tall as a room. It’s probably like 12 feet tall and you have to like use a ladder to stand at the top of it, and I was just sitting there dreaming about how I could make one and it’s like you could definitely make one. 

Emma: It won’t be that grand, it won’t, it won’t. 

Elsie: It could be pretty cool, it could be pretty cool, yeah, anyway, I think that’s my inspiration. I don’t remember the nun office. Do you remember that? 

Emma: It’s like they kind of light it sort of dark and moody. I feel like it’s a scene where you really can tell this is a play. You know how sometimes they translate a play to a movie and you’re like, oh, so they just shot the play. Okay, you know like but I feel like the nunnery, her office, it kind of vibes that way where you’re like, okay, there’s just a lot of lighting going on here, Okay. But I think she does have this kind of Damask wallpaper where you’re like that’s a little fancy for a nun, that’s cool, but it mostly just feels kind of chill, but kind of like dark and moody yeah. 

Elsie: I think everything in Europe feels fancy to an American because that’s just because it’s so old. Yeah, we don’t have that. Everything’s just old and beautiful and if we see an old building we’re like wow, it’s very different here. 

Emma: Yeah, If it’s like 100 years old, we’re like that’s super historic. And then you go to Europe and be like wait, how old is it? It’s true, yeah, it’s true, okay, any other cozy inspiration? I like the scene where they’re hiking.

Elsie: I mean, I guess they go hiking. 

Emma: You know that’s a big part of the movie too is they’re fleeing. But yeah, there’s a lot of like outdoor outfits and activities that feel really fun and, as we’re approaching summer right now, I guess that’s something that was kind of like sticking out to me of like, oh yeah, maybe this would be a good one to like hype up your kids to like go do outdoor stuff If they like musicals. Well, yeah, maybe this would be a good one to hype up your kids to like go do outdoor stuff, mm-hmm, if they like musicals. 

Elsie: That’s true. Yeah, it does have kind of a nice picnic-y vibe. Like her parenting style is outdoors. 

Emma: Let’s go outside, which is a good one. Let’s run around, which is a good parenting style, I think, All right. Well, what would you rate this movie? Zero out of five Do Re Mi’s.

Elsie: I’m going to give it a 10 out of five. I think just Christopher Plummer singing Edelweiss alone is like for me everything. And the puppet show Did I mention? And, yeah, the sewing, and I don don’t know. There’s just so many sweet parts of it like she’s, she’s the perfect nanny. If I I never had a nanny, and I don’t think a lot of people in the us did, but if you did in a magical world, you know you would want her a governess. 

Emma: Yeah, yeah, even the word like hmm, I don’t even know, like that’s strange. Yeah, I’m going to give it five, five out of five. Doremi’s it’s famous, you know all the songs, but I will say, for me and my taste, it’s a little overly sweet. If I’m not watching this with some little girls, I’m like, eh, I don’t know. I’m like, eh, I don’t know. 

Elsie: It’s a little much, she said. She thinks it’s too happy. 

Emma: That’s what she said before we came on, and then it also has Nazis. It’s just got a kind of a strange. You know vibe, the vibes are weird. 

Elsie: The vibes are weird, the vibes are weird. I think it’s very unique, but I stand by it. Yeah, I’m going to stand by it, okay, well, by it. Yeah, I’m gonna stand by it, okay, well, trivia time okay, trivia time, my favorite. I have trivia too, because I’ve been watching a lot of christopher plumber interviews this week. 

Emma:n Okay, oh, wow. Okay. The first one is about Christopher plummer. So Christopher Plummer intensely disliked working on this movie. He was known to refer to it as the sound of mucus or S&M and likened working with James Julie Andrews to being hit over the head with a big Valentine’s card every day. Nonetheless, he and Andrews remain close friends until his death. Andrews claimed that Plummer’s cynicism probably helped his performance in the movie, keeping it from being too sentimental. 

Elsie: Oh, that’s sweet, I can see. I guess I can see it. So the video that I watched recently, because I think he passed in like 2020, ish or 2021 like not very long ago and okay, first of all, for those few who don’t realize, he’s in knives out our favorite movie of all time. Yeah, he’s the dad, he’s Harlan Thrombey, and I don’t know. I don’t think I would have totally like made that recognition if I didn’t know. So I think that’s an important detail, that it’s like two of our favorite all-time movies and he’s starring in both of them. I think it’s kind of special and they’re like I don’t know like 50 years apart, 60 years apart, I don’t know like 50 years apart, 60 years apart, so anyway. So the video I watched. They said to Julie Andrews did you ever have a crush on Christopher Plummer? And she said yes, but I was so young, kind of I didn’t know what to do with it. And then they asked him in a separate interview, just spliced together did you ever have a crush on Julie Andrews? And he said we should have ended up together, we should have had a ravishing affair or something like that. And I just thought that was the greatest answer, so sweet and generous and just adorable. So I love it. I love how, like hindsight is 20-20, right yeah. 

Emma: It’s also a strange thing when you get asked in an interview because you wouldn’t want to say no, that’s true, even if it was the truth, if perhaps maybe they were too young for you or you know whatever? 

Elsie: Yeah, maybe they were lying. You were attached to someone else at the time or who knows, I don’t know. 

Emma: So it’s kind of an interesting thing to think about, like situation where you’re like ooh, how do I? I don’t want to make this weird, but I also definitely want to be complimentary. 

Elsie: Okay, to be fair, it’s like a very unprofessional question to ask, but I’m still glad they asked. 

Emma: It kind of is. I was also looking up, so as I was reading this trivia, I was like, oh, I want to read more about that because that’s hilarious. The sound of mucus. That’s just funny. 

Elsie: When did he say that? 

Emma: So I was Googling it. And what I read in a couple of things was like he actually really liked working with Julie Andrews. That wasn’t the thing. He just didn’t really like the movie Like. He felt like it was just too happy and sing-songy and it just wasn’t his vibe. Basically is what he said, mr. 

Elsie: Cool Guy, Mr Cool Guy. 

Emma: He was like waiting for Knives Out. 

Elsie: Well, it finally happened. It did Coolest movie to me, but I don’t know. I looked at his IMDb and he has like 50 movies, so I don’t know what his coolest movie to him was. I think this was kind of a breakout for him to both of them. You know couldn’t swim, so the original idea was to get Dame Julie Andrews to catch her when the boat tips and they fall into the water. However, during the second take, the boat toppled over so that Andrews fell on one side and Kerith fell to the other. Oh God, that’s really dangerous, really dangerous. Heather Menzies Urich, who played Louisa, saved her. Instead, Andrews stated that she felt guilty about it for years. 

Emma: I don’t think you should feel guilty about it, Julie Andrews. I think maybe that was a problem. I think they have laws for that now. I think they have laws for that now. Yeah, I’m like this actor can’t swim and you’re just like here’s the plan, we’re going to tip the boat and we’ll just see what happens. 

Elsie: It’s a plan. We’re gonna tip the boat, yeah, and we’ll just see what happens. It’s like what? Yeah, I’ve heard that now they have to have announcements when they have a real candle on the set not like you know what I mean. 

Emma: Yeah, well, you hear those stories about every now and someone gets really hurt from like a firearm or a knife or you know something. It’s like, oh my gosh, anyway. Okay, this movie shows Captain Von Trapp and Maria falling in love immediately, but in real life Maria wanted to return to the Nonnberg Abbey and become a nun, as that was always what she desired. She was very upset that she wasn’t able to return. Unlike in the movie, where it seemed like she wanted to leave, the real Maria Von Trapp said in interviews that she fell in love with the children and saw marrying the captain as the best way to become a permanent part of their lives. She said at first she merely liked her new husband and only learned to love him over the years. 

Elsie: Okay, Interesting. I mean I like the movie version better, but I also think it sounds like she told the truth in an interview, which is good for her. 

Emma: Yeah, I’m like okay. So you decided this was what you wanted and you made that work for you, okay. It kind of makes me think about arranged marriages, which is not something that’s like in my culture, or like I really know about the lavender marriage. 

Elsie: I don’t know anyone who’s ever done it. I read about that like every week. 

Emma: Yeah, so you know, it’s definitely just a foreign thing to me where I’m like oh but I kind of, you know, can understand. I do think kids in the mix kind of changes things. But it’s so weird to me to think about going from wanting to be a nun, intensely wanting to be a nun, to getting married to someone who you just like. For I don’t know, it’s just a, it’s a life man. 

Elsie: I get falling in love with kids. I get that part of it. Yeah, I get that part of it for sure. 

Emma: And I get to see falling in love with someone over time and that being like. 

Elsie: That’s romantic too. Yeah, In its own way. Yeah, in its own way. 

Emma: But it’s very different from what I wanted for my life, yeah, so. 

Elsie: Maria von Trapp was not invited to the Hollywood premiere of the movie. Rude. I know Strange, they would not do that today. She would be there. Strangely enough, the woman who made it all possible the movie, the Broadway musical and everything else Maria von Trapp was not invited to the opening night, as reported by the Telegraph. Maria wondered why she hadn’t received an invitation and took it up with the producers, but they simply told her that there were no seats left. Oh my God, this might have been because she clashed with the director and producers during the production. 

Emma: Okay, very respectful 0 out of 10. I know there are just no seats left for you to see the movie that’s based on your life. What, yeah, rude, very rude, okay. Next one, while the Von Trapp family hiked over the Alps to Switzerland in the movie, in reality they walked to the local train station and boarded the next train to Italy. 

Elsie: That makes more sense. 

Emma: Sorry, oh, oh, my God, who can hike over mountains with seven children? 

Elsie:

I kind of was like there’s no backpack, there’s no water bottles. 

Emma: I kind of get that. Where are the granola bars? Mm-hmm, my kid’s going to need a snack every five seconds. 

Elsie: They just seemed like it was the next morning and they had been walking all night and they were in good moods and I was a little suspicious because I have children, okay and from italy they fled to london and ultimately to the us. 

Emma: Had the Von Trapps hiked over the mountains, they would have ended up in Germany, near Adolf Hitler. 

Elsie: She even lived in the us and she didn’t get a f***ing invitation. Okay, that’s even worse. Wait, say that. I think I interrupted that last line, which was kind of intense. Say that again. It did have Adolf Hitler in it. Go ahead, go ahead. 

Emma: Had the Von Trapps hiked over the mountains, they would have ended up in Germany, near Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat. 

Elsie: That’s Hollywood for you? 

Emma: Yeah, they were like geography. Don’t even worry about it. This is a beautiful shooting location there’s no seats left. 

Elsie: Okay, 16 going on. 17 was shot in the gazebo, one of the last to be done. On the first take, Charmaine Carr, who played Liesl, slipped while leaping across the bench. That is a very intense dance. It looks really technically difficult, like because of all the balance. It’s kind of like skateboarding, where you like get up there and you kind of have to get back down. Gracefully. 

Emma: Really, the kids in this movie are strong performers. 

Elsie: Okay, sorry. She leaped across a bench and fell through a pane of glass. Although she was not badly injured, her ankle was hurt and the scene was later shot, with her leg wrapped and makeup covering the bandages. Poor, oh my gosh. Well, I will say I’m sure I don’t know if she’s living, but I’m sure she could watch it now and think it was worth it, because that is one of the greatest dancing numbers I’ve ever seen in anything. It’s incredible, like how they’re like jumping up on the benches, up and down, up and down. 

Emma: Like I love it, so yeah no it’s, yeah, it’s a performance, and what you do as a child actor to get the scene. You know it does sound like the children on the set were not safe and were not looked after properly. But, it was a long long time ago, so yeah, long time ago, so yeah, no seats left. There’s just no seats left. Okay, now it’s time for a joke or a fact, or a meditation with Nova. 

Elsie: Hey Nova, what do you have for us this week? 

Nova: A memory. Okay, one of my favorite memories was when I went to Disney World with Lily and Iris, for Marigold’s birthday. We had a lot of fun, and wasn’t that the year I went on The guardians of the galaxy

Elsie: Yeah, she went on a grown up’s roller coaster.

Nova: I loved it, and also it was kind of scary. 

Elsie: Oh yeah, did you feel really big yeah? 

Nova: Also, I liked the Slanky roller coaster. One of my favorite memories was probably Halloween. 

Elsie: Oh, what about Halloween? 

Nova: I got to dress up. We had trick-or-treating with Oscar. I got to see my great grandma, and so my cousin was dressed up as the monkey in Curious George, and then my aunt was dressed up as a banana. My uncle was just dressed up as the man that takes care of George. I was dressed up as Iron man, and Marigold was dressed up like Elsa. Mommy and Daddy came along happily holding our candy buckets and helping, yeah, and we all ate dinner at Grandma’s pizza, and then we helped give out candy, which that’s my favorite thing to do on Halloween. Besides eating the candy.  

Elsie: Thank you for sharing your memories with us this week 

Nova: Yeah, have a good week. And also, if you have kids sorry I didn’t add this last week, but tell them that I said in this podcast, have a good summer and have a good vacation. I hope you do well, bye bye. 

Emma: Thank you so much for listening. We are taking a break for the summer, but we’re going to be dropping a few episodes over the summer, so make sure that you are subscribed, because otherwise you really won’t know when they’re going to come out. We’re no longer going to be doing show notes on Mondays, or just generally on our site abeautifulmess.com so you won’t be able to listen from the show notes. So you really need to be subscribed. Wherever you listen to podcasts, that way it’ll just show up in your app, you’ll have it and it’s going to be random, yep, but we have pre-recorded them for you. We thought about you. We know you’re still bored in the summer, we are too. So we have a few for you, but we’re also taking a lot of time off, as we mom and I have a maternity leave. 

Elsie: Hell yeah, okay. So make sure you’re subscribed and we will be back with three surprise summer bonus episodes. 

You can find the podcast posts archive here.

A big thank you to our sponsors! Check out the offers from BetterHelp, Posh Peanut, Wildgrain, and LMNT.

And if you’re looking for a specific code you heard on the podcast, you can see a full list on this page!

Show Notes:

Listen to Episode #30: Our Bucket List

Bucket list items from previous episode:

Elsie – buy a home in Palm Springs (not on list anymore)

Emma,- publish a work of fiction (Did it!)

Elsie – be a crazy dressed old lady (wants to be a spooky dressed old lady now)

Emma – live in a comfortable, peaceful, beautiful home that others enjoy spending time (achieved)

Elsie – travel to Japan and India as a family (still on list)

Emma – travel to Antarctica (still on list)

Elsie – design a hotel or motel (not on list anymore)

Emma – learn to speak Spanish, possibly through an immersion program (still on list)

Elsie – build a ceramics and painting studio for my golden years (still on list)

Any new bucket list items you want to add:

Elsie – Finish writing her book

Elsie – Invest in a business in Springfield

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #232: Created Colorful
• Episode #231: A Rug Episode
• Episode #230: Mamma Mia – Comfort Rewatch

Episode 233 Transcript:

Emma: You’re listening to the Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen. Back in April of 2020, we did an episode about our life bucket list, and so today we are giving you an update on them. This topic was requested by listener Kelsey Ebling. 

Elsie: I didn’t even remember that we did this, and every single thing on the list was a surprise to me. So I think this is such a fun episode to sort of see which things you’ve achieved, which things you don’t even care about anymore. You know which things are still on the list? 

Emma: Yeah, it’s always good to do a little refresher, and I also was just thinking back to April 2020. And I’m like, man, life was so different. It was such a time then and we do a lot of like seasonal bucket lists on this podcast, so we talk about like what we’re excited for this spring and I feel like that’s always like really fun, but it’s such a different thing from this episode where we’re talking about bigger life goals, so things that we want to do in the next five years, ten years, whatever you know. So, anyway, let’s get into it. 

Elsie: Yeah, this is exciting. Yeah, this is exciting. So we’re responding to things that we said. If I were going to buy a second home in another, like a vacation home I would be between. I do love Palm Springs still, but I also have this crazy attachment to this certain neighborhood in Brooklyn and I want to own a home there really bad. And I also have developed a big affection for Seaside, Florida, and that is very special now too, and my kids are into it. But also I don’t even honestly know if I need a second home at all, so I think I’m taking it off my bucket list for now. 

Emma: Yeah, yeah, because in April 2020, was it even on your radar that you might move to Springfield. 

Elsie: Yeah, no.

Emma: So it’s just funny how life goes. In some ways, yeah, there is this part of me that’s like, do I need a second home, or could I just rent a home when I feel like going to this place, Palm Springs or Seaside or wherever it is? I don’t have as much of a thing for Brooklyn as you. I love New York, but it’s just not as much on my radar. 

Elsie: So yeah, no, I mean, I think that probably someday I’ll buy some kind of beach house or something, probably, but it’s just not on my goals right now. Yeah, you know what I mean? 

Emma: Yeah, I do love the sound of the ocean. Yeah, it’s just really soothing, it’s magical, something special about it and I also I will say I still love the desert. 

Elsie: Jeremy went to Palm Springs last week and I was so jealous that I didn’t get to go this time, and I think it’s a bro trip.

Emma: Yeah, I was like road trip no, no, no, no, no, that’s way too far. I still have a special place in my heart. 

Elsie: Okay, you’re next, your first one. 

Emma: My first one was to publish a work of fiction and I did it. I bet you at the time I thought it would be cloud nine, which was the first book I wrote and I was writing that in 2020. I might have been close to finishing it in April 2020. I can’t remember the book I wrote. Yeah, and I was writing that in 2020. I might have been close to finishing it in April 2020, I can’t remember, but I wrote it then. Uh, but yeah, I read. I wrote a different book after that, called Handmade Murder, and it is out in print, electronic and audio. She did it, so I self-published it and I’m really glad I did, because the day after I self-published I found out I was pregnant and now my life’s.  I’m not writing a lot of fiction at the moment, but I definitely want to get back to it and I would say this is still on my life bucket list to definitely write and publish more fiction. I just love books, I love reading, I love audiobooks. They’ve been a big part of my life since I was in middle school, and so the thought of getting to write more thrills me yeah. And it’s definitely a thing I think about and daydream about a lot. 

Elsie: Oh yeah, congratulations, and we are all cheering you on and so happy for you and so proud of you. 

Emma: Thanks. 

Elsie: Okay, my next one was to be a crazy dressed old lady also middle-aged, I think. I’m not as much on the crazy anymore. I think I want to be a spooky dresser now. I think that’s crazy. I have changed. It is crazy, it’s different, it’s what I do. I still would say I want to be eccentric, yeah, but I don’t necessarily feel like I want to be colorful and like maybe what you had in mind when you, yes, made. 

Emma: The skull has evolved different aesthetic yeah yeah you’re definitely more in your spooky, haunted dollhouse era yeah, okay, yeah. My next one was to live in a comfortable, peaceful, beautiful home that others will enjoy spending time in. Oh yeah, and I will say in apr of 2020, I lived in this house that was like in between Springfield and Ozark, which, if you don’t know, Ozark is a town. It is also like an area of the country, like the Ozarks is like a whole area, but there is a town called Ozark as well, and it’s right outside Springfield, and I lived in a house that was in between Springfield and Ozark. 

Elsie: It’s living on the highway. It was in between Springfield and Ozark. 

Emma: It’s living on the highway. Living on the highway, yep, and I hated living in that house. It was the house that had the snakes and I honestly didn’t hate it because of the snakes. That’s just a funny story. 

Elsie: It was kind of a dark house too. 

Emma: It was really dark. It was also just like the layout didn’t suit our needs. 

Elsie: It wasn’t small, there were so many spaces that just weren’t that useful to us. Yeah, and I didn’t really have any open floor plan office where you could like walk from her kitchen. It was too much of an open floor without walls. 

Emma: That’s too much. Yeah, and the neighborhood was not the best to walk in, like it didn’t have any sidewalks or anything. It was just like I just felt really lonely the whole time I lived there. 

Elsie: She knew she wanted to move and she was house shopping for like three or four years, right, like a long time, long time and so anyway. 

Emma: So I feel like I did achieve this because now the house I live in, I love it. If you’re a long time listener, then you know that we bought this home some years ago now two, two and a half years ago and we renovated for like nine months. So we really kind of gutted almost every space in the house. And it’s a split level which I never really split. Levels were never on my radar. I always kind of thought they felt kind of like a maze, but like in a bad way. 

Elsie: I think a lot of people want to avoid them because they have a lot of stairs. 

Emma: It does have a lot of stairs and, being as pregnant as I am right now, that is tough. When I’m going up and down with my laundry basket of clothes I’m like, oh my goodness, there’s a lot of stairs. But in general I actually love it. I think it works great for our family. Whenever we have snow days or times we’re home with our kid, like there’s just a lot of areas to play in, but it still doesn’t feel like the whole house is covered in toys all the time. Yeah, and there is an open area like our kitchen is kind of connected to this open living room and it’s a really nice feeling there. But then there’s a whole other living room that has, like, our tv and I have an office that has a door, that’s its own bedroom and our kids have their own bedrooms and it just feels like we have everything we need. Oh, you said our kids. 

Elsie: Yeah, that’s so cute. 

Emma: Yeah, it feels like we have everything we need and it has a nice little backyard. I love walking in the neighborhood. I kind of miss Elsie’s neighborhood, you have a free little library. We have a free little library. We have neighbor friends, these neighbor boys that Oscar loves to hang out with. 

Elsie: You can come to my neighborhood for Halloween and you come all the time anyways. Yeah, so it’s okay. 

Emma: It’s no big deal, but I do kind of miss your neighborhood. I always call ours the second best neighborhood in all of Springfield and I love it, it in all of Springfield. And I love it. It’s great. She lives in a mid-century neighborhood and it. 

Elsie: I think it’s the perfect fit for you and, like you, guys love it, and I think that your house is comfortable, peaceful, beautiful and others enjoy spending time in it. So you checked everything on your list. 

Emma: Yeah, we’ve had a few parties and I feel like it’s been a great space for that. Like, yeah, I feel like it’s kind of the perfect house. I think about it all the time, like when I’m in my house just like working or whatever. I’m like I love my house and I didn’t feel that way for so many years and it’s such a relief, it’s such a load off to feel like I’m not looking. I’m not like hoping to make a change and wondering when that will happen. It’s like nope, I’m just living in that dream that I wanted of just like a nice house that I love, that suits our family, everything’s great. So I love that, yep, and I’m just going to try to not fall down the stairs with my newborn. 

Elsie: So far, you got both of your list and both of mine. I was like never mind. 

Emma: It’s about to take a turn, so don’t worry. 

Elsie: Okay, my next one is to travel to Japan and India as a family. So I am still very into this and we have actually been working on it. We’ve been doing Ramit’s Rich Life Journal and I recommend that, if you want to just be like I want to prioritize my life, it’s now or never type of vibe. Anyway, we are planning to start next year to travel once a year on a big overseas trip with our children for the next 10 years. So we decided that the best fit for us. Like I admire, I had a friend who traveled the world with her kids for like a year. I admire that type of thing so much but we decided that the best thing for us was to do it a little bit every year. And that sounds better to me. It’s just what we, it’s just what fits for our personalities and our work and just like, like, I don’t want to travel for a year, like you know that type of thing. So yeah, we’re gonna do one country a year and try to cover you know all the. Definitely Japan and India will be in there. Those have been at the top of my list for forever, and probably many others as well. 

Emma: So I’m very excited. 

Elsie: Yeah, and our kids are definitely at the age now where they are old enough to anything that people say when they’re like I don’t want to travel with kids. My kids are like. They’re old enough to remember it. 

Emma: They’re old enough to be on a long flight without a stroller. 

Elsie: They’re old. Yeah, they’re very good, good little travelers. So I feel like this will only make it better. 

Emma: Yeah, no, I love it. I look forward to that era. I am in the baby on a plane era and I am not so interested in going on long flights. 

Elsie: Yeah, no, I was just thinking they should invent baby flights, they should Like baby. 

Emma: That would be a load off for parents, for sure. 

Elsie: And everyone’s just supporting you. Yeah, and everyone gets it and everyone’s just understanding putting on their headphones. Yeah, exactly, okay, say your next one. 

Emma: Okay, my next one is to travel to Antarctica. So this is still very much on my bucket list, but I don’t know tons and tons of research on it. But my understanding is how you can travel to Antarctica as a non-scientist is you have to head down south and get on a cruise ship that will go around Antarctica, and some of them you can do little excursions off the boat, and some you can’t. There’s a few different ones. There’s not a ton. It’s not like there’s tons and tons of options, but there are a few, and my understanding is that it’s kind of a two week thing, okay so, and it’s rather expensive, as you could probably guess. Yeah, so it’s something that I really want to do. It sounds so fun. I’m very drawn to cold places. I don’t really want to live somewhere freezing, but I’m just always very drawn to places that just seem kind of rugged. I have no interest in going to space. By the way, I feel like someone was posting about there’s going to be this space hotel at some point in our life or whatever, and I was like I have no interest in space. 

Elsie: I cannot say that enough. I like space books. 

Emma: Love space books, love space movies, do not want to actually go to space but like cold places on the earth I’m very interested in go to space but like cold places on the earth I’m very interested in. So Antarctica is still on my radar but at the moment the price of the trip and mainly the duration of the trip, two weeks away from my kids, just isn’t something that I’m interested in. But it is something I will be very interested in later in life. 

Elsie: Let’s revisit that one in a couple more years, because I want to go with you and our daughter, Nova, wants to come. So, yeah, if they allow I don’t know if they allow kids to come on those cruises, but I feel like that would be kind of fun. 

Emma: I don’t think it’s overly hazardous, like I think you can get older and you know, go. So I also have some friends, Nathan and Jenny, who really want to go. Oh cool, and I believe they will. They will. They are like world traveling people. But he just got a new job, they just moved. This year it’s really probably not the year for them. So I’m like, okay, great, probably maybe in like five or ten years we can all go together and Antarctica sounds like it will happen. 

Elsie: It’s oh yeah going to stay on the list. It is going to happen and I think that it’s totally normal that you don’t want to do it with a newborn. 

Emma: No, no, I don’t know if you can and the longest I’ve been away from Oscar is four nights. And that was kind of enough for me, like I think that’ll change over time, but I’m just not interested at the moment? Yeah, so you know, life. Life will keep going, though, and eventually. I’ll be like yeah, I’m good, I’ll be like, yeah, I’m good, I’ll see my kids in two weeks. No big deal, have fun at grandma’s. Yes. Yes, but at their age now not so much. Okay, what’s your next one? 

Elsie: Okay. My next one was I would love to design a hotel or a motel. Okay, this is another one where I’m going to say eh, it sounds appealing. It sounds like if someone offered it to me as a job, I would consider it. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just not something that’s on my list right now, and I think this was coming from my Airbnb era, which I’m not in anymore. We don’t have any Airbnbs anymore, and that, for me, was a phase. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Elsie: So yeah, I think that it sounds fun. But actually a lot of people ask me, probably more than any other thing, if I would do interior design, and I just don’t see myself in that professionally at all at any point. I actually don’t really want to do that. It doesn’t sound fun to me, so let’s just take it off the list. That sounds fun to me. 

Emma: Yeah, I think you love interior design, but I don’t see you loving working with clients. 

Elsie: I like designing my own houses. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Elsie: But I didn’t even have fun making a house for Casey Musgraves, Like I don’t really want Poor Casey. No, I had fun. I had fun, but I was like, oh, this is like pressure work. A little stressful. It’s not. It wasn’t as fun as making my own house. You know what? 

Emma: I mean, right, yeah, because it’s for someone else, and you’re like, are they going to love it? You know just. 

Elsie: Yeah. 

Emma: A little anxiety. 

Elsie: I’m just not the right person to do client work. That’s not the type of work that I’m drawn to in this lifetime. 

Emma: Yeah, no, I get that. Okay. My next one was to learn to speak Spanish, possibly through an immersion program, so this is still on my list. I don’t know about the immersion program because, again, tricky with young kids as far as like how that could work, but my husband’s actually been taking Spanish lessons almost every day during the week for the past like year and a half, maybe even almost two years now and I’ve met his Spanish teacher before. When we were traveling to Costa Rica, we actually met her in person, Obviously. I’ve met her on his video calls, but, like we got to meet her in person and she’s lovely, and so I have it in my mind that, like, after my maternity leave and once I return to life, you know, from that time maybe I will start taking Spanish lessons online like him, because he, like, basically speaks Spanish. Now, like I don’t know what, how you can say, like I don’t know, like if there’s a test you take, it’s like I am fluent. You know, like I don’t know what the level is, but like when we’ve traveled and been somewhere where they don’t speak English, they only speak Spanish. 

Elsie: He can communicate and like get us where we need to go. That’s really inspiring. 

Emma: But he’ll tell you like, oh, I still can’t talk about fun things or it’s harder for me to keep up with, like you know, just like a casual conversation, like a social interaction, yeah, and I think that’s. You know, that takes a lot of time, so anyway. So I think that’s really worked for him. But, like I said, he does it almost every day. It’s about an hour every day during the week, not the weekends always, and his teacher’s lovely. But I think there is this little part of me just being honest, it’s totally my ego. It just feels embarrassing to have to learn a new language in front of someone and like she’s lovely and she teaches people all the time. That’s what she does for a living. So like she’s never, she’s not going to be. She’s so encouraging and great, but I almost wish there was like an AI chat bot that could help teach you Spanish, because then I just feel like I could get over this little, really very stupid ego hump of just looking. So I know I’ll have to talk so slowly and I’ll make all these silly mistakes like a child, because I don’t know the language and you’re learning, you know. So I think there is a little piece of me that’s like oh, I don’t want to have to do that in front of another person. It’s so embarrassing, but I would love to learn Spanish. We’ve mentioned it before. Our mom’s from Venezuela originally. We have a lot of Spanish roots in our family and I just think it’s a beautiful language. It’s very like, almost kind of dancey. 

Elsie: Yeah, it’s really pretty language. 

Emma: And a lot of the world speaks it, and so it seems like useful and fun. So I would still. This is definitely still on my radar and my bucket list. I don’t know about immersion program, but seeing the success my husband’s had from doing his lessons online, I’m like, okay, that works. You just have to be pretty committed. So anyway, yeah, it’s fun to learn new things too. It’s just kind of embarrassing when you suck at something at first, but that’s part of it. 

Elsie: True, you can do it, for sure. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Elsie: My next one, or last one, was to build a ceramics and painting studio for my golden years. I feel like I’m already doing this now. People ask me all the time about the ceramics kiln because I had it like basically, it takes a lot of time and money to set up a kiln in your home and I did it in my last home, like the day before we figured out we would move. Now my kiln is safely in our garage just being stored and it cannot hook up to anything because we have to do some building projects before that can happen. But 100% it’ll be. I’m not really worried about it or anxious about it and I think some people think that I’ve given up on it just because it’s sitting in the garage. But that’s just kind of how renovating is Well and also you’re in your painting era. Yeah, and I’m in my painting era right now. So I got a painting studio last year and I just had my first show. It was. It’s been a great year. So I feel like I’m like my goal for the year with art was to begin creating an art career for myself that I can enjoy later on, like in 10 years. I see that as like the main thing I want to do and right now I’m very much squeezing it in and I’m fine with that. It feels like building something for the future and it is worth. It is exciting. I think I worried at first like would it be worth it to have a studio if I can only go there a few times a week? It’s still completely worth it to me and, yeah, I’m happy I’m doing it. So hell yes to that. Still into it, your first show is beautiful. 

Emma: Thank you, I don’t feel like you’ve bragged enough about how many of your pieces sold. 

Elsie: Thank you, we’re going to do an episode soon about my art journey and I got a lot of questions on Instagram so that’ll be one of our summer episodes. So, if you haven’t subscribed, we’re doing Surprise Summer, where we are going to have three pre-recorded episodes go up this summer, but at random times, very random. So be subscribed if you’re not. 

Emma: Yep, okay. So is there anything new that you want to add to the bucket list? 

Elsie: Yes, at this time in your life Of course Do you. 

Emma: Do you have new ones? Because, yeah, you kind of took a lot of things off, which, as a seven, I feel like makes a lot of sense for you. Yeah, like I don’t really even view that as like I don’t know. Hopefully you’re not viewing it as like oh no, I did, it’s like one who knows the future. 

Elsie: I don’t view it as a failure at all. I think it’s the manifestor. I think it’s the manifestor, yeah, yeah. Anyway, the main thing that I learned from that was it was like you learn every single thing in your life through making mistakes and I was like that is true and I like I feel like I can own that now. 

Emma: Yeah.So why not yeah? In a way, it really takes the pressure off. Yeah. Because it’s like I’m not failing, I’m learning. Yeah, you know, but anyway, what new things do you want to add to the bucket list? 

Elsie: Okay, so presently, this happened after 2020. I think this happened starting in 2022. But I am presently writing a novel. It’s a historical fiction novel and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s really, really a big learning curve compared to anything else ever and it’s wonderful though it’s great to have such a big challenge. So I love it and I want to do a few, because I feel like if I have to go through this process of learning how to do it the first time, then I might as well do a bunch. Yeah, is what I’m thinking. So, yeah, I’m still in the early phases of writing it and I’m hoping to be done by the end of what year is it now? 2024? I’m hoping to be done with my draft this year. That’s my only goal for the year. Yeah. Other than that. My other bucket list thing I want to add is so since I moved back to my hometown, I’m kind of inspired by Emma on this one. So Emma is like a part owner of a rum bar downtown. It sort of became like, unofficially, like the cool gay bar of our town also, and it’s just like it’s. It’s very, it’s a very good cultural moment and needed thing in our town. And so a goal I wanted to add was that at some point I’m not worrying about this right now, but at some point I would like to contribute something to our hometown, just like something that the town needs. And it’s not that I want to start a business by myself or anything, but maybe just help someone else along or just something. But I feel like I love our hometown. I’m glad I’m here. I’m obviously like mainly here for our family. There’s lots of wonderful things, but there’s a lot more. There’s some missing categories is how I like to put it Like there could be more good businesses, like more, just like things to do and like dining experiences and things like that. So at some point I would like to contribute financially and do what Emma did and sort of just like help something start. 

Emma: Yeah, and I think it’s fun to partner with other people and like watch how other people run businesses and our other partners. Their names are Josh and Rogan and they’re just really cool and very different from the way I approach things. And Rogan’s just it’s really his bar. He’s an incredibly talented bartender we’re in love with him. I’m in love with him. So just watching his passion and how it’s just never really strayed from drinks and from food and hospitality and Josh as well it’s really. It’s really fun to like work with other people and watch them be passionate people. So it’s a treat, you know, because I really don’t even do that much with the Rum Bar, but it is an amazing bar and I’m really happy that it exists in Springfield. 

Elsie: Yeah, it’s been really important for our city to have something like that, so I think it’s special. Yeah, it’s very special. 

Emma: I love that. That’s a cool bucket list item. Investing in your community, basically, yeah, I love that. That’s awesome. I don’t really have anything to add to my bucket list at this time. We had some friends in town recently and we had this night where we did like this meditation. We’ve talked about it on the podcast before Future self-visualization. Yeah, where you basically visit yourself 20 years in the future and like see if you have any advice, see what you’re up to that kind of thing. And we did it once before, right after Oscar was born, and we were doing it this time with our friends, and I am really open to guided meditation. I love guided meditation. It reminds me a lot of hypnosis. It’s very similar, reminds me a lot of hypnosis, it’s very similar. And so like I’m a very woo-woo, open to woo-woo person, but for whatever reason, I just like could not do it again and I think what it is is I’m about to have another baby and I think I’m just in this little phase of life where I’m just not thinking about five years or 10 years from now. I’m really focused on the now, and probably other parents who have young kids go through this. I think parenting is generally like this. 

Elsie: I was definitely like that when Nova was two and three years old. When they’re really little. 

Emma: There’s just so much that you’re teaching them and they just they know nothing and they need you so much that it just is a big part of your life. And I think life opens up more and more as they age. And I love little kids. It’s great. But I also am not so interested in filling my plate with much more, because I just recognize that it could overwhelm me. I like a lot of peace, I like feeling like I have a lot of things under control and that’s honestly really hard when you have little kids at times. And I think, too, like I don’t like feeling disappointed when I’m not achieving my goals. So I’m like I think less goals right now is good for me, because I just have a lot of parenting goals and I’m still working. I’m still doing my job and I’m still writing and you know I still have a lot going on. But I also think not adding anything is like the right fit for me right now it’s called clearing your plate. 

Elsie: And I think that it’s like the thing you need to do sometimes in life, especially when you’re about to go into a big new season. 

Emma: Yeah, and it feels weird to me because I’m a very goal-oriented future thinker type person, so it makes me almost feel like not myself that I don’t have as many big goals right now in my life. But I also am kind of like I think you do, Emma, it’s just like raising little kids. And that’s a whole thing and like it’s cool that you got a lot of space for that, because it’s going to be a lot so and it’s fun so anyway, so I’ll add more once my kids are a little bigger. 

Elsie: Yeah. 

Emma: This is not my era for that. 

Elsie: Yeah, no, we’ll add more later. We can do another one someday, but I think that I’m good with this list for now. It’s exciting to think about the future. I love making bucket lists. 

Emma: Oh yeah, me too. Okay, well, now it’s time for a joke or a factor meditation with Nova, or a segment with Marigold. 

Elsie: Thank you so much for listening. If you have topic requests that you want us to cover on the podcast, you can email us anytime at podcast at a beautiful mess dot com. We’ll be back next week with a comfort rewatch of the sound of music. 

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Show Notes:

Use code ELSIELARSON at Created Colorful for $20 off any product in their Shopify store—consults, gifts, bundles, and our Love Your Closet Audio Course!

What Created Colorful is:

Created Colorful is a virtual color analysis that lets you know what colors look best on you.

The process:

Sign up at www.createdcolorful.com.

They send you instructions to hold different color fabrics up to your face (with no makeup) and take pictures.

Then they will email you back if they need more photos.

The results:

Emma – Light summer

Elsie – Deep autumn

How it has helped you:

Feel more confident when purchasing clothes

Stop being a wasteful shopper

Makes shopping easier

Has opened up more options

Check out Created Colorful on Instagram

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #231: A Rug Episode
• Episode #230: Mamma Mia – Comfort Rewatch
• Episode #229: Recipes We Make at Home

Episode 232 Transcript:

Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast, your cozy comfort listen. Today, we’re discussing our experience with Created Colorful, which teaches you which colors look best on you. This was so fun to learn about. I feel like it’s changed my life. We did it about a year ago. So yeah, this week we’re going to talk all about it and convince you that you have to do it.

Emma: And yeah, we’ve mentioned it a little bit here and there before. And we usually get questions about it. So we were like, let’s just deep dive like a whole episode about the process, the results, how it’s helped us now that it’s been some time since we’ve done it. I feel like I have a lot more to say about it than I did two weeks after I’d had it done. Because it kind of takes a minute to get used to. So anyway, it’s all that. Before we dive into Created Colorful, I wanted to do a little announcement. You may already know, because I feel like our podcast listeners are real friends and they’re in the know, but just in case, and also feel like if I don’t get to talk about this, then it’s weird, but my book, Handmade Murder, is available as an audiobook.

Elsie: Woo! 

Emma: So if you didn’t see that on our blog or on Instagram, then you’re hearing it here. So it’s on Audible and iTunes. It should be available in pretty much any territory. So if you’re outside of the United States, you should still be able to find it. If not, send me an email, podcast@abeautifulmess.com because I’m a first time self publisher and I’m figuring some things out and it could be that I just need to press a few more buttons and I could get it in your territory. But, yeah, it’s on Audible and iTunes for sure, and it may be on some other platforms because I’m not 100 percent sure how it always gets distributed because, like, my print and electronic version of the book are available in so many more places than I realized, like, it’s on target.com, it’s on walmart.com, it’s on barnesandnoble. com. Sometimes it’s in the store. So, I don’t totally know all the ins and outs of distribution, I’m just doing my best. But I know that it’s on Audible and iTunes, so if you’re needing an audiobook, or you’ve been wanting to read my book, but you just don’t have time to read, I get it. I also love audiobooks, so I was very excited to work on this, and it is available. And in case you’re curious, yes, it is read by the author, it is read by me, and I had a lot of fun with this. It’s part of why it took a little bit longer, because I was so nauseous my first trimester that I just didn’t feel like I could sit and read this book and do a good job. And I really wanted to do a really nice job with it. And so I feel like it turned out really nice. The last audio book that I listened to was read by Meryl Streep. So I’m not going to compare it to other audio books. 

Elsie: Don’t compare it. 

Emma: Because she’s like the greatest performer of our time. But I will say, I do think it’s a nice performance and you obviously are familiar with my voice if you’re a podcast listener. I sound like this. And I think it turned out really nice. I think it’s very entertaining. It’s a pretty quick listen. Thanks And it’s a fun book. 

Elsie: Do you know how many hours it came out to be? 

Emma: No, I don’t know off the top of my head. 

Elsie: That’s interesting! Well, I mean, props to you for reading it yourself. That is a high level, skilled task to take on, so I’m really proud of you for just, like, going for it and doing it.

Emma: I did my best,  and I think it turned out really nice. I’m really happy with it, and I’ve had a number of people listen to it already, and maybe they’re being nice, but I think they would have told me if I needed to record more areas over again. So I think it turned out really good. And so I’m excited for that. I think audio books also just make literature more accessible to more people for all sorts of reasons. Yeah. So I’m just really happy.

Elsie: There’s so many. So many good opportunities when you’re taking a walk. I love audio books. It’s like every day of my life. I think that it’s a modern miracle.

Emma: They keep me company a lot. So I would be honored if my book keeps you company. So it’s available. Check it out. If you have any interests. 

Elsie: Yes, and leave Emma reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, anywhere that you can leave a review, five stars only. 

Emma: I mean, yeah, that’s much appreciated. But yeah, there are lots of reviews that I’ve been shocked how many, so if you’ve already left me a review, thank you. It really does help and it really does mean a lot. 

Elsie: Oh, I’m so proud of you. Congratulations. 

Emma: Thanks. 

Elsie: Yeah. That’s a big one. 

Emma: Okay. So let’s talk about Created Colorful. 

Elsie: Okay, so I first heard about this when I was doing a, you know, the little Q& A box on Instagram and someone said, what season are you? And I said, I think I’m probably a fall or winter. What season do you think I am? And a lot of people wrote me back and said, I did a color analysis with Created Colorful, which is a company that offers this service. And someone said, specifically, it changed my life. Like, it helped me feel more confident about myself, and I signed up for it that day. Like, immediately, yes. That’s a good review. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a code, it’s ElsieLarson, and I think it’s 20 percent off. I’m not sure about that. Well, you’ll get some percentage off. Pretty sure it’s a, it’s a code that does something. So yeah, use our code if you want to. So, a virtual color console from Created Colorful, which is what we did, is 180.I understand that that’s a lot of money, so I will explain to you why it was worth it to me. And do with it what you will. There’s definitely other people out there on the internet who offer the same thing. This is just who we used. I used it because it was like someone personally recommended it to me on Instagram. And you know, the personal recommendation is kind of everything. It really is. Okay, so what it was is you sign up, you pay the 180, and then they send you instructions for how to get started, and this was more than a year ago now, but they tell you, like, to hold up sort of like fabric or clothes, or it could even be like, I was stealing things from my kid’s closet, my husband’s closet, but just to hold up fabric with different colors to your face, and you’re supposed to kind of have your hair back out of your face, you’re supposed to not wear makeup. And honestly, like, I hated doing it. I thought, like, pictures looked horrible. Like, I’ve seen people post their pictures online. Mine looked way worse than anyone ever. Like, to me. But, it’s like, not the point. So I just, I participated in the The act of it, I did it, you know, I wore up actually, absolutely no makeup. And then, yeah, they have you go back several times. So I had to do three. You’re supposed to, I think it’s like, if you do a good job, you only have to do two rounds. And if you do a bad job, you might have to do three. And I had to do three. What did you have? 

Emma: I had two rounds. I didn’t really know. I was hoping one round. So now I’m like, oh, I guess I did a good job. I thought I did a bad job and that’s why I had to do two rounds. 

Elsie: Yeah. And like, sometimes you don’t have all the colors that they ask for. Don’t do the ones you just don’t have. I guess you could probably go to the store and get like a piece of fabric or something, but I didn’t take it that far. I just used whatever I had or like the best thing I could find. And yeah, when I looked at the photos. Initially, because you end up with a camera grid of like yourself with like 20 different colors held up to your face and you can kind of tell instantly which ones are the worst. For me, I wasn’t like able to see which ones were the best and I was glad I was like getting the second opinion, but I could definitely see that for me, like, I knew, like, yellow was, like, my worst possible color, and, like, pastel colors, like, peach, and I’ve kind of always known that because my mom and I have the same similar colors, and my mom looks horrible in pastels, and she’s always, like, said that, like, when we were in, like, I’ve always noticed, like, in springtime, when I would, like, Go to get an Easter dress that was like a part of our childhood that I always was like so excited. I loved how they looked on the rack. And then when I started putting them on, I didn’t love how they looked. So it kind of made sense to me. I knew I was probably a fall or maybe a winter. Okay, so talk about your experience with the consult.

Emma: Yeah, so I will say this was a time that my Big Bud jumpsuits really came in handy. Because I seriously have like nine or ten jumpsuits and they’re a solid color and they’re all different colors. And I just used the jumpsuits on my first round and a few other items in my closet. And so I could hold up, you know, red, yellow, black, green, two different blues, oh, purple, you know, whatever. And so it made it really fast and easy. And yeah, the process is really not hard. I didn’t love my photos either. It wasn’t like, I’m going to be texting these around. These are my new headshots because I didn’t really have makeup on and I have my hair kind of pulled back. And it was nice lighting. They do tell you to like, you know, stand near a window or something so that they can see your skin and see your eyes, you know. Yeah, I also have this piece of art in my bathroom, our main bathroom that my husband and I share. I bought it off Etsy and it’s really beautiful. It’s very artistic, but it’s a nude and it’s in the background of all my photos. So I would never post them anyway, because they get taken down because it’s, Oh, it’s a nude. That’s funny. Anyway, so I sent those off and then. The second round that I did, they had me do colors that they were kind of like thinking might be my colors. So they were like, try to find charcoal and just, you know, some other color, more specific things. And I do remember stealing a couple things from my husband’s closet because I didn’t, I can’t even remember what they were, but just like random pieces of fabric. You can also just use anything around your house that you have that, like, is that color. Because you’re really just, like, holding it up to your face and taking basically a selfie. Yes. And I’ll also say, as far as, like, recommending, because I do think this would be a really fun gift for, like, a friend. It’d be a great gift or a teenager. I don’t know. I just could see it being a really sweet gift. I thought that every email I got from them, every interaction with them and their team was very positive and very, like, complimentary, but not in, like, a bullsh*t way in a giving real compliments about, like, you know, my eyes are one of my favorite thing, and they just talked about the color of my eyes, and it was just really nice. Because I think anytime you’re doing something that might feel a little bit vulnerable, like sending a bunch of no makeup selfies, trying to figure out what colors look good on you. You wonder if they’re gonna send you back an email that’s like, oh, you look awful and it’s brown, you know, or whatever, and it’s gonna kind of ruin your day. That did not happen. I thought it was extremely positive and very encouraging. 

Elsie:  I agree. They were so hyped and so kind. I kind of did think it was bullsh*t a little bit because mypictures were so bad. But also I was like, but they were doing their job. They were like, like showing you the best possible options. So let’s talk about getting the results. Okay. So mine was sort of what I expected. Was yours what you expected?

Emma: No. So mine is called Light Summer. There’s a whole bunch of different seasons. It’s not just like the four seasons. If you’ve never seen any color analysis there’s three versions or three varieties for each season each of the four seasons. So there’s 12 total. So there’s a light, medium, and dark for every season. So I’m a light summer. So, what that means is I look really good in light coloring or neutral cool tone coloring. And some of my best colors are blues, lavender, white, uh, not so much like black would be better in charcoal. And I should kind of avoid colors that are super bold or earth tone or warm. 

Elsie: Did you cry? 

Emma: No, I didn’t cry. 

Elsie: But did you have anything that you love to wear that you were upset about or did you feel like, did you feel like it helped you more or did you feel like it was frustrating? 

Emma: So, I think for a lot of life, like when I started to learn to dress in my opinion, better or more put together or like buying nicer pieces. So a lot of my early thirties was like figuring that stuff out. You kind of start buying a lot of what I would call neutrals and a lot of neutrals or what people think of whatever pops in your head, I can pretty much guarantee you are earth tones and earth tones don’t look good on me. So, it was kind of like, uh, I needed to switch in my mind, like, what neutral, quote unquote neutral means.

Elsie: That’s interesting, yeah. 

Emma: Because like, khaki is not a good color for me, it’s actually, like, kind of unflattering. 

Elsie: Me either. 

Emma: And even like, kind of a earth tone green, which I love that color, I love greens. Not so great. I would be better off with more of a light emerald or some kind of jewel tone type thing like, you know, or turquoise, but lighter. So I had to kind of rethink neutrals. And I think that was a little bit frustrating because you have a lot of things in your closet that are very basic. So it’ll be like, Black, earth tone greens, khakis, things like that, and those actually aren’t great for me. So there’s kind of a little bit of that, but I do actually like my colors. I’ve always thought I looked great in blue. I have blue eyes. So I always felt like when I wore blue that would kind of set off my eyes. So that wasn’t surprising and that was nice and I have a number of blue things and I love, I love blue. I like wearing blue. I think it’s a really cool color. I’m, I’m not, I never really thought of myself as a pastel person, like it’s just not something that I gravitate towards, but now I do for clothing because it is, it looks good on me. Like lavender is a color that looks really, really nice on me and I never would have guessed that. So yeah, um, it’s kind of funny. And then I’ve always noticed that when I wear lipsticks that have a little bit of like purple in them, like a pink that kind of slants towards purple. Rather than red or orange that always looks a lot better on me.

Elsie: Interesting.

Emma: So now I know better like what blush colors and lip colors. I use a lot of multi stick So it’s like the same piece of makeup that goes on my cheeks that goes on my lips But I try to find things that have a little bit of purple in them I’m kind of slant that direction rather than a bold red or orange orange because those don’t look as good on me. And yeah, for me, like knowing that I’m light summer, it took a little bit to think through the neutrals. But other than that, I really like it because it definitely helps me when I’m shopping. But we’ll talk about that next. What was your season? 

Elsie: Okay. So when I got my results, I was Mostly happy. I was not like some people are devastated when they first get it and that’s a normal thing. Like some people are disappointed and then they try the colors and they get into it later. Like I’ve seen that with some of my friends, but for me, I knew I was going to be an autumn or a winter, but I thought I was going to be a winter and I ended up being a deep autumn. And I think I’ve, I was, I believed it, I suspected it, because like, you know, they have like the celebrity pictures a lot. So one of the celebrities for mine is Julia Roberts, and I do feel like she has like a lot of different hair colors, and she has like the same things as me where she looks good with darker hair and red hair, both of those work, and like not so good with blonde hair, you know what I mean?

Emma: Yeah, all my celebrities are like Michelle Pfeiffer, Jodie Foster, Amy Poehler, Naomi Watts, Kirsten Dunst. I just like wrote some down so I can tell people. 

Elsie: Oh those are interesting. 

Emma: It’s a lot of blondes or people who go blonde a lot.

Elsie: And it does make sense that we’re opposite palettes because we’ve always known this about ourselves that we do, we do look alike. And we have a lot of the same features, but we have, like, just drastically different colors. It’s like, mainly the color is the thing that’s so different. So anyway, I was happy that I was in autumn, but I was sad that I wasn’t a winter. Because winter, there is a part of me that wants to be a goth person. And they did say on mine that like black is not your hottest color, which I still to this day have a hard time believing because I don’t know, I think everyone thinks they look good in black. It’s just an ingrained thing. Most people think that even if it’s not true, I can see that there are other colors that are better, but I would say I’m wearing black right now. I still don’t think black is bad. And that’s something that I adjusted. And more recently, they put up a video on Instagram that was talking about how, like, if you want, like, other palettes, like, to sort of, like, expand to, like, your sister palette, like, mine, since I’m deep autumn, would be deep winter. And I like that, because I like that palette, too. It’s not something I would wear, like, every day. It’s more dramatic, for sure. But I want to have, like, options. Yeah. So, um, yeah. And I think that’s like a thing that if anyone has a criticism about the color analysis, it’s usually that they don’t want to feel limited and they want to just be able to wear what they love. And that is, I think, valid and understandable. But in my experience, it kind of, like, honed me down a little bit. And I feel like I am more able to wear what I love just within parameters that, like, It makes me feel more confident about my purchases. Like I feel like before I did the color analysis, I had a really colorful closet. I knew that it wasn’t good because I knew it was like I had a double personality. I had like clothes I would wear for the blog photos and then clothes I would wear in real life and they were opposite and I didn’t actually want to be a colorful dresser anymore. Like I’ve known that about myself for a while. It’s just not what I’m, it’s not what I love in my soul, it’s not what I’m drawn to, it’s just kind of what I felt like it was like the persona that I was stuck with from my 20s or something, or 30s, I don’t know, one of those. But anyway, I think that for me it was extremely helpful, and since I have done the analysis, I’ve still bought a little bit of stuff that’s a different color, but I’m just like a little more careful with it. Because for me, it’s like, I want to wear black and I want to wear bright red. They’re like, just do it with a cardigan or like, you know, just do it like with a hat or like there’s little tricks you can do to still bring in your best color. 

Emma: It can be like a color that’s not so great for you because it’s not right by your face. And then you can wear something that might flatter 

Elsie: On Easter, I really wanted this dress that was like, It’s just like a cute Christy Dawn dress, and I just wanted it, and I just bought it, and I wore it, and it was like, I knew it wasn’t my color, and I knew it wasn’t like, the greatest thing I could wear, but I still liked it, and it’s like, I think It was cute. Who cares? You know what I mean? There is a case for who cares once in a while, and like, no one can ever take that away from you, so I think if you’re fearful that it’s gonna like, limit you too much, just don’t. 

Emma: It’s not a diagnosis. It doesn’t mean, it’s not like finding out that you need to be gluten free and it’s like, no,you’re going to make yourself sick if you do this. It’s like, no, these are just colors. It’s just a recommendation. It’s not, you know, a diagnosis. So I think if you view it that way, it’s like if you’re out shopping and you’re like, you have this style shirt that you like and it comes in two colors and you’re like, should I get it in black or charcoal? I’m like, oh, I’ll get it in charcoal because I know it looks a little better on me. Great. Made it easier for me to decide. But if I am out at a thrift and I see a dress that’s like the absolute wrong orange, but I’m so excited about it, I’m just gonna buy it and wear more makeup whenever I wear it.

Elsie: And that’s just how it’s gonna go. I will say there is something to it like, if you want to wear a color that’s wrong for you, but you do it with like, More makeup or a spray tan or lashes or other things that make you feel like artificially confident. That also works, too. So anyway, since the analysis, I have bought a ton of brown and like maroon. These are not colors that I would have said were my favorite colors or like been drawn to in the past, but I can recognize now that they just look good and they work and they blend. It’s kind of just like, like you with the lavender. It’s like, this is always going to be a win. And like brown clothes are actually really easy to find. I think I just didn’t think of it before because I was always attracted to like You want to be a colorful lady. Yeah. So anyway, it’s so interesting. I would recommend it to anyone if you’re going through a time when you feel like you want to change your style, or you want to feel more confident, or you just like, Want to, you know, like be a smarter shopper. Like there was definitely a time in my life where I felt like I was like a wasteful shopper. I mean, it was a wasteful shopper. Same. So I think that this can be helpful for all those things. 

Emma: Yeah. And I think it’s kind of like a similar thing to like understanding your body type or like fits that look good on you. It just makes it easier to shop. Yeah. And if you’re, you know, a person who’s like, fashion is my number one hobby, I love fashion. It’s like, that’s awesome. Like, you’re going to do all sorts of experimental things that frankly, I’m never going to do because I just kind of want simple clothes that, you know, going to last me a long time. That’s quick for me to get ready in the mornings. And I do a lot of wacky necklaces cause I like to make jewelry. So like, you know, like. You just have to know yourself and, like, find what works for you. And I feel like if you’re wanting to kind of make your closet more cohesive and everything look good on you, understanding fit and understanding your colors are really valuable.

Elsie: Yeah, I completely agree. Definitely check out Created Colorful on Instagram. They have some really great videos and like, I think they have a good vibe overall. Like Emma said, they’re extremely positive. They’re going to pump you up and make you feel good about yourself, which is amazing. And yeah, there’s, there’s really nothing bad about the color analysis. Yeah, except for like when they said black isn’t your best color, but I still, um, I still wear black. It’s not my best color either, but yeah, it’s not a diagnosis. It’s just a recommendation. Yeah. And, um, let’s talk a tiny bit more about makeup and just like other, you know, sort of like honing down your aesthetic. Like what I was hoping to get out of it was I also asked them questions like, Okay. Because you can ask questions, which is cool. And I asked like, which hair color is more suited for me? Like, cause, and I have like, kind of go between like a more black hair and a more reddish hair. And they said they’re both kind of like equal. And I was like, okay, that’s, that’s like good. That’s nice to know. And I really wanted makeup. Like I wanted to make sure my makeup was fitting and this was helpful for sure. I feel like autumn thing makes it really easy to shop for makeup and like what Emma said about like Getting like a little bit more of a purplish tone in her lipstick. 

Emma: Like that’s super helpful. It’s a bummer when you go buy like nice makeup, and then it just really doesn’t like you try it a few times and you’re like, why did I buy this? 

Elsie: A lot of buying makeup online is seeing other people using it and like videos and like I love watching videos of people putting on makeup.

Emma: Oh yeah. 

Elsie: But that’s sort of like one of the worst ways that you can shop for makeup. Unless you know they’re your season. 

Emma: But yeah, it’s not always, it’s just gonna look different on you. 

Elsie: Yeah. 

Emma: I say the same too with nail polish. It’s not that nail polish is that expensive. I do my colors and nail polish all the time now and I love it.

Elsie: Same. And yeah, it looks better because sometimes I would buy some kind of, you know, autumn colored nail polish and then I would try it on and I was like, This doesn’t look very good on me. I don’t like this. I just end up picking it off and it’s just, you know, another like little wasteful thing where you’re like, okay, I’m going to give this to my sister now because this is not my shade. So yeah, it’s  just nice.  So a positive thing. is that I feel like my closet, my closet’s messy, but like the stuff in my closet is like the best it’s ever been. It’s very cohesive, I’m definitely on my color scheme 90 percent of the time, and it has made my shopping way easier. It makes it easier when you see a dress that you like in three colors, it makes it easier to choose, you know, which one looks the best on you. I think that like, being In Enneagram 7. I always knew this about myself deep down, but like, I’m very influenced by how the models look in the dresses. And you know what I mean? Like a lot of times I would buy like a colorful dress or a pastel dress and the model was like black and like Obviously, like, I don’t have the same, yeah, like, obviously, I’m probably not gonna have the same, like, color, like, you know, the same effect, um, and then, yeah, I would get it in the mail and be like, ew! So, I think that knowing, your colors, I don’t know, for me, it was very helpful. It helped me to not be so distracted by what looks good on other people. And like, now I can just appreciate like, like I love lavender. And I think it’s like, every time I see Emma wearing it, it gives me a happy flutter in my heart. And I’m so happy for her. And I used to. By pastels kind of a lot because I like, I don’t know. I like it, but they’re pretty. I always knew that pink looked bad on me deep down, even though it was one of my favorite colors. 

Emma: Yeah, I will say to like, I actually think in a lot of ways, rather than limiting me in some ways, it really opened me up. Like, for example. One of the things is I tend to look a little better in silver jewelry versus yellow gold and oh interesting Yeah, and I still wear a ton of yellow gold Most of my jewelry is yellow gold and that’s fine. Like it’s jewelry, you know, whatever you want to do but I honestly didn’t really give silver much of a second look cause I just thought it wasn’t cool or it was like something that other people did. And then once I found out it actually looks good with my skin and my colors, I was like, Oh, I should give silver a chance. And now I have a few silver necklaces and silver earrings, like these big drop earrings that really look really cute on me. And I never would have bought them or tried silver if it wasn’t for them saying, Hey, you actually would look better in silver than gold. So I’m like, oh, try that then. But I didn’t run out and get rid of all my gold jewelry either. So, 

Elsie: Yeah, actually Emma and I both traded some of our clothes. So I passed on to her some, my lavender jumpsuit and this some I think a light green  So now we’re all redistributed. It’s perfect. Hopefully you all will have a sister who’s the opposite color of you two and that really works out. That really works out. Okay. Well, my code is ElsieLarson. Use it if you want. And let us know if you have, if you have an experience with it, we just want to hear about it. I think it’s such an interesting subject. I like hearing the stories of the people who get mad after they get there. So I think it’s so funny. Oh, I know. It’s hilarious. But then it usually turns out good in the end. Don’t freak out. 

Emma: You’ve got to open your heart. 

Elsie: Okay, it’s time for Nova’s segment. Hey Nova, what do you have for us this week? 

Nova: A meditation. 

Elsie: What kind of meditation? 

Nova: A Mother’s Day meditation. And also, all you mothers listening out there, I hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day. 

Elsie: Awww. Okay, let’s hear the meditation. I’m closing my eyes. 

Nova: Breathe in, and out. One more time. Breathe in, and out. Imagine you’re on a sunny beach for your Mother’s Day gift. And then, imagine that the waves are rolling in and out. Then, your children come to play. They give you a present that they made and give you some seashells. Then, you go back to your house and you sleep. Then, you wake up. Next day on Mother’s Day, you wake up and find plenty of presents. All your kids are waiting there, smiling and ready for you to open them. Then, after you open all of them, You go to the beach again to have one more last look. And you bring a beach ball for your kids to play. You watch them and start to join in. Then, when you’re all ready, you take all the seashells that you find and bring them back to the airport. Then you get on your plane home. And then, Once you get back home, you put the seashells on a little frame and put a picture in it, so you’ll always remember the wonderful, splendid time at the beach. One more breathe in, and out. 

Elsie: Thank you, Nova. That was the best Mother’s Day ever. 

Nova: You’re welcome. Happy Mother’s Day again! Bye!

Emma: Thank you so much for listening. We love hearing your suggestions for topics for future episodes. You can send us an email at podcast@abeautifulmess.com with your request. And next week, we are coming back with an update about our life bucket list. This is something from an episode in 2020 so we’re going way back.

You can find the podcast posts archive here.

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Show Notes:

Read our blog post: Do You Wear Shoes In The House? (And Three Reasons Not To!)

How do you know what type/style of rug works for your space?

Make sure high traffic areas have patterns that are forgiving

Look at how it needs to be cleaned and know if you can honestly clean it that way

How do you know the correct size rug to get for your space?

Use a measuring tape

Determine the function of the rug

Consider how durable it is

Where do you buy rugs from:

Etsy

eBay

Apple and Oak

Rifle

Rugs USA

Dream Rugs

Loloi Rugs

Tips for cleaning rugs:

Sparkle baking soda on rugs and then vacuum to absorb odors

FOLEX for spot cleaning

Put a towel underneath the rug before spot cleaning

Power wash them outside

Favorite Rugs:

Elsie – Vintage Turkish Rugs

Emma – Turkish Rugs

Tips for tripping over rugs:

Get a quality rug pad

Put rug stickers on the corner of the rug

Screw them down

Sparks Joy:

Elsie – Vintage roll top desk with the top covered in tiny gold frames

Emma – Domino’s pan pizza

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #230: Mamma Mia – Comfort Rewatch
• Episode #229: Recipes We Make at Home
• Episode #228: Listener Questions – Sister Edition

Episode 231 Transcript:

Emma: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast. Your cozy comfort listen. And today we are doing a deep dive into rugs. We are talking about everything from knowing the right rug for your space to actually keeping them clean, especially when you have pets, messy kids or maybe you’re just clumsy like me and you spill your food on your rug a lot. There’s a lot of reasons why your rugs can get dirty.

Elsie: I love this subject so much. I think that people on the internet, this is a generalization, can be very negative about rugs. Like it’s one of the things it’s like dusting. It’s one of the things that people just get so in their head about. And I personally think there’s, there’s hope for your rugs. Ok. We have a hopeful, optimistic attitude about rugs. We’re not going to be negative about it.

Emma: So I’ve never dusted in my life. I’m fine. It’s fine.

Elsie: Yeah. Well, we’re freaking out about dust. It’s like if you, if you’ve never been an influencer, this is what it’s like, it’s like you post a picture of anything and people are like, how do you dust that? How do you dust that? Why do you dust that? Why I wouldn’t want to dust that? And it’s just like me neither. Dust.

Emma: So I don’t problem solve.

Elsie: I’ve just said before in my life, but it’s not like a, it’s not like a ritual that’s keeping me up at night.

Emma: No, I mean, yeah, if something’s like, obviously cob webby, sure that doesn’t really happen much. I don’t know what to say.

Elsie: Like, I don’t know, dusting, if I had to make a list of the top 100 problems in my life, dusting wouldn’t make it onto that list for sure. It’s just not even like a significant enough problem for the top 100.

Emma: I’ll be honest, it gives me a little bit of humility too because I’m always like, oh, I thought I was this pretty clean person. I feel like my house is pretty clean and then I, I’m like, I’ve never dusted before. I’ve never cleaned my oven before. Like, you know, just things that you see other people doing on the internet and you’re like, oh, maybe I’m not as clear. I was, I’m good. I’m ok. But like, you know, I give it more like a B minus. I was thinking I was more of an A minus and like, maybe not so much. I’m good with a B minus, by the way, in the, in the class of cleaning your house, I’m like, I’m, I’m fine with that. Everything’s good. Nothing’s a problem. So, whatever, but yeah, I don’t dust, give yourself whatever score you want.

Elsie: Don’t worry about it. I’m not worried about it. Good. Ok, so, yeah, this week we’re going to talk all about rugs. So the things we’re going to go through are like determining the right rug for your space because oftentimes they’re expensive, they’re a big investment. There’s something you save up for. How do you get the right size? Where do you buy them from? Tips for cleaning rugs? Our favorite types of rugs. So yeah, we’ll go through all this. And I think before let’s do a little bit of a, like a history of rug buying, history of rug buying. So my first r this is so funny, like in our early blogging days, there was like this certain IKEA rug that every blogger had and it became like a thing where we used to post a lot of other people’s home tours on our site and it became a thing where people would complain about the rug. And it was like, here’s that rug again. And so yeah, my first experience in buying a rug was like, I thought it was fancy because I bought a big rug. This is always the story.

Emma: You buy your first car and you’re like, this is the nicest car I’ve ever owned. 

Elsie: But then later you get a rug I ever bought was one of the ones from urban outfitters. That’s basically a thick piece of fabric. You know what I mean? And you just lay it out on your floor and it looks like a rug and you definitely don’t want to use it without a rug pad because it’s a, it’s hazardous, slippery will die. And we had that one in our first home and it was like, maybe Chevron or like, it was something of that time. And then I started buying the very fuzzy white rugs for a couple of years and I learned from those that I wanted to be a shoes off household. I was trying to think of the word and I was right or no. Yes. Yeah. We learned from those that we wanted to be a shoes off household because we got like the trail of footprints situation around where our coffee table was. And yeah, I learned that basically the value of shoes off and like the point of it. yeah, and we’re American. No shame to anyone, do whatever you want in your own home. It’s not common in the US. But I personally just, it just makes me feel like I have less cleaning to do and it makes me feel like I don’t have to worry about buying light colored rugs, which I like light colored rugs. Sometimes.

Emma: It’s just when you have kids who are like, learning to walk to and they’re crawling a lot. It is nice to have more. Yeah, clean floors than it’s nice having clean floors. But I have dogs, they kind of ruin it too because they go in and out and, you know, that kind of, yeah, let’s not think about that.

Elsie: Let’s not think about that. You know, I have to just turn my brain off to my dogs and I’m just thinking that my house is clean still. I’m just believing it is.

Emma: I mean, it’s going to help to do shoes off.

Elsie: It helps, OK, 100% it helps with rugs and stuff and it makes, it makes things last longer. You can read studies about it. We wrote a blog post back in the day about it. If you’re interested, I’ll just leave that up to you. But anyway, so the first thing we’re going to talk about is how do you know what type or style of rug works in your space? So there’s so many choices out there. So let’s talk about size function durability. And then my personal like heart, soul searching question that you have to ask yourself is how committed are you to your rugs?

And I’m, I’m dead serious right now.

Emma: That’s a real question that you should ask.

Elsie: So we did, I did the fatty phase and which those are beautiful rugs.

Emma: They’re gorgeous. I think I completely understand why people gravitate towards them and get fixated on them because they look like this soft fluffy cloud on your floor and it just, I get it like the appeal is there the ones that are made of real fur, like the synthetic ones.

Elsie: I can’t, I’m not speaking, you’ll know by the end of this episode, I’m not a synthetic rug lover. And for me it’s not for me and I understand if you’re vegan, you’re honestly trapped. I get it to each their own. That’s tough. True. I think the toughest categories for a vegan, one of the toughest categories for vegan might be rugs and that’s probably not shoes, what vegans think at all, but probably not anyway.

Ok, so I am very committed to my rugs after I learned after I got the little footpath, then, you know, I had to try cleaning it in the bathtub, which is what you do. You take your big fat, you put it in the bathtub. I would like literally. Yeah, that’s the thing that I think is really cool and that I want people to understand about natural fiber rugs.

So like usually that are made from animals, like wool, things like that. You can wash it like you wash your own hair. I would literally use shampoo and shampoo the rug and then wring it out and then lay it on my porch for a day or two and let it dry and then it’s good as new again. And that’s the beautiful thing about those rugs. So I do think that there’s like different levels of commitment. And then after that, when we moved to our first house in Nashville, I got these two huge white rugs. And I think this was like the most negative comments I ever got was when I put a huge white rug in my dining room and we were about to adopt a kid, which I don’t think people knew that at the time, but I will say this. We used that same rug. Actually, I don’t think it was the same one. I think it was different ones, but whatever, we had a white rug under our dining room table for three houses in a row. So for like five years and it was fine. So I do stand by that, but I did spot clean it myself, like get down there with the Folex. And so what I would do is put a towel underneath it, spray it with the Folex, get it real wet, let it dry, do all that, all those steps.

Emma: If anything ever got on it, I’ll actually say I kind of think kids in my experience so far is not as big of a problem as dogs or adults with wine. Dogs has kids. You can put like a mat under their high chair or under their seat. You could kind of like plan for them. They’re going to drop things on the floor and they’re learning to eat, you know, but I feel like it’s pretty easy to catch them. Whereas dogs peeing on rugs randomly or like me tripping and spilling red wine on something you can’t plan for that as easily. And those are the problems.

Elsie: I think that’s true. I have one time in my life spilled a full glass of green smoothie all over a couch and a rug. I just kind of everywhere and that kind of thing happens like once in a while you trip and you’re like, no, I have to just get through it. Ok. So I think, ask yourself, how committed am I to this rug? If you’re very committed, you can do anything like I have right now on my stairs, an almost white stair runner and it’s fine. It’ll be there for years. It looks still really good. And I do kind of actually have some texture to it though and some design to it.

Emma: I will say that if you get something that’s like a solid, almost like a piece of carpet that’s gonna be more, you know, upkeep and keep it perfect than if it has a slight design to it, like some kind of damask or some kind of, you know, traditional whatever, like you could have anything but that will save you sometimes with a little bit of spots because then you, you don’t notice the spots as much, you can clean it so you make sure it’s clean. But if it doesn’t quite come out, it’s like, well there’s some texture there.

Elsie: So you know, I agree. This is a good point too. With everything in your life, from rugs to clothing, to wallpaper, to like quilts on your bed. There are forgiving patterns and unforgiving patterns. Yep. So, always be aware if you’re choosing something that’s forgiving or unforgiving where, like, if you get like a little stain on it, is it gonna, like, ruin the day or is it going to like, almost not even matter? Like, there, there can be a huge difference. This is what I would say too about like buying rugs, like finding out how committed you are.

Emma: It’s the same thing when you’re buying clothes, if you’re buying like some new tops and they’re all dry clean only and you’re just not a person who goes to the dry cleaner or dry, you know, washes by hand and hang dries or, you know, you’re like, you know what, I’m not gonna do that, then just don’t buy those tops. It’s no big deal. But if you’re a person who will do that, then you don’t really need to criticize your friend who’s buying all this dry clean only stuff because they’re gonna

take it to the dry cleaner or do whatever it is they want to do, they’re into it. So it’s like, great. So just know your level and like other people could have a different level than you and that’s fine. Maybe you will watch closely your rugs and maybe you won’t, so you can buy something different and it’s the same thing, clothes, all my clothes go in our washing machine. I just don’t buy things that are dry clean only because we go to the dry cleaner, like, twice a year. So, it’s not a good idea for me to thine own self pare.

Elsie: Yeah. Know yourself. I love it. Ok. So, all right, let’s talk about size for a moment. Ok. So when you’re determining the size of a rug for a room, like first of all, get out your measuring tape, you’re not doing this without a measuring tape. You’re not guessing. I have seen like the funniest freaking stories if you guess you will be wrong. Ok. I’ll just give you that as a rule and if you accept that as a rule, I’ll save you some trouble. Measuring tapes.

Emma: Don’t cost a lot of money. You should have one in your house. If you don’t own a measuring tape, you should buy one. You can get cute ones. You can get ones that fit on your keychain. They’re going to be small, but I would just just buy a measuring tape measure.

Elsie: I will measure for a freaking bath mat. I promise you. It’s just worth it every single time. And I’ve had, I have returned rugs. It sucks. It’s annoying. You can do it, but it sucks for me. I buy basically every single rug online. I like, I, I just don’t have a place in my town where I find good rugs and, like, it’s, yeah, I’m not going to go to every store to the market or something.

Emma: Like it happened that’s true. Or like, even a garage sale. I’ve had that happen. Oh, my go. Really? It was like, you know, a fancy, you know, just, it worked out. It was like, buy on ebay but to measure.

Elsie: But you still need to. Yes, you do unless you’re just collecting them for fun. Which I had one of those collections in my garage and I had to go away at my last house. I had to let it go. You don’t need a collection of like, 15. You’re a hoarder. So, so, ok, measuring every time this is common sense. But I promise you if you’re like, I think in my bedroom, I think an eight by 10 will be fine. You might be wrong and it’s like one size up might have made it so much better or, you know, you might get it where it’s just barely, barely, too big and then you can’t use it.

Emma: It’s a doorway, weird or something. And you’re like, oh, if I had just gotten one size smaller. Yeah.

Elsie: Yeah. And I have, I have gotten, even last year when we moved, I got some of my rug sizes wrong. It’s just so easy to do. So. Never believe that you can do it without a measuring tape. Ok. So the second thing I would consider is function. So I used to be super, super super into like the fuzzy rugs and I think I just eventually was like, I want something easier. So, and the vintage rugs for me, those are my special something because they are the easiest and they last the longest and they’re just the most durable. They’re easy to clean all of the things. So I would consider the function and just like a couple warnings. So new rugs that are made to look vintage are so easy to find online. You can find them all over Amazon for what seems like a better deal than a real vintage and I get that but be very careful because those rugs are, they’re literally made of plastic and like you cannot clean them. So if your dog has like a accident, your rug just might be ruined forever. Like they’re just kind of the worst. Like that’s my worst experience is I love, I love cheap stuff and I’m, I am a cheap person in some ways but just not about rugs. I just think like spend a tiny bit extra and get the real vintage and you’ll save yourself so much, you know, like waste cause it’s, it’s sad to throw away a rug to throw away a big huge rug that’s like has one stain on it.

Emma: It just makes you feel so bad, especially if you haven’t had it that long and it can be kind of a whole thing, like, in some areas it’s not necessarily, like, easy. It’s not like your trash person will pick it up. So you have to figure out how to take it to, you know, some kind of facility or, I don’t know, there’s just like, problems there. So it could be, it could be a whole chore that’s going to take up a chunk of your weekend when you could be doing something fun.

Elsie: Yeah.It’s like my one thing I could boycott forever is like a plastic, synthetic rugs. Then the next thing to consider is durability. So let’s talk about Jute rugs for a moment. I have been like, I love jute rugs. I think they’re so cute. They come in cute patterns. They have those ones on Etsy with the scalloped edges. I fall for them every time and I do think that Jute rugs are good for some situations but like huge caveat, they are not durable.They don’t recover from a stain. Well, and they’re not good for high traffic situations and I don’t recommend them outdoors because they can get easily ruined by getting wet or mud or something. If they don’t, they take a long time to dry out.

Emma: Yeah. So then I think they can get kind of mildewy or like, you know, just not great for them.

Elsie: I love how they look though. And they’re also really, really affordable. So I have had good experience with them in a sun room place like that where there’s like, lower traffic. Yeah, it’ll be great. But for an outdoor rug, maybe I should link my poor drugs this time. I found like the greatest poor drugs this time. They are cute. They kind of look like you but they’re not, they’re just easier to clean and they are synthetic for sure.But they’re, they’re the right thing for the right place. So, yeah, I’ll link to those. Yeah. Durability is a huge thing that it’s really hard. Like I had this amazing rug at our pink house and Emma’s dog. Yeah. Any. Anyway, it was so sad. We tried, we tried everything, we tried fluxing it so many times that I accidentally damaged the wood floors underneath. Oh, it’s so much worse than just getting rid of it. So, anyway. I don’t know if I’m even making points here or am I just telling stories about the rugs I’ve bought, I don’t see how that’s not points.

Emma

Ok.

Elsie: All right. Let’s keep going. What’s next? Where do you like to buy rugs from?

Emma: So, we’ve kind of talked about Elsie hates synthetic. I do own a few synthetics in my home. But, you know, I agree with her point how they get ruined and it can just be more waste. But I also can understand if you already own some and you’re just going to keep them until they die. I get it because I’m doing the same thing. So, anyway, but where do you like to buy rugs from? There’s all sorts of options. We’ve already mentioned that we buy most of our rugs online. So where do we buy?

Elsie: So, for vintage rugs and search by color and size, I buy them almost always on Etsy and ebay, it’s very easy. My most common search term that I use is Turkish Ruck. And so I’ll just put like pink Turkish rug or neutral Turkish rug. And then I’ll put in like the size and I think if you just put like eight by 10 or nine by 12 or whatever, then you’ll get other sizes like it kind of knows like it won’t always only give you that exact size.

Emma: Yeah, it’ll give you, yeah, close to it.

Elsie: Yeah, with runners you often need to pay attention because sometimes they’re, they’re not all the same width. So be careful with that. But I like mixed match or mixing and matching runners. I have a lot in my house. They’re all different. I like the feeling of that and I think that it’s like a good vibe. And then also I have to recommend my friend’s store in Nashville called Apple and Oak. She sells vintage rugs. She sells mostly Turkish a little bit of Moroccan. She also sells new rugs and the thing I love about her, she has a beautiful shop in East Nashville. If you’re in the area, you have to go. It has other like, gifty stuff. It’s really cute. And also if you’re furnishing a new house, she will like, bring rugs to your house, like she’ll bring a large, yeah, like a bunch for you to try. I did that in my first house and it was so great with vintage. I think it’s such an opportunity when you can try it out because a lot of times it’s non refundable and that’s understandable. But then you have to be really careful and really confident about like, you know, buying from ebay, especially the pictures are sometimes not the best. So every once in a while you just like get a bad one. That’s not what you thought. Yeah, the coloring is kind of off or I don’t know, like the, I think most sellers will show you if there’s like a spot that’s kind of messed up but not great.

Emma: But sometimes it’s worse than you could tell from the photo. Wasn’t that they were being deceitful, just didn’t quite translate. And so that’s always a bummer when you’re like, well, I’m stuck with this now. How can I hide this under some furniture?

Elsie: Yeah, I would honestly say like vintage rugs are most of the time, the same price are less than a new rug and higher quality. So I highly recommend it. I think it’s worth the risk. It’s worth the extra work. Ok. But if you want to get new rugs, I will give you my new rug recommendation. I get it. Sometimes you just want something affordable. Sometimes you just want the same rug in two sizes, things like that.

Ok. So I love the rugs on rifle. I have a bunch of them. They do have wool and synthetic rugs. They have these ones that are called printed rugs. They make really good bathroom rugs because they look like a vintage drug. But it’s kind of just like a flat printed matte. They’re very affordable and they’re just, like, good for places where, I don’t know, you like an entryway, like high traffic places where something could get ruined. And then I will link to my porch, my magical porch rugs. They’re brown and like, sort of like a brown and tan diamond pattern. And they’re just like, really great for a porch specifically. They’re the best porch rug I’ve ever had. Is there any other rugs you think we should talk about?

Emma: I’ve bought a lot of rugs if we’re talking about new rugs and, you know, affordable options and easy to shop. I really like rugs. USA, I’ve shopped there a lot of times and I’ve never been disappointed. I’ve always got what I bought. Yeah. And I think it, if there’s a lot of jute and they have, you know, obviously synthetic ones, but they also have some natural fiber ones. You can look, but sometimes you like, are looking for just a specific color and a specific size and you don’t really like ebay is not doing it for you. So I feel like it’s kind of nice to shop on a site that’s like, ok, they’re going to have all the sizes and all the colors and I can get something that’s going to work for my space and be done with this, you know?

Elsie: Ok. And then a couple of times in my life, I’ve got a dream rug, so I guess I could talk about the dream rug. Yeah, I got a Jonathan Adler rug whenever I was in my new money era, that was like a bunch of Jonathan Adler stuff.

Emma: That’s what she wanted to do.

Elsie: It was a magical time. I had to leave that one when we sold our house furnished last year and I would still buy that rug again. It has kind of like a maize pattern. It was like a wool rug, but with kind of this subtle maize pattern, it was really unique. And then also from Laloy rugs, I’ve had a couple of their Hye rug collection and those ones are really nice. If you just want a fuzzy, neutral, fuzzy rug. I do. I love the fuzzy rugs in our house. Now, that’s more historical. I’m not as much getting fuzzy rugs but for any other style of house, I think that they are so cute. So, anyway, those are my dream rugs and then I have this one Etsy rug that is like, it’s up in our kids bedroom. Have you seen that one? Oh, no, it’s a 10, it’s a 10 out of 10 and it comes in different sizes. If it’s still there, I will link to it as well. But anyway, overall, most of my favorite rugs in my life were vintage or a rifle, which is so funny. Like, I don’t because rifle is not, it’s a paper place with like stationery gift wrap and stuff. But I don’t know why they have the greatest drugs. Like they are, it’s beautiful for me. 

So next step, well, we’ve talked a little bit about some tips for cleaning, but let’s just do a whole section.

Emma: Now that’s like tips for cleaning rugs or like ways people can preserve rugs because we’re kind of talking about rugs, like you’re going to buy it and you’re going to keep it for a long, long time, which I think is the way to go. Like, spend a little more, keep it much longer. It’s less wasteful. It’s kind of just less shopping.

Like it’s nice. Nor do we, like, change a rug. It is annoying. It’s so annoying. So how do we keep them clean? Because, you know, most people have pets, kids, they spill things, whatever you walk on them. It, you know, you have guests over and someone tracks in some mud, whatever. So how do we keep our rugs clean?

Elsie: Ok. So if you are a shoes on household, I would just recommend vacuuming a lot more than other people. Just vacuuming those paths around like a TV, dining room table entryway, like stair runner. If you have it, things like that just need to be vacuumed way more because there’s always like little bits of stuff from the outdoors getting pushed into the carpet rugs.

Emma: And here’s a tip on vacuuming whenever I’m about to vacuum all the rugs in our home, which we don’t have tons of rugs. But when I’m about to, I will go throughout the house and Sprinkle baking soda on the rolls. Baking soda is probably most of, you know, is kind of an air freshener. It will absorb smells like I put a bowl of baking soda in my fridge all the time. There’s always one in there and I’ll change it out periodically because it kind of absorbs it, like suck in all the garlic smells and whatever else. So I’ll Sprinkle that on rugs throughout the house so that it gets to sit for like 30 minutes an hour or whatever. You know, it doesn’t sit for days because again, I have kids and pets and, you know, you don’t necessarily want baking soda just sitting on the floor forever, but I’ll Sprinkle it out on all of them and then I’ll start at the beginning again and vacuum it up. So I’m vacuuming the rug anyway. So it’s a really barely an extra step and it can kind of help to freshen any smells. Nice, soak, mud, pets, whatever. We have a lot of dog hair in our house.

Elsie: That’s a great tip.

Emma: It’s cheap. You probably already have baking soda in your house. 

Elsie: Ok. So spot cleaning, spot cleaning is like your best friend if you have large rugs that are made of natural fibers. So I had this one time when I fex too hard and I damaged, we had like super light wood floors underneath and it got like a dark spot and I’m like, it’s fun because it’s under a place where a rug will probably always go.

But I’m still mad at myself about it. So my tip for that is to put a towel underneath while you’re doing all the fixing because sometimes it takes many rounds like this rug was not recoverable, which I didn’t know. So I was, I was going, she was really trying to say that really hard and I’ve had that before. Also, we had a carpeted room in our last home that it was like in the movie theater and one of the dogs did something horrific and it came out with Folex, but I was working on it for like a week.

Emma: Folex is kind of a miracle, but it sometimes will take a few rounds. It depends what has happened.

Elsie: It’s worth it though.

Emma: Yeah, I’ll also say outdoor rugs and some certain types of synthetic rugs. Now, you have to plan for a sunny day, but you can power wash them. That’s true. Take them outside and if you have a power washer or if you’re renting a power washer and doing your whole outside or whatever, you can power wash your rug and then kind of place it somewhere or hang it somewhere is more ideal in the sun and it’s not going to rain for a few days and let it dry out in the sun.

Elsie: Now, let’s talk about cleaning your rug outdoors. So I mentioned before you can do the bath, the bathtub. That’s kind of annoying though because then you still have to get it out of the house afterward if the rug is bigger than you, once it gets bigger than you.

Emma: So if you have a way, if you have a big plastic tub or something that you can take outdoors and just fill that up swimming pool or if you have a little soaking pool yourself, it’s always an option.

Elsie: A lot of times. Colin and I did this several times when we were, I just like, I’m very committed to my rugs. Ok. So a couple of times it wasn’t necessarily a power washer, but we would use like the hose attachment. Yeah, like the spray part of a hose was perfect strength for like the big white rugs for shampooing it really good. Really? Get it in there because you want to get all of the, I’m talking about, you want to get everything out right? And then spray the sh*t out of it and let it, you know, drip, dry, drip, dry, drip dry and then, yeah, like, leave it out there for as long as it takes a day or two and let it dry before you bring it back. You could blow dry it.

Emma: But it’s going to take a long time. So I think it’s, I could, but I wouldn’t blow dry a rug. It would take so long. I don’t even blow dry my hair for me, just like, hang it over the side of your porch, do whatever you have to do and it is worth it, I think.

Elsie: Ok. So, Emma and I have had different experiences on rug cleaning services. I think you said you had a good, or was that your couch?

Yeah.

Emma: It’s called Missouri Rug. If you’re in Springfield, Missouri or nearby. And they will do rugs obviously, but also furniture. So they’ll take your couch, like, take it away, clean it, bring it back and I’ve had great experiences with them.

Elsie: So I’ve had a couple of times where I took a rug and it still came back, still smelling bad. So I don’t trust the rug cleaning services. I would prefer to just do my own Diy rug cleaning. But, you know, maybe it’s probably a case by case basis, I would swear that they just didn’t even clean it. Like, it just smelled exactly the same when they brought it back. So, maybe it was, maybe they just lied. Maybe they forgot. I don’t know. That’s weird. Anyway, that’s all my tips for rug cleaning. Just when you buy it, think about how you’ll clean it and expect that that will be necessary at some point. So that you don’t have to beat yourself up. You know, because like spilling a glass of wine or a green smoothie or having dogs that just do dog things or Children, you know, it’s, it’s a part of life that’s obviously like 10,000% worth it. But I think having a plan, it’s so frustrating to throw away a giant rug. I have not been more mad than almost anything when I had to throw away that big giant. You know that, so our favorite rugs for me 1000% it’s vintage and my number one is Turkish rugs. So Turkish rugs are what you usually see. Like almost all of my rugs in my house, the traditional looking ornate rugs and they come in a lot of different colors. Like they have really light ones that look more boho, they have dark navy and red ones that look more traditional. So, yeah, that’s a good, a good time. I also love Swedish rugs. And there’s lots of other styles that are good as Well, most of my favorites are from ebay and they’re Turkish.

Emma: I don’t go for the fluffy ones quite as much, which tend to be more Moroccan because they just, I don’t know, I think I’m not quite on the commitment level to giving them a bath as much as much. So, a lot of mine are Turkish and most of them are from ebay. But I have this pink one that’s currently in our bedroom. It used to be in our kitchen now it’s in our bedroom and I have this really colorful one that I recently got like in the last three months. That’s in this little library room. I think I put one photo of it like in my Instagram when I was showing the book remarkably bright creatures, you can see it behind it. Ok. It’s really cute. It reminds me of this rug I had years and years ago. So I think I do gravitate towards these certain colorful rugs, but they don’t fit everywhere in my home. So when I have a spot that’s kind of like tucked away or just for me, that’s always what I gravitate towards.

And we have this ongoing thing in our household where my husband doesn’t love rugs. I think in part because it is kind of like upkeep, you got to clean them all the time or they look dingy and then also like they can be a bit of a tripping hazard or just annoying in some ways.

Elsie: Let’s give tips for that.

Emma: Yeah, on tripping hazards. So, for me, we’ve kind of just gotten to a place where, like the areas of our home that are super high traffic, like our kitchen, we don’t have a rug in there. We just don’t. And it honestly, it would be beautiful to have one, but also it is so easy for me to just sweep and swiffer in there that I kind of don’t mind not having one. And we have the era where we’ve got little kids and I’m like, you know what, this is honestly easy and I don’t care. So it’s totally fine by me. But there are areas of our home that are more like my spaces, like my office, my library room, my side of the bedroom and they all have rugs. So we kind of have this mix throughout our house.

Elsie: You have a rug only on your side of the bedroom, it’s only on my side of the bedroom. What I have to see that it’s kind of like how it fit because we have a couch, a love seat over on that side.

Emma: So it kind of is like in the love seat area, but that happens to be like the side I sleep on. So anyway, yeah, it’s kind of funny but I have another friend. I won’t out her but her husband’s the same way. Like she loves rugs. He doesn’t. So it’s just kind of a mix, you know, it’s just kind of how it goes. You got to find your way with whoever you live with. Yeah, everyone’s got to love their space.

Elsie: Must love dogs. Must love rugs.

Emma: But let’s give tips about tripping over rugs because that can be a thing, especially vintage rugs or rugs with the tassels I think can cause kind of issues.

Elsie: Ok. So my first tip, this is obvious, but just in case like a quality rug pad. So if you don’t have a rug pad, that’s the problem. Like rug pads are super important, they can hold your rug in place pretty well. And like there’s, there’s better and worse ones. So ones that have a little more thickness I think are, but still that rubbery plastic texture is my favorite kind.

Emma: It’s kind of grippy. It’s almost like the kind of stuff you use when you’re opening a jar and you have, we can put links to this stuff and then there’s like the stickers that you can put in the corners of the rug.

Elsie: So I have had floor damage from them. So I’m on the fence with them and I know a lot of people say they don’t cause floor damage, but they did for me in my mcmansion strips, it usually doesn’t strips. It’s a love and hate relationship. But I think if you’re in a situation where your floors either aren’t brand new or they’re a little more worn in or you don’t care or maybe you’ll just get lucky and you won’t have any. The thing that’s cool about them is when you have the edge that flips, it fixes that and the edge that flips is a kind of a hard problem to solve it.

Emma: Kind of is, it’s almost like you’re setting heavy stuff on it all the time, but then you’re tripping over the heavy thing. You know what I mean? Like, it’s just weird, like, you fold it back and try to get it to say, but then it’ll curl back up for some reason and you’re like, dang it.

Elsie: Ok. And then the third tip I have is for, this is like a little more extreme. But I also think it’s for me, maybe I’m more comfortable with this than with the stickers now. But on my porch rug they flip up bad. Like, we live in a very windy place and I just humid too, which can really, and they’re just flipped up. We’re kicking down the edge of a rug every day. Absolutely constantly. So I decided that I’m going to screw them down on every corner and I wouldn’t probably do that in the house, but I probably would in a carpeted room. I think that it just depends on what your surface is underneath and how forgiving. Yeah. For, for the porch, for me, I’d rather have one hole than potentially use the stickers and like, I feel like they could cause more damage. So anyway, yeah, I’m gonna screw them down. I think it’ll be probably like, super worth it. I like it. Cool. I guess that’s all of our rug stuff. So hopefully this was encouraging, like, I guess I just want to reiterate like we know rugs can be expensive and don’t think that we’re just saying get the most expensive rug. I’m saying like balance, think about the factor of the price, the size and the durability. Think about all three of those things. Not just one is my advice.

Emma: If you’re moving into a new home and you came from a smaller space and you’re needing like basically a lot of rugs don’t be afraid to just like do that over time so that you can spread out the cost if you’re wanting to get rugs that are going to last to like help with waste and just get things that you’re going to be really happy with. It’s ok to have a room that doesn’t have a rug for a while.

Elsie: I agree. It’s not a big deal like it’s easier to clean in some ways.

Emma: So just, you know, think about it and you’ll find the perfect one for. You. Keep shopping on ebay and Etsy, you’ll find it. You know, I would say it’s better to wait and get one that you love that you’re going to keep, than to get something that’s filling a space that you’re not going to throw away after a year and it’s going to be a whole hassle and it’s just waste and, you know, there’s no point just leave it with no rug for a while.

Elsie: Yeah. I hope this was helpful. and yeah, we can’t wait to see, send us pictures of your rugs. I am an enthusiast for it. I think it’s such a fun subject and it’s like a thing that makes house feel like a home.

Emma: It’s cozy. Ok, let’s do. We’re going to do a sparks joy segment. So do you have anything that’s been sparking joy for you lately?

Elsie: I do. So I have been getting my home ready for the historic home tours in three weeks from now and I am really working.

Emma: I can’t wait to come and troll. You’re going to come to my house for real.

Elsie: Yeah, I knew you got tickets loudly. I didn’t think I thought you were going to go to the other ones. I’m going to go to all of them. Well, I can’t wait to hear your comments. That’ll be great. So in my office are on my desk or like I got this. So I got this vintage roll top desk. It’s my special someone. It’s spooky, it’s spooky, it’s haunted. It sort of has secret compartments. It’s magical. And anyway, the top of it, I have covered it in little tiny gold frames they’re pretty easy to find. So, my idea was that I would sort of like, get some antique ones when I come upon them. But that’s hard to do. And I’ll probably, like, put those up front and then I got quite a few from places like Amazon. I got a few from anthropology, just like, you know, regular places like that just to like dollar tree. Just kidding. I would though if they had them. I don’t know. So it’s just, it’s just lots and lots of tiny gold frames and the size is probably like two by three for the smaller ones and then four by six ish, somewhere in that range. And yeah, the thing I love about it is it’s just like, it looks like this, like beautiful collection.It’s a way to put family photos because I’m kind of like, I like putting family photos up in the house and I want to, but I don’t want them to be cheesy. Like I feel like it has to be like a certain way for me to accept.

Emma: You have a lot more art on your walls too so it can be hard to mix in a way. So it’s almost like you need other little spots for them.

Elsie: In my office it felt like the right spot. So anyway, tiny gold frames all linked to some of them and they are definitely sparking joy for me just because it’s like the easiest way to put a bunch of memories with my kids somewhere where I’ll see them every day.

No, I love it.

Emma: I’ve seen people, the smaller ones too, they’re like two by three. They might even make smaller sizes. I don’t know. People will use them on their Christmas tree. Just add a hanger or ribbon. 

Elsie: That’s right. And have, like, family photos or vintage photos or even like little one of those trees.Remember?

Emma: Yeah, they’re really cute. I think Claire has one too. Oh, cute. Yeah, I think you both did it, but I can’t remember now. I’d have to go check. But anyway, cute.

Emma: Well, for me, sparks joy. Have you had Domino’s Pan pizza before? Oh my God.

Elsie: I can’t believe you’re saying this. Go on, go on, sell it card.

Emma: So this is not sponsored. This is just for free. So we are a Domino’s Pizza delivery household.

Elsie: I feel like everyone has their place. I am like anti Domino’s and Emma is anti Papa John’s.

Elsie: Yeah. No, I’m like, I’m a Pizza Hut. I like pizza. I have to get one of the big three and it’s Pizza Hut for me.

Emma: Pizza Hut’s my number two, we love Pizza Hut, but Domino’s are number one and Pizza Hut’s number two. Papa John’s is a never, so they’ll never sponsor us now and I’m fine with that because I’m not a fan. So anyway, so we always get hand toss and the other night I was like, really in the mood to order a pizza. Oscar was already in bed. Trey didn’t want pizza. I’m pregnant though. So I was like, I’m ordering a pizza and I was like, I’ve never had their pan pizza. I wonder if it’s like the Pizza Hut pan pizza, which is like a little crispy on the bottom part of our childhood.

Oh, it’s a big part of our childhood. So, I was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna take a chance here and not get the hand toss. It was amazing. It was so good. It was a lot like the Pizza Hut Pan pizza. Yeah. And it was almost like, it’s not as good as our Detroit style pizza on our blog. But I was not making pizza. I was in the mood to just order it and take a shower and wait for it to get to my house.

Elsie: Oh, my gosh.

Emma: It was very good though. So it sparked joy.

Elsie: No, that sounds good. I have some pizza woes in our moving to our hometown. I miss my Nashville pizza.

Emma: We don’t have a lot of pizza in Springfield and it’s hard.

Elsie: It’s hard.

Emma: We only have the big chains really.

Elsie: And then we have a cute little spot in our neighborhood, but it’s like a mood food so it’s like a once a season thing for me.

Emma: There’s a pizza downtown, but they only do it from 6 to 9. Like twice a week, I think on the weekends I’m never out the other night I was finally out, but it was almost nine. So I was like, they’re going to be sold out. I’m not going to be able to get it. So it’s, you know, sad. So, pizza is tough around here. But anyway, Domino’s pan pizza.

Elsie: Two thumbs up for me. That’s the funniest thing you’ve ever said. And I love it.

Emma: I honestly though I do look, man, sometimes I try to be cool, but other times I’m just gonna be real.

Elsie: Yeah, I respect that. Ok. It’s time for a Nova segment. All right, Nova. What do you have for us this week? 

Nova: A joke. What kind of key opens up a banana?  A monkey.

Elsie: Love it. That was good. 

Nova: Bye. 

Elsie: Thank you so much for listening. You can submit your questions at podcast@abeautifulmess.com or call our voicemail at 4178930011. We’ll be back next week with an episode all about our experience with Created Colorful.

Update: The book is now available as an audiobook as well! You can find it on Audible as well as iTunes.

You have no idea how much excitement and anxiety I have living inside me right now as I type those words. I wanted to create a mini bonus episode for our podcast listeners so they could be the first to know. And I’m sharing all the details and links I have, as well as reading Chapter 1 in the episode.

You can stream the episode here on the blog or on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, and Stitcher. You can find the podcast posts archive here.

Show Notes:

What is the book about?

Handmade Murder is my first, self-published novel. It’s a dark and twisty thriller and if you listen to murder podcasts (like me) you will probably love it. Here’s the description you can find on the back of the book:

What if a villain believes they are a hero?

Our addiction to social media has created a new version of fame. And lurking beneath the surface of beautiful, polished social media accounts is a community being targeted by a killer.

Ela’s life is falling apart after she experiences a miscarriage. Her marriage dissolves while the rest of her life feels on hold. In order to deal with the grief and guilt from losing the pregnancy, Ela spends a lot of time on her phone. And the more time she spends online, the more her new identity begins to take shape.

Rosie has found a new group of friends, other women who also make their living online. She cares deeply for this group, and they are the first non-family members she tells about her new adventure—she’s pregnant! Through her connections and a chance encounter with a famous podcast host, Joan of This Is Now, Rosie and her friends begin to notice a bizarre trend among their influencer community. While it’s estimated up to 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, the stats seem to be much, much higher in their industry. And they soon discover many of the women have an eerily similar story.

Joan and Rosie race to find out who or what is behind these seemingly connected tragedies. But can they uncover the truth before it happens again?

Handmade Murder, is a fast-paced thriller that begs the question: Can you be a serial killer if your victims aren’t born yet?

What versions are available?

Handmade Murder is available in paperback, hardcover, electronic for eReaders and now as an audio book too!

Note: The hardcover version that is available on Amazon currently is the design printed on the cover (no dust jacket). The only way to get a hardcover with dust jacket version is through a Ingram Spark source (so, other than Amazon).

Where is it available?

Amazon / Audible – You can purchase any of the versions here. It’s available in many territories outside of the United States as well, so if you have Amazon check and you will likely find it.

Ingram Spark – I have also listed the book here. This means you will likely be able to request the book from your favorite independent bookstore or libraries.

Barnes & Noble

Target

Walmart

Pagination Bookshop – my favorite local bookstore in SGF where I live, they ship!

And my novel is available at many libraries and more independent bookstores across the US and even some worldwide. Check wherever you love to get books from because it *might* be there.

How can I support your book?

Obviously buying (or requesting from your library) is support, also buying it as a gift to friends. Also, tell friends who love to read about it—this really does make a difference.

And last, please leave me a review! This helps my book become more visible to other readers. So far I’ve seen hundreds of reviews online mostly on Amazon and GoodReads. Thank you!!! This truly has meant so much to me!

You can find the podcast posts archive here.

A big thank you to our sponsors! Check out the offers from Indeed, LMNT, Posh Peanut, and Honeylove.

And if you’re looking for a specific code you heard on the podcast, you can see a full list on this page!

Show Notes:

Decor inspiration:

Nothing they would use in their own house

Donna’s Villa (before and after renovations) – Beachy vibe, love a good renovation, lots of blue, and it’s an indoor/outdoor house

Other cozy inspiration:

Greece – beautiful location, love Greek food, and can’t wait to take a vacation there

Love the vibe of a single mom taking care of things around the house

Rate this movie from 0 to 5 Dads:

Elsie – 10

Emma – 5

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #229: Recipes We Make at Home
• Episode #228: Listener Questions – Sister Edition
• Episode #227: Collecting Art

Episode 230 Transcript:

Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen. Today we are rewatching Mamma Mia and Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again, starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried. I’m so excited. I love these movies. So like when my children were toddlers, this was our ultimate comfort movie that we put on all the time. And it was specifically Here We Go Again. We watched that one way more, but we watched them both. And it is so joyful. Like, there’s just nothing else like it in cinema. I will stand by that. There’s nothing else like it. There’s only one ABBA musical. 

Emma: Musicals will always have a special place in my heart. And this one in particular is they’re just like, we’re doing a musical. Like, they’re like, we don’t care. We’re doing the musical. And I’m like, yeah. And there’s honestly a lot of people in these movies that I’d never, I didn’t know they had ever done a musical. I didn’t know they sang and dance. 

Elsie: Right. We were watching it the other day and we both said, this looks like the most fun you could ever have as an actor, like it just looks so incredibly fun.The dance numbers they have, the sets, the costumes. There was like, there was one we were watching where they were like, there was like three or four boats full of people and there was like a dock full of people and it was like everyone was dancing in sync. 

Emma: You’re kind of on the beach all day dancing. I’m sure it’s hot. I’m sure there’s things that are not fun about it, but It looked pretty. It was amazing. It looks pretty fun. So it’s a comfort rewatch from your girls toddler hoods. . For me, I actually hadn’t seen the movies before but I’d seen the play, the Mamma Mia play. I had a friend who was in like our local community theater, it’s called Landers Theater, Springfield Little Theater. He was in it and so me and a few friends went and saw him in it and so I’d seen the play, so I know the songs. I think you kind of know the songs even if you’ve never seen the movie or the play, like they’re very famous, but I had never seen the movie and so there just kept being people that I was like, oh, he’s in this. Oh, she’s in this. Oh, wow, Meryl Streep’s great in this. I just was like, odd as I was watching it by myself at night. 

Elsie: Yeah, it just reminds you that every actor has a theater nerd living inside of them. No matter how cool.

Emma: You’re like, oh, this is like a serious actor, does all these like very serious roles. And then all of a sudden they have like their shirt half unbuttoned and they’re dancing and you’re like, okay, they’re just a theater nerd. I love it. 

Elsie: It’s beautiful. Okay. So describe these movies for anyone who hasn’t watched, which if you haven’t watched, we beg of you, you should. These are highly recommended from us.  It’s just like two joyful movies in a row. 

Emma: You will want to take a vacation though. I was immediately like, oh, I need a summer vacation. It’s not in the cards for me, but I was like, oh, really. I haven’t even ever been to Greece. 

Elsie: Me neither. I know. 

Emma: So anyway, both movies are set in colorful Greek Island and the plot, it’s kind of a background for just hearing cool ABBA songs. So, in the first movie, a young woman is getting married, and she doesn’t know who her father is. And so she’s read through her mother’s diaries, and she kind of discovers that there are three possibilities of who might be her father. 

Elsie: Dot, dot, dot.

Emma: Dot, dot, dot. So she invites them all to her wedding without telling her mother. And that’s kind of the premise. And then throughout the movie, they have moments where she’s like, oh, maybe it’s this guy. Wait, no, maybe it’s this guy. And everyone’s trying to figure out why they’re on the island, why they’ve been invited. And it’s really funny and fun. And it’s hilarious to me that you watch this with your girls as toddlers, but of course, all of that’s very over their heads. 

Elsie: Well, and to be fair, we mostly fast forward to the songs. And we’ve always been an ABBA family, so it’s just like very familiar songs. It’s just a movie version of very familiar songs.

Emma: Yeah, and I will say for like a movie that’s, you know, been around for some time, I think it’s pretty sex positive. It doesn’t really go into shaming her. She has a moment where she’s like, my mom would have thought I was, you know, that kind of thing or whatever. 

Elsie: I agree. I think it’s pretty positive. I think the premise is hilarious. It’s awesome. It’s basically like three days, three boyfriends, and I don’t know who the father is. 

Emma: It was over two months. There’s one in one month in the diary. And then there were two gentlemen in the next month and I think that makes sense when you’re in your early 20s. That can happen, that makes sense to me. 

Elsie: Yeah, okay. I misunderstood it because in the second movie it kind of makes it seem like it’s just like BAM BAM BAM. But anyway, I think it’s wonderful. My eight year old was asking some questions. I think it’s like a curious little premise and a fun way to learn. Let’s leave it at that. 

Emma: It’s a very fun way to learn.

Elsie: Yeah. 

Emma: Okay, and then the sequel, do you want to tell them what the sequel’s about? 

Elsie: Okay, so in the sequel, we get to see Donna’s life when she was younger. So I like the sequel because it has two sets of actors, like the older actors return and they’re all in it again, but then there’s also a younger set of flashback actors. So it just gives them more to work with. And like, they’re all like really amazing performers. Okay. So anyway, Sophie, she still has the three possible dads. She’s reflecting on her mother’s journey in the second movie. Her mother has passed. So there’s a lot of sad moments where they’re sort of like celebrating her life. And then in the end Sophie discovers she is also expecting a baby as well. That’s pretty much it, right? 10 out of 10, 100 out of 10. I love it. 

Emma: Yeah, and I would say the second movie, the sequel, has maybe more fun costumes. There’s a lot more costume changes. 

Elsie: I feel like they accepted the challenge to outdo the original. And the other thing that’s kind of cool about the second movie is, like, they got to break off the Broadway a little more and just, like, pick random ABBA songs. And just, you know what I mean? It has a lot of fun songs in it. It’s really great. 

Emma: And not to spoil, but Cher’s in it. 

Elsie: Yeah. Cher is amazing. So I made Emma, like, fast forward and watch every song because she hadn’t seen the sequel. And her little son, Oscar, who’s two, watched every single song with us and he was very engaged with it. It was amazing. 

Emma: He was just, like, mesmerized. He never watches musicals. We haven’t really watched any of the Disney movies. Princess ones or any with songs. He just hasn’t been interested. So I think what I needed to do is fast forward to only songs apparently, but I also think he was just like, oh, these people are dancing. And you know, I don’t know. He was into it. I think seeing your girls be so into it too. It was kind of like a moment for him.

Elsie: It’s a sing along to them. 

Emma: Yeah, they were definitely singing and dancing along. It was very cute. I’d be like, I want this song next. 

Elsie: Yeah, that’s true, a little fit. Well, you know, kids. Okay, so memories from when you first watched this movie. So I first watched it when Nova was a toddler. So it wasn’t that long ago. I mean it’s an eternity in parenting, like memories, but it’s a very short amount of time in real life. It’s like a couple years. So yeah, I remember I just like heard about it. And I’ve always loved musicals. Our mom raised us with, like, The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins was, like, a big part of our childhood. So I’ve always had, like, a soft spot for musicals, and I like how, like, unhinged they are, and, you know, just, like, joyful. My husband doesn’t watch them, so I feel like it’s my, like, anti snob thing that I carry the torch for, you know what I’m saying? 

Emma: Plus then once you have toddlers and kids, you have someone to watch with you. Because otherwise you’re just trying to talk someone into it who’s like, I don’t really want to. And you’re like, forget you! I’m gonna find another friend to watch this with me. 

Elsie: And when my kids were little, before they knew about Post Malone, before they knew, like, the stuff they know now, they only knew old music, and I was so proud. And it doesn’t last forever, because you can only shelter your kids from the real world for so long. But they, like, loved Elton John, ABBA, Nancy Sinatra, that’s, like, all the music we listened to when they were really little. So they know all the ABBA songs, and it is definitely, like, a thing I’m still proud of to this day. So my memories are pretty niche cause it’s just like a thing I did with my kids. But yeah, I recommend it because when you’re a parent, you have to rewatch movies. That’s part of the journey. And I’ve watched Frozen and the weird second one and the Christmas one more than I can ever count. And I do honestly love them. I have a soft spot for even stuff I don’t like that the kids watch, but there’s, like, something special when you’re able to, like, convince them to watch something that you’re a little bit interested in, you know? 

Emma: Yeah, it’s a nice feeling. I agree. Because I love cars. But, I’d rather watch Bluey or, you know, some other things. And now I’m like, oh, I gotta try Abba again with him now because he was into it. 

Elsie: Abba is forever. I love it so much. Okay, so decor inspiration. Anything I would use in my own home, not so much, I don’t think, but it’s more just, like, the vibe of Greece. So, the thing I love about it is it is very, like, vacationy, and very beachy, too. Magical, there’s a lot of renovating is one of the themes, because she sort of, like, takes on this rundown. Villa to turn it into kind of a hotel, and then her daughter does it again 25 years in the future. So yeah, I love that. I always love to watch a makeover story in a movie, whether it’s a house or a person or any kind of makeover story is great. 

Emma: Yeah, and there’s a lot of, like, blue, there’s also a lot of, like, colorful tile, there’s even this moment where, like, on the ground there’s, like, this kind of mosaic of, like, a dolphin made out of tile. So there’s a lot of, like, beachy, vacationy vibes, like, I feel like living in the Midwest, we just don’t have houses that feel like there’s ever sand in them, you know what I mean? 

Elsie: True. 

Emma: It’s just not the vibe. And so, it’s fun to see houses or visit places where, like, it’s a very indoor outdoor.

Elsie: That’s true. That’s a thing that people in the U. S. don’t often have, is like an indoor outdoor house situation where you would like leave your doors or windows open all day and I think it’s very magical. 

Emma: Yeah, it is really magical. I think it’s really special for kids, but like, my house is very closed up, like, you know, we don’t have bugs in the house much, and when we do, it’s like, oh no, we’ve left the doors open too long. Whereas in some areas of the world, it’s like a very fluid thing.

Elsie: Emma has permanent trauma from those snakes getting into her house. So, she’s never gonna leave her door open. 

Emma: Among other things. I think I told a story about the raccoon more recently. That’s a wildlife issue, man. But indoor outdoor is not for me. I mean, it’s happening, but I don’t want it. So there’s a lot of that in this, where things look very weathered because you get the vibe that like the windows are open all the time and people track in sand, but you just sweep it out or you rinse it out and that’s another thing is like floors and surfaces. A lot of times, or it’s not that there’s no wood, but there is a lot of tile, a lot of like, it almost looks like plaster walls, but I think it’s more like that one material it’s like lime washy and everything just looks kind of weathered. But like in a really beautiful way. And there’s a lot of blue, which I don’t do a lot of blue in my house. So I really like seeing it because it’s just different and fun. 

Elsie: Yeah. Love it. I can’t wait to visit Greece. It’s definitely on the top of my romantic vacations list where I’d love to go. I’ve heard that it’s hard with kids. Because, like, at least some of the, the popular Greek cities are, like, very vertical. And like, it’s too much, like, stairs and, like, you know, too much climbing. You’d be cantering them a lot. But I don’t know. My kids are getting bigger now, so I think that Maybe even with them. But, I can’t wait to go to Greece. I love Greek food. I think everything about it is intriguing and amazing. But I can’t also pretend, like, I know much about it, because I’ve never been there. It’s just more of a fantasy for me right now than a, than a reality, but I would be curious if you’re, if, if we have any podcast listeners who are from Greece or have been to Greece a lot, or you’re just like, for some reason, an expert, let me know what you think about Mamma Mia movies and like how they, like how accurate it is. I don’t even know if it was filmed in Greece. I know nothing about it. I’m curious. 

Emma: I would love to know. 

Elsie: But I bet it’s probably like a thing that a lot of like Western people know about Greece because they’re, you know, Mamma Mia’s popular. Okay, so the before and after renovations, anything else about it that was just cozy and caught your attention?

Emma: I liked how Donna’s character, which is played by Meryl Streep in the first movie, when we meet her, you know, uh, she’s single, like that’s part of the premise is there’s these three potential fathers and she’s been raising her daughter and running this villa that she’s turned into a kind of Bed and breakfast hotel, but there’s a lot of scenes where she’s like holding a drill and she’s like fixing a window or like, you know, spackling some tile or this or that. And she’s always wearing these cute overalls. I really liked the vibe of basically showing a woman with power tools, taking care of things around her hotel and being like. This would be easier if I had a rich husband like she has a whole song about that, but I’m just doing it myself and it’s like, it was just cool. I like that. I was like, oh, this is fun. 

Elsie: Oh, is it the money, money, money? 

Emma: Yeah, money, money, money. Everyone’s like trying to collect money from her, like all the extras. Yeah, it’s really funny. 

Elsie: Love it. I’m curious how many of our listeners are ABBA fans, but I hope some of you are. Maybe we’ll convert some. Really for me it’s like, the number one thing I love about these movies is the dancing. I’m one of those people that likes to sit there and try to learn the choreography. And like all the motions and stuff. I just love that sort of thing. Just sitting on the couch with your arms up. Just like swaying with them. It’s really, really fun. 

Emma: It’s fun too because you can kind of tell that there’s extras and like certain cast members aren’t extras. They’re like, you know, in the bridal party or in the, you know, whatever. They don’t necessarily have a name, but they’re, they’re in it over and over. So they have a more prominent role and you can tell that they’re dancers and they’re doing basically advanced ballet moves. And then some of the cast, especially like the three dads, I feel like they gave them some fun dance moves, but anyone could do them. You know what I mean?, 

Elsie: Yeah, those are the ones I’m like, I could do this dance. They do a little bit of choreography. It’s beautiful though. It’s awesome, so happy. 

Emma: Yeah. It just has a mix of dance moves in it. Cause there are times you watch a musical and you’re like, Oh, this lead actor is like a dancer. And maybe I didn’t realize that or whatever, but like they’re doing some moves that are serious here. And then sometimes you’ll see a dance and you’re like, that looks fun. They’re having fun. I could do this. 

Elsie: That’s true. No, I get no ballet training required. Okay. So rate this movie from zero to five dads. I mean, I’m going to give it like a 10 out of five because it’s like one of my favorites, it’s my sparks joy movie of a lifetime. There’s probably nothing else that makes me so joyful in my soul. 

Emma: Yeah. I would give it five out of five dads and you know, I can be a little harsh sometimes with story. You’re a less generous critic. But I just feel like they knew the assignment, they nailed the assignment, this movie knows what genre it’s in, and it is doing a great job. And there’s really, like, I feel like anything questionable, I’m doing air quotes about the story, they kind of go with it. And I just think it’s great, and I love all the casting, and I love all the costumes, and it’s just a blast. If you don’t like musicals, especially cheesy musicals, this might not be for you. But I feel like if you just saw the cover of the movie and you didn’t, like, I don’t know, that’s on you a little bit. So, 

Elsie: 5 out of 5 deaths. It advertises accurately. What it is. I think so. You got what you bought. That’s what our dad says. You got what you pawned. Okay, so just like a side note If you’re like me, and you just, like, have a love for the 70s, but you weren’t alive then, and you kind of wish you were, every single Cher movie I’ve ever watched is a 10. Just go on Cher’s IMDB if you just wanna do more stuff in the category of, like, happy joyful kind of unhinged. I don’t know. 

Emma: She has a lot of serious films too. Yeah, like Oscar winner Serious films. Oh, I haven’t seen anything like that. I think she’s in Silkwood with Meryl Streep. She’s in that one with Nicolas Cage,  Moonwalk, moon something. It’s pretty serious. 

Elsie: The ones I’ve seen are mainly, like, The Witches and the mermaids ones. 

Emma: She’s got range. Because in this one, then, she sings. I mean, we all know Cher sings. But, you know, it’s a musical and she’s got kind of wacky outfits and it’s really fun. She does the whole spectrum, man. 

Elsie: I love her. 

Emma: Icon. 

Elsie: Okay, it’s trivia time! You know, we love our trivia. Okay, so, Pierce Brosnan had no idea what the project was about when he signed on, the producers told him that it was being filmed in Greece, and Meryl Streep was starring. Okay, honestly, like That would be enough for me, too. Brosnan said he would have signed on for anything involving Streep, describing her as that gorgeous blonde I fancied terribly in drama school. That’s cute. That is cute. That is adorable, but I think he probably would have still done it, and I’m glad, I’m glad he’s in it. 

Emma: Yeah, he does great. 

Elsie: He’s perfect.

Emma: But he’s definitely one where you’re like, hmm, I wouldn’t have guessed he would want to do this, necessarily. Cause he’s James Bond.

Elsie: Well, I guess they really did film in Greece. 

Emma: Yeah, I guess they did. Or they tricked him. No, I bet they really did. Stellan Skarsgård said, It was absurd to ask me to be in a musical. I can’t sing. I can’t dance. And then I saw it also had Pierce Bronson and Colin Firth, and they can’t sing or dance either, so I felt a little safer there. 

Elsie: That’s good. I think he’s perfect, too. I love all the three dads. The three dads are, like, Oh, yeah, they’re great. They’re iconic, and it makes me love them more when I see them in other movies. Obviously, like, there’s nothing probably in their portfolio that’s quite like this, but I don’t know, I feel like it, like, Gives them this little, like, badge of, like, I’m not a snob, I’m, like, I’m better than that I will, I appreciate. 

Emma: I’m just here to make stuff.  I’m not afraid to look a little silly or, like, do something outside of. Hey. I feel like it’d be nice, too, because I feel like this, uh, actor, Stellan, he plays a lot of bad guys. Mm hmm. Gets cast a lot as a villain. Mm hmm. Or just very serious, maybe he’s not the villain, but a lot of times he is, but he’s very serious. And so I would think it would be kind of a fun little reprieve to get a role where you’re like, I’m gonna play this guy named Bill, and I like fishing, and I like adventure, and I’m singing and dancing, you know?

Elsie: Totally. I love them. While this movie heavily implies but never explicitly reveals who Sophie’s real father is, there is a semi official answer according to screenwriter Katherine Johnson and director Valida Lloyd. Sophie’s real father is Bill Anderson. I did not catch that. Did you catch that? No. I, like, I’m like, why? Because they have blonde hair? Like, why else? 

Emma: That was my guess. And then they kind of have this thing where they mentioned that his mother or grandmother has left the villa to Donna or helped her buy it. And she would only give that away in her will to family. But I’m also like, how would she know? Like, if he doesn’t know, then he’s obviously never taken a paternity test. So how did she know that this was her granddaughter or her, you know, So, I’m not sure, like, it doesn’t totally add up exactly, but there is that kind of clue where you’re like, Oh, okay, his mother grandmother left some money to this family, so she must have thought this was his heir or relative or however you want to call it.

Elsie: Yeah, I mean, I guess if, if you made me pick, I don’t know if I would have gotten that right. So that’s interesting.

Emma: Okay. The young cast did extensive research on their legacy counterparts by studying the first movie and watching countless interviews and other movie footage from their early days. Lily James was a fan of the musical from an early age and stated that she had seen it over 10 times on stage and already knew every moment of the movie adaptation by heart before auditioning. That’s cute. That’s very cute. It’d be so fun to like, be in something that you’re like, I grew up watching this, I’m a huge fangirl, that would be like, such a dream come true.

Elsie: No, it’s ultimate. And you can tell, you can tell that they tried really hard to, like, match the performances. It was great. Dame Julie Walters was given a day off from Shepperton Studios filming in November of 2017 during the taping of the Angel Eyes number, so she could attend an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace where she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire of Queen Elizabeth II. The cast and crew gathered to surprise and welcome Walter’s back while singing There’s Nothing Like a Dame from the musical South Pacific. That’s very sweet. 

Emma: Yeah. I love her. We’re very American, so I’m like, okay, I know kind of what this is. I know that, you know, a dame is like being knighted and the queen gives you this, but I don’t really even have a sense of like how pristine, like what the, you know what I mean? We don’t have anything quite like this. It sounds 

Elsie: It sounds amazing. 

Emma: It does sound amazing. And I understand it’s an honor, but I really don’t understand much else about it to be honest. 

Elsie: I know that she was. The Weasley mom from Harry Potter, so I knew that she was British from that. I think that’s the only fact I know about her.

Emma: The other day, Elsie and I were talking about this movie, and I was convinced that I had just watched the first movie that this wasn’t Julie Walters, this was Tracy Allman, who is like a British American actor, comedy actor. She’s in Curb Your Enthusiasm. She plays Larry David’s girlfriend who he doesn’t really like, and he’s trying to get rid of in the last season. I thought for sure it was her, but it’s not. It’s Julie Walters. Dame Julie Walters. 

Elsie: I knew about it because Nova told me. Nova learned about it on Yoto Dailies. 

Emma: She’s got better information than me. She learns all her facts from that. So yeah, it’s the Weasley mother, which is how I know her because I’m a big Harry Potter fan.

Elsie: Yeah. Don’t start us on Harry Potter. But yeah, it’s cool. British actors are kind of just like in everything. The other day we were watching a British show with a lot of British actors and Jeremy was like, that person’s from Game of Thrones, that person’s from Game of Thrones, that person. And I was like, finally like, Jeremy, listen, like all British actors were in Game of Thrones.

Emma: There’s so many characters in Game of Thrones. They went through everyone. They probably made some new actors just to get enough characters. It’s true. 

Elsie: Okay. Cher handpicked Andy Garcia to play the character Fernando out of a bunch of selected actors. Okay, I love That’s funny. I love the song Fernando, but my kids always make me skip it. It’s their one skip. They’re like, no. They don’t get it, but yeah, I love that song. 

Emma: Andy Garcia is a cool actor too. They’re cute. He’s one of those that has quite the different range. His career has a lot of different roles in it. That’s funny that she, I wonder if she knows him, like if they’ve, they’re friends or I don’t know. I have no idea. 

Elsie: No, but I love her. I know that she’s cool. I know that she’s nice. I, I just know. It’s like, you know, the people that try to always tell me that Martha Stewart’s not nice. I’m like, I know she is so sorry. Sorry, but I just, I just know in my heart that I would love her. I don’t care. 

Emma: I just don’t really, I feel like if you met my grandma on a bad day, I just think maybe be a little more generous. You never know. Anyone’s grandma on a bad day. She’s having a bad day. I don’t know. It could happen. I could see that, so I’m like, well, who knows? 

Elsie: Yeah, I don’t know. 

Emma: Okay, well, that’s all our trivia, so now it’s time for a joke, or a fact, or a meditation with Nova, or possibly Marigold, because she has her own segment now too.

Elsie: Hey Nova, what do you have for us this week? 

Nova: A joke. How do you get an astronaut’s baby to stop crying? 

Elsie: How? 

Nova: You rock it. 

Emma: Woo hoo hoo! That’s a good one. I love it. 

Nova: Bye. 

Elsie: Thank you so much for listening. If you have a comfort rewatch movie you would like for us to talk about, you can submit at podcast@abeautifulmess.com. We’re already taking submissions for our fall and Christmas, because when we get back from Emma’s maternity leave, it’ll be fall. Yeah, it’ll be September already. You can also call our voicemail anytime at 417 893 0011. We will be back next week with an episode all about rugs.

You can find the podcast posts archive here.

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Show Notes:

Dishes for Date Night at Home:

Elsie – Detroit-style pizza and Stuffed crust cast iron pizza

Emma – Air fryer chicken wings with Buffalo sauce, Broil steak, Air fryer steak, Chili and Chicken and rice with cashew chicken sauce or sweet and sour sauce

Holiday Tradition Recipes:

Elsie – Chicken Alfredo, Oatmeal cookie shot, Cinnamon Toast Crunch shot, Sugar cookies, and Gingerbread cookies

Emma – Fresh pasta and casseroles

Sweets + Treats:

Elsie – No bake cookies and Ice cream

Emma – Soft peanut butter cookies and frozen cookies

At-Home Cocktails:

Elsie – Aviation cocktail, Paper plane cocktail, Painkiller cocktail, Jungle bird cocktail, Green tea shot, Old fashioned, and Bee’s knees

Emma – Agroni and Spritz

What Do You Take To a Party?

Elsie – Chex mix and Pitcher mojitos

Emma – Overnight no boil lasagna, Homemade focaccia, Caesar salad with dressing

What Do You Love To Make When Guests Come Over?

Elsie – Sugar cookies, Chili, Cheese boards, Queso, and Chocolate chip cookie dip

Emma – Dips, Salsa, Detroit-style pizza, Oreo dip, Dunkaroo funfetti dip

Breakfast Recipes:

Elsie – Breakfast casserole, French toast casserole, Roasted sweet potatoes, and Air fryer sweet potato

Emma – Tator tot casserole, Biscuits and gravy casserole, and Pancakes

Summer Recipes:

Elsie – 7-layer salad, Creamy pasta salad, Margaritas

Emma – Mango salsa, No bake cookies

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #228: Listener Questions – Sister Edition
• Episode #227: Collecting Art
• Episode #226: Ever After – Comfort Rewatch

Episode 229 Transcript:

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Emma: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast, your cozy comfort listen. Let’s talk about food. So two years ago, we did a cooking episode and a lot has changed since then. So we thought that we would update you on some of our favorite things to cook at home. This is all home cooking. Things we love eating at home, recipe land. 

Elsie: So you guys know, we are in our food blogger era now. If you’ve looked at our website recently, and sometimes people come who haven’t been for a few years, they’re like, wow, that’s a lot of food. And that’s true. It is.

Emma: And a lot of booze. 

Elsie: I am trying to finish our cocktail archive this year. And it’s fun. I love it. 

Emma: Oh, yeah. So much fun. Well, and we have tons of shots too. And one day, we got to photograph all these bomb shots. I think we talked about it a little bit, which if you don’t know, a bomb shot is where you drop a shot into a drink. And they’re really fun to photograph. I was telling Elsie, it reminded me of photographing geysers in Iceland because it’s explodes like the liquid. And I thought it was really pretty and really fun to do.

Elsie: Your photos were really good. Yeah, we still have one more, no two more, that we have to complete. But anyway, it’s been our food blogger era. If you need a recipe, definitely go to A Beautiful Mess now more than ever. It’s definitely like a big variety still. I do think we have a lot of like the most alcohol recipes ever. But that won’t be forever. That’s just what we’re on right now.

Emma: She’s working on her grind.

Elsie: But anyway, yeah, we’re gonna go through all the different categories. Talk about all our favorite recipes, things we like to make at home. Little weird stuff. So if you’re needing some inspiration to spice up your home cooking, this will be a good episode for you. I always need that inspiration.

Emma:I do too. As much as I love cooking, I always get in a rut.

Elsie: It’s probably because we do it professionally now. Because like when you do something professionally, then you don’t do it as much as a hobby. Usually. 

Emma: That’s true. Yeah. Like most of the time when I’ve had friends whose like dad was a chef or things like that, they’re like they never cooked at home. They just made toast because they were tired. They were like I cooked all day, you know? And I’m like, yeah, I can understand that. Mainly, I get sick of doing dishes more than cooking. 

Elsie: The dishes are crazy. 

Emma: The dishes are crazy on the days you’re photographing. Anyway, so we have a bunch of different sections. So we’ll just go through the sections of different things. So first up is dishes for a date night at home. I also think of this as just like, for us, we don’t always eat our dinner with Oscar. We usually eat with Oscar, our son, like we’re eating the same foods as him, but it’s like we have a mini meal and he’s having his meal. And then we have our real meal after he goes to bed.. That’s a lot of what we’re doing, which I don’t know maybe is controversial for parents, whatever. You parent how you want, I’m gonna parent how I want. But I like to eat my real meal after he goes to bed.

Elsie: Yeah, our kids love eating with us around the table, but we don’t do it every night. So I understand. 

Emma: And there’s just some things he doesn’t really want to eat. And also, it takes long enough to cook and his bedtimes at seven. You know, just stuff like that, where you’re like, well you know. So anyway, so these are dishes for just my husband and so we can call it date night at home. But to me, it’s like just a regular Wednesday night where we’re about to turn on Star Trek.

Elsie: Your favorite things to make home. Okay, so I put down I think the pizza recipes are very ultimate. So the Detroit style pizza is my number one. And my number two is the stuffed crust pizza that’s in the cast iron. Those are just like, they’re so good. And you can make them in your oven so anyone can make them. You don’t have like a pizza oven or you know anything special. 

Emma: We do a lot in our airfryer. So we will make chicken wings. And we’ll do different kinds of sauces. I recently did like a homemade buffalo sauce and we’ll use that a lot. So I love chicken wings. And it’s not something we feed our son. I mean, he could eat it, but he’s not really a bones kid. Yeah, so it’s more our thing. And then we do a lot of steak. So when we’re eating it, like just a steak itself, we boil it and I have a blog post about boiling steak. And usually honestly my husband does that and I will make some kind of side like risotto or vegetable side or maybe pasta, whatever. But a lot of times I’ll make steak in the airfryer and we’ll cut it up and we’ll use it as almost like fajita or like toss it into a stir fry. A lot of times it’s like kind of a taco like taco situation. 

Elsie: That sounds good. 

Emma: Yeah, it’s really good. And then my husband actually has special dishes that he does a lot. He’s a big stir fry guy. But his big ones other than the steak, which already mentioned is he makes chili all the time. We kind of have this ongoing thing with the chili because I love chili, but he makes it so often and I never thought about it before. But now that he does it so often, I’m like, oh, I always thought of chili as a fall food. 

Elsie: I think it’s a fall food for me.

Emma:  I didn’t realize how much I attached it to fall.

Elsie: So you guys eat chili all year round? 

Emma: All year round. He made chili this week. He just makes chili all the time and it’s good. It’s the chili that his dad made growing up. He’ll make it with chicken. It is good. It’s not different from the fall, but I am always kind of like, oh chili, I didn’t realize how much this is, I told him I was like, it’s almost like green bean casserole to me where I’m like, it’s not that it’s bad outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I just don’t think to eat it. It’s just to me like a food that you eat at that time of year and I didn’t even register to me how much I thought of chili that way because like a lot of restaurants have chili on the menu all year round. Anyway, I don’t know if you need a 15 minute segment about chili, but my husband makes really good chili, but he makes it all year round. And I’m kind of like oh, I’m a fall chili person. I didn’t even know that until now. We eat it with Fritos. He eats it really healthy and I eat it with lots of cheese and sour cream. That’s our way with that. 

Elsie: Love it. My kids love, this is like I think it’s Midwestern, but at Steak and Shake they make like the spaghetti with chili on top and my kids love it. Chili Mac. They love it. Yeah, it’s thing. I made it at home and it was a hit.

Emma: It’s good. It’s got good flavor. But somehow I’m always like smells like fall now.

Elsie: Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah, I think I’m on your team. I would not make chili. It’s already not the season for me until probably September and then I’ll be like very in the mood again. So I like September through January. I feel like at the Super Bowl is the end of chili season for me.

Emma: Yeah. And then the last thing we’ll make fairly often is essentially it’s like sheet pan chicken like baked chicken, like cut into pieces baked on a sheet pan and rice. Then I have a few different sauces I make. So I have a cashew chicken sauce. It’s on our site. And I have a sweet and sour sauce that I have on our site. Now our towns Springfield, Missouri is kind of known for Chinese food but like Springfield style Chinese food, Google it, it’s a whole thing. So for me, it’s a very like childhood thing. If you go to the restaurants around here though, like the takeout classic ones, it’s like fried chicken, which I love. That’s definitely a guilty pleasure food for me for sure. Eating out is like cashew chicken, Springfield style cashew chicken. But at home, we don’t fry it. We like bake it. It’s not breaded, so it’s a little bit healthier. It just has the sauce and the chicken and the rice and sometimes I’ll steamed broccoli or stir fries and bell peppers or whatever. 

Elsie: Nice. That sounds good.Okay, let’s talk about holiday tradition recipes. So this year after Thanksgiving, it was also Emma’s like hard Thanksgiving because she was pregnant in the sick way. So we had the idea that we might start next year, because she was like eww, making like all these Thanksgivings which I get. When you’re contributing to more than one Thanksgiving and you blog Thanksgiving. It’s just, it’s too much Thanksgiving,

Emma: You’re like how many times can I make green bean casserole before I’m like hey man.

Elsie: So we had the idea that this next year, we might do weird Thanksgiving, try to do some kind of like a themed Thanksgiving or in some way, maybe mix some traditional foods just like the top favorites with like some weird foods that make it more. I like that idea. I feel like that would make it like maybe a little more exciting. 

Emma: I thought we could maybe get Jeremy involved too because he likes to cook like authentic, like spicy Chinese food or like different things like that. He’s had phases. I thought that could be kind of fun. Something like that. This year for Christmas Eve, we did fresh pasta. 

Elsie: It was such a vibe. We were doing like our Nancy Meyers. It was such a vibe. I think I’m gonna do that every year now.

Emma: Yeah. Our brother and his wife they did like this red truffle sauce. We had meatballs. Yeah, I want to do that every year. So I’m like, okay, we kind of already have a little bit of like a pasta Italian theme going for Christmas Eve. So I feel like Thanksgiving needs to be like Chinese or Mexican or something different than that.

Elsie: I like to have Chinese for Thanksgiving. 

Emma: Well i was like, maybe we could do dumplings. I mean, we can buy frozen ones but maybe we could do like kind of like a dim sum type thing or I don’t know. I guess you don’t need to hear us brainstorm our holiday for next year. 

Elsie: The recipe that I’m gonna put down for this one are, we have a chicken alfredo recipe. That’s perfect. It’s like the Nancy Meyers Christmas necessity.

Emma: It’s a great any time of year.

Elsie: Yes. It’s for all year. And then, for just being funny, I think it’s hilarious to have a Christmas shot. And so these are the two I recommend either the oatmeal cookie shot or the Cinnamon Toast Crunch shots. I feel like they’re just like, kind of like vaguely, like cinnamony the oatmeal, you know, just like they kind of taste like that time of year. So either for Thanksgiving or Christmas, do one of those. It’s hilarious. It’s fun. It’s silly. And then the other things that I’m so passionate about are sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies. Now I’m like a little more on team gingerbread cookie, but both of them every year, always and forever. 

Emma: I love it. And yeah, my husband’s family, we’re still going to do a very traditional Thanksgiving. I do love all the traditional foods. It’s just when you cook them four times you’re like okay. We have a pretty epic, in my opinion, casserole archive on A Beautiful Mess. So if you need stuffing, if you need green bean casserole, if you need funeral potatoes, if you need any classic Midwest southern casserole you can think of we probably have a version of it or we will soon. We will next year because I do love making casseroles and I do love eating casseroles. I just don’t really want to make the exact same one four times while I’m nauseous. That was this year, but that won’t be any other year. I’m not doing this pregnancy thing again. This is it. 

Elsie: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Next year, we’ll bring an update back about how weird Thanksgiving turns out because I think it’s a fun aspiration. Okay, what about sweets and treats.

Emma: Sweets and treats, so I’m always in forever a cookie person. We always have frozen cookies in our freezer. So we’ll make like a big batch of something usually the soft peanut butter cookies that I have the recipe on the site. It’s Trey’s favorite. So we make that pretty often. I also have a post on our site that’s like how to freeze cookie dough properly. And basically, it’s you need to freeze it in the balls. That’s the headline, but the tips are, you need a cookie dough baller so you can measure them out because you don’t want a whole bunch of different sizes. Because you’re gonna pull them out of a bag and just bake a couple at a time and you don’t want a giant one and a small one because one is gonna get burnt and one’s gonna be too raw. So you want them to be measured out. And then also you’ll want to set them on some kind of cutting board or baking sheet and pop them in the freezer uncovered for just a little while, like 30 minutes to an hour. Then put them into a Ziploc bag or a reusable bag, however you want to store them. You don’t want to put them in there right away because they’ll stick together and you’ll end up with a big clump of cookie dough. And that’s what you don’t want. Cutting through frozen cookie dough trying to make even balls at that point is not ideal. So you want to freeze them into individual balls that are all the same size. And we always have that in our freezer. And we will bake like one or two at night, most nights honestly. And then also if we have people over randomly or just people over and we’re like hey does someone want some cookies, then we can throw a couple and it’s like 10 minutes and that’s it. So it’s nice. It’s like a great like little hack to always have cookie dough in your freezer. And you can freeze almost any cookie dough. Like any cookie dough that you bake. You can pretty much freeze it. Most of them freeze well. AS far as home cooking goes cookies is where it’s at. 

Elsie: Yeah, I agree. I love learning cookie recipes. I think it’s one of the most fun categories for sure. My husband’s favorite cookies, they’re not my favorite cookies to make but they are so good is no bake cookies. You know they’re not aesthetic.

Emma: It’s probably my favorite cookie to make and eat. But it’s not Trey’s favorite but I make them a lot myself. 

Elsie: Yeah, he loves them and Emma’s recipe is perfect. So definitely try that one. I’m trying to think of what my favorite dessert is. I just want to say, I think I’m just an ice cream person. I think I’m just an ice cream person. Yeah. 

Emma: Ice cream is great. 

Elsie: Yeah. Any kind of ice cream. Okay, so at home cocktails. I have so many notes on this one because it’s my zone for the year. Okay, so for fancy. My top two are the aviation cocktail and the paper plane cocktail. That is if you just want like a cocktail that seems like it’s from a restaurant, like a fancy hipster bar. You will feel that with these and they are so good. 

Emma: I’m a fan of different types of martinis, also playing the dry martini, whatever, but anything in a martini glass, cosmo too.

Elsie: Hell yeah. 

Emma: Cosmo has a few more ingredients though so you have to kind of be prepared but yeah, those are delicious and you really only need one or two and you’re  good. 

Elsie: It’s true. Okay, for tropical I will send you straight to the painkiller. The painkiller is where it’s at. I think it’s the best one. I just like love the nutmeg. The Jungle bird is really good too. 

Emma: I was gonna say jungle birds probably my top but it’s painkillers next. 

Elsie: Yeah. And then for a shot, the green tea shot is everything. It doesn’t taste boozy. It’s sweet. It’s like summery, it’s nice, it’s fun. If you just want to learn like a classic, especially if we’re having like a dinner party or I don’t know, I feel like if you want to like impress someone, I would learn the old fashioned. It’s easier than it looks. I would learn the Boulevardier. I love that one. It’s similar to the old fashion. It’s even a little bit easier. And the bee’s knees I think is the best old fashion like little coupe glass drink and it’s like super simple. It’s like a honey and gin and lemon drink.

Emma: I also love a negroni.

Elsie: That’s all you had to add. 

Emma: Yeah.

Elsie: Negronis are great too. 

Emma: I also really love if we’re taking summer drinks, I love a spritz. So I will buy like the little bottles of Prosecco. Some spritz are made with Prosecco. Some are made with different things. It just depends. But for like a Prosecco, you know, Aperol Spritz. I’ll buy the little bottles because you don’t want to open a whole giant bottle of Prosecco if you’re the only one. I mean, maybe you do. I don’t know but not me.

Elsie: Yeah, like, if you’re not having a party, you probably want to get the small bottles. 

Emma: Yeah, then you can  have one or two.

Elsie: That’s common sense, she’s speaking good judgment there.

Emma: Watch out.

Elsie: By the end of the year, we’ll probably have every popular cocktail recipe on the site. So there really is nothing we don’t have. So if you’re trying to learn something, there’s so many to learn. You’ll have so much fun, just like scroll through.

Emma: I love reading the history of them too nd learning, like where they were made the first time. 

Elsie: The histories are fun. 

Emma: And also, like if you’re missing something like what could you use instead? Like a lot of our recipes will have that. So I don’t know, I think all of that’s like really helpful and just kind of like fun to learn. 

Elsie: Yeah, I agree. 

Emma: And then you look cool when you go on order, because you know, you know what you want.

Elsie: You do look cool. Okay, what do you take to a party?

Emma: Okay, so I wanted to mention this too, as far as like, take to a party, my friends and I we also do a lot of it’s called meal train. I believe it’s a website, mealtrain.com or might be meal-train.com or something. So it’s a way to organize it. But basically, anytime someone has a baby, or if there was a death in the family, or just something going on, where it might be nice to send a friend, sign up and have friends bring them meals. That’s like a thing that me and my friends do. And they all did it for me when I had my last baby. And I’ve done it for lots of friends as they have babies, and also a few deaths in the family, things like that. So I wanted to mention what I always make because I don’t always bring food to a party. It depends on the party. Like if someone’s like asking you to bring something like if it’s a brunch, or if it’s a dinner, but a lot of times people are like you just bring a bottle of wine because people are already doing what they’re doing. But this is like the meal I bring for meal train. So if I’m bringing a friend a meal, this is what I always make. I have this overnight no boil lasagna. It’s really a very simple, basic lasagna, but it’s delicious and it’s very comforting. And it’s on our site. And then I make homemade focaccia which I don’t have a recipe on our site, but I always use the Bon Appetit one. I like use exactly the Bon Appetit one. It’s a great recipes. The way it’s formatted is not my, it’s like a little convoluted in a way but if you’ve never made focaccia before then it has a lot of like videos in it. It’s a great recipe. So I do that. Sometimes I will kind of do my own topping situation because focaccia if you don’t know it’s the one that looks kind of like bubbly. And you can add things like olives or rosemary sprigs, or some people will add like edible flowers. There’s a lot you can do with focaccia, so I will sometimes kind of do some kind of variation. But at any rate, it’s like a giant like nine by thirteen pan of focaccia bread so I’ll make the lasagna I’ll make the focaccia and then I’ll make a simple Caesar salad. And when I say simple I do like to make my own caesar dressing. It’s really good. It’s worth it. It’s not hard, you just throw stuff in a food processor and blend it. That’s all you do. It’s really not a big deal. It does have raw egg yolks so if that freaks you out or if you have a friend who can’t have that maybe do something different. If you can, I think it’s worth it. Fresh caesar dressing is delicious and then you just toss it on, you know any greens you want. A lot of times I’ll do kale partly because it travels better because it’s hearty but I also just really like Caesar kale salad I think it’s really good. So that’s like my meal train meal that I take people all the time and now you know. If you have a baby and you’re my friend you’re getting lasagna.

Elsie: I know I’m like how do I get this meal delivered to me?

Emma: You are going to need someone to die I guess. Adopt another baby.

Elsie: Not happening, unfortunately. Okay, the things I bring are chex mix. You got to get the colors of the M&Ms to the theme. So like, at the Fourth of July family thing, I get the red, white and blue. And at Christmas you get green and red. Halloween orange and black, don’t be messing around. Yeah, you can do like pastels this time of year. I think chex mix with the themed M&Ms, it’s my main thing that I take, which is probably saying a lot about me. And the other thing I think is so great to take is the picture mojito. So just hear me out. Picture cocktails are the perfect party cocktail. Like I just don’t think that people who are hosting can get enough help with that. It’s nice to have something besides wine. So I think pitcher cocktails are like a great thing to take. And then you contributed something and took something else off the hostess plate.

Emma: I love it. 

Elsie: Okay, so what do you make when guests come over? I think that I don’t have like one thing that I usually make so I put sugar cookies. And then just depending on the time of year, either like in the fall time I would do chili, and in the spring and summertime, I would do cheese boards usually.

Emma: No same. It depends if I’m serving a meal, like if we’re just having like, a couple of friends over and we’re all going to sit down have dinner together or if it’s like a bigger party. In that case, it’s probably going to be more like cheese plates and dips. And we have a lot of dips on the site and a lot of really good dips, by the way. Also salsa like mango salsa and a bunch of other ones. So those are all good. But my number one thing to make if my friends eat dairy and gluten, which some people don’t, and some people do, but if they do, then I always make the Detroit style pizza. Which I feel like you mentioned earlier as a favorite at home meal. No one in my family likes pizza. My husband and my son don’t really like pizza. So the Detroit style pizza is a waste on just my family because it’s just me eating it for like three days straight, which I will do. I have no shame. But, you know, it’s like kind of a lot of effort just for yourself. So if I have friends coming over who eat gluten and dairy then I make Detroit style pizza and a big salad.

Elsie: Make that next time I come over, I want it. 

Emma: It’s so good. It’s kind of like focaccia but with pizza on top. It’s very saucy, but not like Chicago style pizza. That’s a whole different thing. To me more like a lasagna or soupy in a way. It’s good, but it’s different. The Detroit style though is my top. 

Elsie: Okay, I have to call out specifically out of the dips, the queso and then the chocolate chip cookie dip. I think those are like my favorite. 

Emma: I make the queso a lot. 

Elsie: The queso, it’s just like classic and it’s good. And like no one doesn’t like queso you know what I mean. And the chocolate chip cookie dip is like a fun. It’s kind of like a kid friendly recipe. It’s good for like a baby shower or like that sort of thing. Like it’s a sweet dip so it’s like don’t make it for your family at home. Make it for a party for sure. 

Emma: It’s nice to have something sweet around and you might not want to like go to the trouble of baking a whole dessert or something. So having a sweet dip is nice. And the cookie dough one is probably my favorite but we also have an Oreo one and there’s a What am I trying to say, not funfetti.

Elsie: Dunkaroo, it’s called Dunkaroo funfetti dip I think.

Emma: That’s what it is and that one’s really good too. It’s very like kid nostalgic. So if you’re wanting like something just to have something sweet around at a party, I think a sweet dip is a really good way to go. 

Elsie: I agree. Okay, so for breakfast recipes. I just have to say Emma has like, she’s like the breakfast casserole queen. So we’ll list them all out on the website or on the show notes and you’ll be like what the hell. She has like so many really, really good breakfast casseroles.

Emma: I get the most compliments on my breakfast casseroles from my father in law too, which means a lot to me. He’s a very complimentary man like I think he would complement anything I would make but I can tell that my breakfast casseroles, the tater tot casserole and the biscuits and gravy casserole in particular he loves. He’ll come over for Christmas or whatever and have seconds and I’m like Bill’s loving it. Five stars from Bill and it means a lot ot me.

Elsie: Let’s try to remember there’s one just called breakfast casserole. There’s one called french toast casserole.

Emma: Tatertot one is actually, it’s not technically a breakfast. Like you could do it for dinner too. If you wanted. I just usually serve it as a breakfast casserole. It’s really good. It fits any time. 

Elsie: Yeah, it’s the Midwest in us. We were raised in the church, what do they call it like Sunday dinner type of culture. It’s a casserole culture. So it’s how we were raised. It’s a part of our childhood.

Emma: And to me tater tots anytime a day, apparently. 

Elsie: The breakfast recipe I make the most often is just like sweet potatoes like roasted sweet potatoes. And I also put them in skillet, I also airfryer them. So I can put that in the show notes. I think we have it all the different ways, but sweet potatoes for breakfast are the sh*t like with rosemary I love them.

Emma: Yeah, and here pretty soon we won’t link this because it’s not there yet. We have one recipe. But we’re going to do a pancake grind. And I’m very excited because honestly, pancakes is kind of my husband’s thing. Like I’ve mentioned his chili already. But he’s also the pancake guy at our house because he has a griddle. So some people are a griddle pancake family and some people are pan pancake family. We grew up we were pan. So like pancakes have like a crispy edge around it. You know, it’s like kind of a whole different thing. Whereas griddle pancakes are more like to me like a McDonald’s pancake. They are more even and the whole thing is soft. That’s more his vibe. But he’s the pancake guy at her house and he makes pancakes with our son at least once a week. They made them this morning. Oscar always gets to pick the color. Today it was yellow. Usually it’s blue. But anyway, we’re gonna do a pancake grind. I know we have one recipe on the site already. That’s pretty popular. That’s like homemade pancakes that doesn’t have milk but sometimes you’re out of a random ingredient and you need to know how to make pancakes. So we’re gonna go through a series of those and just like the very best pancake recipes, which I’m excited about.

Elsie: That’ll be fun. I love pancakes. It’s like a top breakfast food for sure. Okay, let’s talk about summer recipes. 

Emma: So some top ones for me is mango salsa, which mangoes are more in season in the winter, at least here where I live, different hemispheres, different whatever. But you can still sometimes find them and the mango salsa recipe we have on our site has some tips if you end up with mangoes that aren’t quite ripe yet, how you can ripen them at home. Because that does happen from time to time. I’ll also point out if you just want to swap the mangoes for peaches. You can do peach salsa. It’s just a one for one swap it out people. But I love dips and salsas and to me, dips can be like a whole food category, especially during warm weather times. It’s kind of like, what’s the character in Only Murders in the Building and he just eats tips all the time. I’m like, that’s me in the summer. I’m like, I’ll just eat dips, I’ll just eat, you know, whatever dips all the time. So that and then we’ve already mentioned no bake cookies, but that is to me forever and always a summer thing. I make them all year round. But it’s because growing up there was this whole era maybe it’s still going on I don’t know where if our air conditioner was on our dad didn’t want us to use the dryer or the oven at all. It was a conserving energy thing. And it’s like your bill can get kind of expensive if you’re like running all these different things. So if the air conditioner was on, which was always on in like July, August, like it gets very hot and humid in the Midwest, where we’re from, then we couldn’t use the oven or the dryer. Clothesline and no bake cookies were like kind of the only cookies you could make, anything no bake. So to me, it’s like a summer like I really want cookies, but the air conditioners on okay, I have to make no bake cookies.  It’s just always gonna be you know, gotta hang the bedsheets on the clothesline and have a no bake cookie. It’s July. like just always imprinted in me because of my childhood. I actually really love it. It’s like a very like special little thing to me. 

Elsie: Okay, my two favorite summer salads are the seven layer salad. It’s like a very southern recipe, but I love it. I stand by it. I think it was delicious. And I’ll definitely be making it every year. And then my favorite pasta salad that we have right now is the creamy pasta salad. It’s a mayonnaise based pasta salad. And I like them both ways. I like the oil based ones too. But I have no problems with mayonnaise at all. I love mayonnaise. I know how do people live who don’t like mayonnaise? 

Emma: I don’t know, what do they eat? 

Elsie: And then the other thing that I think is perfect for summer is margaritas. So we have our classic margarita, homemade margarita mix. And then I just made a few more but I’m starting a margarita grind. So I’m going to do like twenty more margaritas this year. All the flavors.  And it’s so fun. Like it’s like such a simple, but amazing drink. And once you learn how to make one, then learning all the different flavors, it’s just like so easy. So it’s gonna be fun.

Emma: Anything with salt I’m pretty interested in like a salt room or cookies with salt on it. But yeah, citrus and salt. That’s where it’s at. 

Elsie: Totally. 

Emma: Well, now it’s time for a joke or a fact or meditation with Nova. 

Elsie: All right, this week Marigold is with us and she wants to do her joke. 

Marigold: What did the tree wear to the swimming pool? 

Elsie: What? 

Marigold: His swimming trunks.

 
Elsie: Oh, that’s a good one. Good job. Thanks so much for listening. We will be back next week with a comfort rewatch of Mamma Mia. Oh my gosh.

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Show Notes:

Some background on us:

Elsie is older

We are 2 1/2 years apart

We also have a younger brother

Were you close when you were younger?

Normal sibling fights but by high school we liked each other

What are your similarities and differences?

Similarities:

creative

loves photography

likes thrifting

Introverts

Differences:

Elsie is more into drawing and painting while Emma is into collage

Emma can bake and Elsie can’t

Emma is more literal where Elsie is more imaginative

Emma is an Enneagram 9 and Elsie is an Enneagram 7

Where do you see your relationship in the future (after your kids have grown)?

Travel grandmas

Listen to Episode #155: Step Inside Our Old Lady Creative Retreat

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #227: Collecting Art
• Episode #226: Ever After – Comfort Rewatch
• Episode #225: Easter Traditions

Episode 228 Transcript:

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Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast, your cozy comfort lesson. A lot of you tell us that you listen to the podcast with your sister. So today we’re answering questions about our relationship as sisters. Plus, we’re doing a book report on The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi. Yeah, something like that. 

Emma: Okay, so let’s talk about being sisters. And it is funny. We’ve gotten like lots of emails over the years that’s like, I listen to this with my sisters or my sister who lives across the country listens too and we’ll talk about it or just different things like that. 

Elsie: People always ask us, how do I make my kids be close friends when they grow up? And we’re like, we don’t know. 

Emma: I don’t know. I’m not writing a parenting book. I don’t know what I’m doing on that one. So yeah, should ask her mom. Maybe she knows. We don’t know. Okay, so some background for anyone who doesn’t know. So Elsie and I are sisters. Elsie is older, much older. No, I’m just kidding. Actually, we’re only like two and a half years apart. Three years? Two to three years apart. When you’re a kid. I feel like it’s like a big thing. And when you get older, you’re like, yeah, she’s a couple years older than me. It’s like nothing, so, two, three years apart. We also have a younger brother, who’s two, three years younger than me. I’m the middle. And we’re very close with our brother Dorian as well. But we’re not going to talk about him in this episode, because he’s not here. So he doesn’t get to have his perspective and basically make fun of us, which he would do too too well, which is why he’s not invited to be here because he knows everything. So we’re very close with our brother as well. Anyway, so yeah, two, three years apart. My boys are going to be three years apart. 

Elsie: My kids are two and a half years apart. 

Emma: I hope they’re close too like us. 

Elsie: I love the age gap. Yeah, I think it’s a perfect age gap.

Emma: We could share clothes in high school. It was great. You got your license before me. I’m trying to think what else was good about it? I just felt like I had a lot of like, older cool friends because they were your friends. They were your age.

Elsie: Yeah. And then whenever you were in college, I had more younger cool friends because I was friends with all her friends. Yeah, so it’s true. 

Emma: It was a good age gap. Yeah. Okay. So one question. Were we close when we were younger? I’m assuming this meaning when we’re kids like growing up. 

Elsie: I think we were average, like kids where we were close but we were also fighting all the time. Like just regular. 

Emma: Yeah, kids who are like she took my toy and that or she wants to sleep on the top bunk. And I want to too. We have one story our mom tells a lot, she would tell it much better than us. Our mom’s actually a great storyteller. I feel like I’ve mentioned that before. She’s really a good storyteller. But anyway, we’re like, I feel like mom and I came home from school or something. And Elsie and I had shared a bedroom and Elsie had moved all of my stuff into the hallway. We had these giant Tupperware chairs that were like, kind of like a toy bin, you had a teal one and I had a pink one. And my pink one was in the hallway. And just all my stuff was in the hallway. And you were like, Emma’s moving out. She kicked me out of the bedroom. I don’t know how my mom resolved it. But it was just like, no. So we were normal kids who like back and forth. By middle school, high school we liked each other and didn’t really have any of that stuff anymore. 

Elsie: I think I got a lot of ideas like that from the TV show Full House, or TV shows like that at the time. Like any show that had something that they did interesting, because I remember one time I saw someone on TV sleep in the bathtub, and then I had to sleep in the bathtub. 

Emma: Careful what you let your kids watch.

Elsie: But yeah, we were close. But I feel like when I got my driver’s license was when I felt like we started to bond over our common interests of like, thrifting thrift all the time. And we definitely hung out with the same group of friends for a lot of high school and college ages. And still now so yeah.

Emma: And the next question is like, what are your similarities and differences. And I feel like that was part of why we’ve always been so close as we aren’t really the same but we do have a lot of similar interests. Like we’ve both always been creative people, I think you’re more into drawing and painting, and I do collage and whatever. But we’ve both always loved photography. So we would take a lot of pictures of each other or do little photo shoots in high school and college of each other. We both have always loved weird clothes. So like thrifting and making things weird. Like you would decorate your room a lot more than me, just like repaint it, redo it. You’re just always like a lot more than me, but we’re very similar in a lot of our interest. And so I think that made us close because it was like someone to hang out with who wanted to do all the weird things you wanted to do. And actually didn’t have that many friends at school growing up who were weird like me so I at least had a sister who was.

Elsie: Yeah, no, it was definitely like a fun built in friendship. Okay, so similarities and differences. Well, Emma can bake, I can’t do that. I would say that’s my one thing that I’m very jealous of her ability to bake. And also you have different artistic talents than me. Like, I remember when we were younger, and we made an art show together. Your paintings were very graphic and edgy and cool. And I was very jealous of them.  I think that they stood the test of time a little more. I’m like a person who has to learn everything the hard way by making mistakes, or I don’t know, like, doing the same thing over and over and embarrassing myself until, like, magically I butterfly out of it, you know? Anyway, I think that Emma has a lot of strengths that are like, I think one of the reasons why we make really good business partners, is because Emma has some strengths that I just don’t have. And I have some strengths that I wouldn’t say you don’t have them. But like I have some superpowers that are extreme. So last year, we did the strengths finder, it’s like a personality quiz that helps you find your strengths, and one of Emma’s top strengths was finishing. And that was definitely like a lightbulb moment for me. Because throughout my whole career, I’ve always struggled with finishing things I start, and people are always like, how are you so productive, even though you’re a seven. I swear to God, it’s like Emma, Emma, Emma is the reason why I can do those things, because she’s very focused. And she always if we form a plan, she will make sure that we finish it. So I feel like that’s been very complimentary, because I’m very excitable and passionate, but I wouldn’t be able to, like, do all the things I set out to do without you helping. I think to like the way our brains work. I say this a lot. Like I’m a very literal person. Not that you’re not literal, but I think you can be more artistic and imaginative and just those types of things. And so to me, like, not finishing a project doesn’t even really compute. Like, that’s like, what kind of literal I am like, my brain is like, oh, I said, like I’m one of those people that had to learn socially, when someone says a party is at eight, they really mean it’s at nine or 9:30. And if they show up at 7:45, you look weird and it took me a long time to learn that, because I’m very literal. So if you’re like, hey, the party is at eight, I’m like, oh excellent. I will show up at 7:45 with mine, and that’s actually not how humans are. I like that I’m that way, like a finisher. I think it has served me really well in life. But it’s also like, at times really annoying. And like, makes me stand out as awkward in a way where it’s like, oh, and I think like you kind of complement it where you’re like this more imaginative artistic can be kind of out there. And so I get to kind of play this role of like, helping you be a little more literal, finish the dream. Also I think, a lot of times, like I have ideas, and I share my ideas with Emma, and she sort of like filters, which ones are the.

Emma: And I’m like writing it down. Like that one doesn’t sound like a real thing but this one we could do. And now I’m starting to make a plan of how we will do it.

Elsie: And it’s interesting, because in our young career, like when we were probably like, the first five years of blogging, this is something that we fought about a lot. I think I was always trying to overpower her finishing machine. And like, I was sort of like a control freak when we were younger, about everything being my idea of what perfect was, which was obviously like, nothing special. Anyway, but then as we grew older, I think we understood, like, I definitely came to understand the value and importance of the finishing. And I don’t know how, if any you rebalanced for me but at least it helped me. I think that it broadened my perspective a lot. And now, I think I am like a little bit of a finisher and before I would have been 0%.

Emma: You definetly are. You’ve had do a lot of things without me. Like I think whenever you had to do like your adoption, that’s a big paperwork and just a big thing. And I didn’t do anything for you with that. Obviously, that’s like not a part of my life in any way other than I get to be cool aunt. And so like, yeah, there’s a lot of things over time.

Elsie: I can do things by myself. I just don’t want to. 

Emma: You definitely can. Yeah, I think for me, I really needed a time in my life where I just went and did my own thing. And I did that right after college. I moved to LA and pursued acting for a while which was not something Elsie was interested in. And you didn’t move to LA. You did help me move out there. And you visited me a number of times when we stayed really close the whole time. But I think I needed a little era where I just like, basically went and found myself without you. And also learn to appreciate myself without you. I think I did need that when I was younger. And then once I kind of had that era, I think I felt a lot more secure. Like, Elsie has these strengths and I have these strengths. And we could just build something together. And I don’t need to feel like I’m half a person without her because I’m not. I’ve been on my own now. And I’m a whole person without her. But also, I like what we do together. And I think that there’s a lot there of value. 

Elsie: That’s true. And once you returned, I also think I appreciated you more. And that’s when we became 50/50 partners. You know, instead of like Emma being like my sidekick, you were like my partner. And it’s always been like that ever since.

Emma: Another funny thing about us is, I think we’re both introverts. And I think that, that serves us well. Like when we traveled together, or just like also growing up together. I think we’ve never really felt like pressuring each other to go out. We’re just very comfortable with, like, oh, you gotta go have your time or oh, we’re gonna sit in the same room, but not talk for a few hours or whatever. I think we both are very comfortable being around another introvert and being an introvert. I never have felt pressure from you to be more fun or go out more. And whenever I have friends like that in my life, I sometimes get a little anxious. 

Elsie: I don’t like fun people.

Emma: I don’t want to be a fun person. And so someone needs me to be that I’m like, oh no, you’re gonna discover I’m not. I don’t have to do that with you. I know that you’re like, yeah, you do whatever. I’m gonna do my thing. I don’t need you. I’m an introvert too. It’s so whatever. So I think that like works well for us too.

Elsie: That’s true. Jeremy’s an introvert too.

Emma: Trey is like a half half I would say. And then I think we’ve talked about Enneagram a number of times, but not super recently. So I’m an Enneagram nine probably with an eight wing. And I kind of look like a three sometimes when I’m healthy, which is a good amount of time, but not always.

Elsie: I think that she is a three and that she’s an accomplisheder but she’s not a people pleaser. I don’t think you have that trait as much like in the nine part you do. You have the part where you can be patient to a fault. 

Emma: A little bit of a doormat. 

Elsie: Yes, yes. Which isn’t good sometimes. But I also think that nines are like the easiest to be around people. And just like generally, like, people who I think find happiness easier in life than maybe some of the other numbers.

Emma: Yeah, I think we naturally seek peace, which to me makes a lot of sense and feels very balanced but Elsie’s a seven. So she’s fun. 

Elsie: I’ll tell you what a seven is. A seven is like, every year you wake up and you have a new business idea. And you do at least half of them. So it’s like a personality built on trying things all the time. It is a good thing. And it’s been a lot of fun. I feel like my life has been an adventure. And I don’t have regrets, which I’m proud of that for myself. But I think that it can be hard to live with so many ideas all the time, and so much FOMO all the time. And a lot of times I have to like contain myself. I have to rein it in all that, like it’s too much reining in basically. So that can become annoying. If I went by all of my impulses, I would have a mess of a career. So yeah, just like reining it in all the time takes a lot of self control. But luckily, I’ve found ways to stay interested in our blog business. But in different ways, all the time. Because I think that’s one thing that’s hard for sevens is like keeping the same job. So I’ve been lucky in that way.

Emma: Yeah. Well, I think because our career is like it is the same job. But it has morphed so much over the years. And we always let it if it makes sense. And that serves you really well and I think honestly serves me well because honestly, there’s a lot of times in my life that I feel like a little bit bored. And then I’m like, I need to go hang out with Elsie. I need some new ideas. I just like I’ve finished all my things on my list. I’m just a little bored. What else do I want to do in life and I’m honestly like, I need to go hang out with my sister for a while because you re energize me to like dream a little more and dream bigger. And I think that’s really fun. I tend to gravitate towards sevens because I think they are so fun and they can just like be full of different ideas and inspiration. I have a certain level of that but not to the extent that you do and so I think it is a really enjoyable. Yeah, I think it makes life an adventure. But I could see how for you it can be a burden at times because it’s like too much FOMO. But I don’t really have that piece of it. I just get to enjoy the good parts.

Elsie: No, that’s nice. Thank you. Where do you see your relationship in the future after your kids have grown? That’s such a nice question. I think we’re going to be travel grandmas, for sure. We talking about it all the time. Right now, our life is very about parenting so we’re doing that together. And we’re on slightly different schedules, but it’s lining up enough to where we can just do kid stuff together all the time. And it’s a wonderful time in life. And I think it’ll be that way for the next 10 years or so. And then yeah, I’m planning to be a travel grandma, I think Emma is too.

Emma: Definitely, a hot travel grandma.

Elsie: She always describes her elderly self as hot, like, it’s really important to her.

Emma: I’m not even that vain. I just feel like we don’t do it enough, talk about how hot you can stay for how long and so I’m like, I’m just, that’s just my eight wing. That’s like, I’ve got to fight against this because I think that women are like, we become invisible. And I’m like, not me, I’m gonna stay hot for a long time. I’m gonna get hotter because I got more times right now I gotta get ready fast. I got a toddler. But one day mark my words. 

Elsie: I like it. I like that for you. I like honestly kind of don’t give a sh*t. But I love it for you.  I think that’s fun.

Emma: I don’t even really care for other people notice, it doesn’t matter much. It’s just like my own internal.

Elsie: I think working on your style. And like feeling good about yourself is something that’s important and good for every single age of a woman’s life. It’s always important.

Emma: I think it’s my own personal middle finger at some of the sexist stuff that women have gone through in the past of like, oh, you’re old now so you’re not beautiful anymore. You’re only beautiful in your 20s or whatever. And it’s like, middle fingers to that. I’m gonna be super hot 50 year old lady, take that world,

Elsie: Don’t worry about it. I’m not worried about it. I’m just gonna watch the idea of you and not worry about it. Okay, so yeah, no, I think that the future is bright. And we get a lot of messages about our idea of having like an old lady’s home, where we have all the crafts and all the you know, we did an episode about that. And it’s such a happy, fun idea. And I think it’s likely to happen. With just like the mortality rates of men and women. I’m like, 90% sure. I’m like on my last husband.

Emma: You hear that Jeremy, she’s  90% sure. Watch your back.

Elsie: Well, I’m just like, would I rather date again or would I rather become a travel grandma with our own swimming pool in our own like grandma club? I think I know where my path is leading me.

Emma: Yeah, I’m kind of the same. Like, we’ll see what real life goes. I’m open to whatever. But yeah, I’m also 90% sure, I don’t know. There is just bored to life though. I think when you’re young, like falling in love, and getting married does feel like such a big part of life. And it is. And it really is, and it’s so special. I think there is kind of like, there’s more. I didn’t realize that when I was younger. And now I’m like, oh, yeah, there is. There’s so much more. Cool. I’m interested in exploring that idea in my mind. And like, when I get there, seeing what that’s like. And we also have a lot of career goals that are not on hold right now. I wouldn’t put it that way. But I would just say like, we are very, like, hey, we’re in our mom era. And we are making time and space to hang out with our kids. And like, that’s what we’re doing. And so our careers are not on hold by any means. But we have a lot more that we are interested in.

Elsie: Our careers are limited right now by the time we have. I think we’re making the most of what that time is. But I mean, I’m not gonna lie, like, it’s one of my comforting thoughts when I feel like you know, I get to do my painting interest, usually one or two times a week. And I love that and I’m fine with that for right now. But I love the idea that in 10 years, maybe I’ll do it every day. And I think that that’s like a way to think optimistically about the future and also give me enough time and money in my 50s and I will make that haunted Bed and Breakfast.

Emma: Yeah, I think there’s just so much to get involved in and to do and then who even knows if we will really be like actual grandmas with grandkids. I don’t know what age that’ll happen or if it will even happen because that’s a choice that someone else will be making. But I think that would be fun thing to to kind of put together.

Elsie: You’re not going to pressure the sh*t out of your kids to have kids when they’re 20.

Emma: Oh my God, no. Oh my God. No. Oh, if they do I’ll be like wow,I don’t know what happened here, but fun for me.  Before I even had kids, we did like that haunted house at Halloween. Like I could just see us doing lots of random weird stuff when we’re old. That’s kind of like, for our community, for our family.

Elsie: It sounds amazing. You’re keeping me young Emma.

Emma: Yeah, I think there’s just a lot out there. I think it’s always been like a strength of ours that when we get bored, we do fun stuff. So I’m not worried about it. I’m not worried about having an era where there’s more time, I’m like no that sounds actually great. I have no idea what we’ll do. It’ll definitely be weird. And it will definitely be fun. 

Elsie: I love it. Okay, I guess it is book report time. So we are talking about The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi. So I really just had like two big takeaways from the book. What about you? 

Emma: I had like, kind of like two things I put in my notes app.

Elsie: So can you give the premise a little bit? 

Emma: So we picked this book, because we were really just like scrolling through kind of like nonfiction. 

Elsie: The title is very compelling title.

Emma: The title is super compelling. So we were very drawn in by that. And then I think that we read that it was like a best seller in Japan. And it’s definitely well known. We’re not the first to talk about it. We’re not the first to discover this book. But I felt like it kind of jumped around a lot. And in my mind, if I had to sum it up, I would be like, it’s kind of about like, personal responsibility. And just like, taking care of your sh*t. This is the life I want so I’m going to lead it. So in a sense, I would say, yeah, you’re having the courage to be disliked, and that you’re kind of putting other voices out and saying, I’m going to decide what’s right for me, and I’m going to do what I feel is what I need to do to be happy, to be a hard worker to be the life that I want to live. So in that sense, I think that the title fits. But I also felt like he kind of jumped around to a bunch of different things. And a lot of times the chapter title or the heading of the section that we’re about to read, sort of didn’t match to me. It was more like a gotcha headline. And then you would read it and be like, okay, I see where they’re getting that, but I’m not so sure. Maybe you should tell them how the books is formatted too.

Elsie: I agree with that too. So the way that it’s formatted is between a philosopher student and a teacher. And it’s like a back and forth conversation.  I read the audiobook. I read some of the reviews and I think people really didn’t like the audiobook. I feel like 50/50 on it. I’m glad I read it. And I probably wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t think it’s recommendable, so sorry. But I think that I am glad I read it. The takeaways are really strong. It’s unique. It’s definitely different from other self help books I’ve read. But I do agree with Emma that like the promise of the title and the chapters is kind of bizarre. It’s like they just tried to think of better titles afterwards or something. It didn’t really feel like that they represented what they were saying they were going to represent, which is very annoying. 

Emma: And I don’t know if it was translated, maybe that’s part of it. I don’t know, I didn’t look that up. So perhaps that’s a piece of it. But it almost felt like a little click baitty. Like they’re like getting you in with this weird headline. And then it was still like a good chapter. But you’re like that didn’t really match what you started with. So I feel like you got me.

Elsie: Yeah, so the title, The Courage to be Disliked, I think is still a topic worthy of talking about on the podcast. So like a very important topic that we are very passionate about. Okay, so I have down this quote that’s like, freedom is being disliked by other people. So I love it. I love that. I wish the book was more about that, I agree. But since it wasn’t, we can still talk about it anyway. I think that it’s kind of like when you move into a home and you’re starting to decorate and you make your mood board, and then you see all these like new things coming out and you’re at the store and there’s like, this is cute. This is cute. I like that. I like that and it feels very overwhelming. I think that life can be that way with people’s opinions. And it does take courage, consistency and a sense of confidence to stay on the mood board that you chose instead of responding to other people’s opinions about your life all the time. 

Emma: I think that’s  good.

Elsie: The other part that really stuck with me is there’s a story in the book about a novelist who can’t finish their novel like can’t/won’t. And I’m in that situation myself right now. So I did relate to it literally, but I also just really liked the idea of it. So they say that he wants to leave the possibility open like the possibility of like, this might be the great It’s novel ever. And the act of finishing it sort of exposes yourself to criticism, and shame and other feelings.

Emma: The possibility that it’s not the best novel.

Elsie: And I think about that every day. I think about that so much right now. I think it’s such a big thing that I mean, all of us face at one or many points in our life. And I think that it does stop people from doing some of the most important things that they felt called to do in your entire life. It’s so sad that sometimes people don’t finish those things because they don’t want it to be bad, or they don’t want to be bad at it, or they don’t want to get bad reviews or hear people’s negative opinions. So yeah, I thought that was really meaningful to me. And it’s something that I will be thinking about as I finished my novel, or I shouldn’t say finish it that makes it sound like I’m almost finished. As I keep working on it for however long it takes. I have to keep myself from the idea that it’s safer in its incubation phase than it is in the real world.

Emma: Well, yeah. And it’s definitely that trap we all fall into where it’s like, the fantasy is always better than reality because it’s a fantasy. It’s not real. And so we can make it whatever we want it to be in our minds. And then reality can be wonderful. It can also be devastating. It can be anything in between. It can also just be boring, which is the worse? I don’t know. So yeah, I think it’s really hard to face that at times. So yeah, that’s an interesting one. Okay, so this one, they were actually talking about trauma, which I thought was kind of controversial.

Elsie: I thought that it was really controversial, the title of the chapter, was it, trauma does not exist. 

Emma: Yeah. Which I don’t think was really their point. 

Elsie: I think they never got there in convincing you at all, and no one really thinks trauma doesn’t exist. So I thought it was very confusing. I was a little hung up on that. 

Emma: I was like, I don’t think you needed to name the chapter this or the section. I don’t know if it was a chapter. But yeah, that title didn’t work for me. But some of the things I had to say I thought were interesting. So one thing they talked about was, we determine our own lives according to the meaning that we give those past experiences. So not just the experience itself, but the meaning that we give it. And they kind of talked about this, they say otherwise, everyone who goes through XYZ goes through this experience, fill in the blank, would all behave ABC fill in the blank. So everyone who’s graduated high school, has this experience, you know what I mean, or whatever. Like, that’s not obviously not a traumatic event. That’s just a regular neutral event but nevertheless. But as we all know, from real life, there are variants that show that just because a certain event happened in your life, the way that you interpreted it, or I would say also the way you healed from it or chose to heal from it, the steps that you took, and the power that you might have taken back changes the way that that affects your life. And I thought that was an interesting to think about and explore, and the best point that they had for that title chapter. And I liked it. Because I think that is sad to think about, there’s lots of things that happen in our lives that we have no power over, we don’t get a choice. You’re born a certain way or something happens to you that you didn’t want to happen, all sorts of things. That’s life. And I like the idea that to some extent, you can take back your power, you can find your way through healing, and you can take steps to interpret that differently. It doesn’t mean that you can avoid it completely, or that you can change what happened to you, but you still get some agency. I’m a very independent person. So anytime I feel like my freedom, or my agency is being taken away I bristle at that. So I think that’s part of why that stood out to me. And then I think this has to do with your novel thing you’re just talking about. So this was my other takeaway that I wrote down was that maybe it’s harder and I think what they meant by harder is less happy. So maybe there’s less happiness to live with an open possibility of a dream that you never try than to try it and potentially fail and then get to have a new dream. And I think that’s kind of like the second part or the other side of the finishing the novel and moving forward. We like to collect stories of people and we’ve shared so many of them on the podcast, people who like start second careers in their 40s 50s 60s. People who epically failed at writing, painting, whatever, and then they had a big success later. I love the stories of people who like I wrote my first novel and it was a bestseller. Love it. Great story. I really love the stories that are I wrote 10 novels and then in my 50s one really hit and now I get to do what I love. I love that story even more. And I think that you don’t get there if you’re the person who keeps living in the fantasy and you don’t finish. You only get there by keep going and learning and growing and being open to the possibility that your fantasy isn’t going to be fulfilled. But if you keep pushing, you get to have a new dream, that might be better.

Elsie: I agree with that. I mean, I truly believe that every experience you have in your career is like always stacking towards your next experience even if they seem unrelated to you at the time. There’s so many things that we’ve learned or tried that felt like it ended w little to no value and kind of just a failure. And then later on, we were able to use that skill in a different way, repackage and magically makes money or it has success. 

Emma: People always think like, how’d you do that? You’re an overnight success. I’m like, no, man, did you see all the other things that I fizzled out on? And they don’t because that’s not always how people see it.

Elsie: I’m very inspired by the idea of just finishing the thing that feels really good. 

Emma: Yeah. So anyway, we liked the book. We didn’t like the book. You had one friend who loved it. 

Elsie: Yeah, I did. I had a friend who texted me that said they were loving it, and I would love to hear what you thought about it. Definitely send us an email if you had a strong opinion. I’m just curious. 

Emma: It’s a bestseller, so it’s not like, I don’t know. I don’t think either of us really loved it, but I’m also really hesitant to give it much of a bad review because I’m like, I know people love it and there were things that really stuck with me. 

Elsie: I think our review was very balanced. Like it’s worth reading. It has interesting takeaways. The format is kind of cringy and hard to get through. It has some controversial things too. A little bit of click bait titles . I read some of the reviews on Goodreads and I feel like it was sort of in the, I think we were all kind of on the same page. Okay, so now we’re gonna go to Nova’s segment. Hey Nova, what do you have for us this week? 

Nova: Well today, I think I want to do something new and I think I may start doing this too on the podcast. 

Elsie: Okay. What is it? 

Nova: I think we should do a memories with Nova. 

Elsie: Okay, memories with Nova. I love this. 

Nova: I’m gonna share some memories with you. One memory is, last time we went to Disney World for Marigold’s birthday, which I know you all have heard Marigold’s on the podcast before, and I loved it. We went and we went on all sorts of rides. It was amazing. And another one was when I first got Pumpkin, my dog, her head was so tiny and she was so tiny. She wasn’t very big at all. I drove for about three hours to go get her. And finally when we got her, I was wearing a shirt for two days so she could have my scent. And so she could always remember me. 

Elsie: Oh, that’s very sweet. I think it worked. 

Nova: And one more is we went on our family vacation to Branson and Mommy and Daddy and Marigold slept in a cabin.

And, I slept with my cousins, and we did so many fun things, like going on a boat, and playing, and there was video games, in like the living room. I got to play some video games. And the last one I’m just gonna squeeze one more in, because sometimes I’ll do three or four. And, it’s Christmas when I got my scooter, Nintendo Switch, and got some dog treats for Pumpkin and Dolly. We spent it with Aunt Ruby, Uncle Doran, and Penny, my cousin. And my aunt, and uncle, and, oh, Mila, who was my baby cousin. That was my first time to meet her. And, I spent one night with Grandma and Grandpa, and we had a good time. 

Elsie: Amazing! Thank you for sharing all those memories with us, Nova. 

Nova: Bye!

Elsie: Bye! Thank you so much for listening. We’d love to hear your suggestions for topics or future episodes. Send us an email anytime at podcast@abeautifulmess.com with your request. Next week we’ll be back with an episode all about food! 

Emma: Food! Woo!

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Show Notes:

Artists mentioned:

Snake by Paige Barnes Dorsey

What We Do in the Shadows: Vampires

Bridesmaids – food poisoning scene

Julie Blackmon

Rosie Winstead

Erin Tyler

Michelle Houghton

Janet Hill

Emily Martin

Galleries we love:

• Liz Lidgett Gallery
• Haw Contemporary
• Hashimoto Contemporary

How do you know what type/style of art works for your space?

Go slowly and give it time

Don’t be afraid to move art around your house until it feels right

If you find something that feels right, collect art that fits around it

Don’t buy all your art at once

Have a mixture of high and low art

Go to the library and research different types of art

Follow artists on social media

Where do you buy your art from?

Etsy and eBay

Flea markets and thrift shops

Look around your community

Sign up for email lists of any artist you like

Try the app Artsy

How do you know if a piece is overpriced or not?

Look up other prices by the artist and see if they are consistent.

If it seems too good to be true, then it is.

How do you select the right frames for your art pieces?

Try out a few different ones

Custom framing is a game changer

Find ones you like on Pinterest

Try pictureframes.com

How do you hang your art pieces on your walls?

If it’s heavy, use wall anchors

Small nails

Put a string or wire on the back of the frame or have the framing shop add it

What are your favorite art pieces in your home?

Esther Pearl Watson

Julie Blackmon

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #226: Ever After – Comfort Rewatch
• Episode #225: Easter Traditions
• Episode #224: It’s Spring Bucket List Time!

Episode 227 Transcript:

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Emma: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast, your cozy comfort listen. And today we’re going to do a deep dive into collecting art. Everything from where we purchase it, how to decide what pieces will work for your space, framing, and anything else about collecting art. 

Elsie: Yeah, I am so into this. This has definitely been my art collecting year. So it has been so fun. So first of all, I just wanna promise upfront, we’re gonna do a good link in show notes situation this week. So we will link to all of the artists that we mention and all of the places that we buy art. It’ll just be like a nice little link section. If you’re into shopping for art, definitely go there and you don’t have to try to remember anything.

Emma: Yeah, if you’re out jogging or you’re driving your car, don’t try to write anything down. It’ll be in the show notes. 

Elsie: Oh, I just imagined like the most horrible wreck of trying to write down an artist’s name. 

Emma: I have to write down those Etsy names. No, don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Fine, we’ll link it. 

Elsie: So in this episode, we’re going to cover just the basics of starting your own art collection in your home. And to begin with, I just want to acknowledge that collecting any kind of art for your home is so exciting and magical. So when we started off in our twenties, the things I would mainly collect or decorate with were photos that we took ourselves, which is just like, I think it’s a sentimental way to decorate and it’s also really budget-friendly. And then prints, mostly from Etsy. And then the other thing would be like thrifted art and vintage art that was found for a bargain. And there is lots of bargain art in the world. So we’ll talk about all of that. This past year I’ve been in an era where I started to collect some original art from some of my favorite artists and some pieces like, I don’t know, kind of like the sort of stuff you would want to pass down to your kids or like you need t write it on your insurance, like that kind of situation and it has been like really magical, special and it was, it’s kind of a dream come true honestly because I love art, and you know, having a chance to like, collect a few pieces from favorite artists is a very magical experience. So I want to talk all about that, and no matter where you are in life, hopefully, you’ll learn stuff in this episode about decorating your home with art. Cause I honestly think any apartment, home, even a bedroom is better with pieces of art that mean something to you. 

Emma: So first up, let’s talk about how do you know what type of style or art is going to work in your space? There’s nothing worse than getting a piece and then kind of moving it all around your home and being like, Oh no, I don’t know if this really works, but I do like it. 

Elsie: Yeah. No, art is often not returnable. If you wanted to commission a piece from an artist, which I think is a great way to collect art that fits your space, your colors, your style, that sort of thing. It’s like you need to be really sure about it. You need to put planning into it. So. When we first started collecting art, I did it really slowly. I think that was a key. And I learned really quickly that, and this is different for different people, like you might totally disagree with this, but for me, I did not like the look of mixing my antique and vintage art and my contemporary art. I just don’t like how it looks when it’s all mixed together. So for me, I created like spaces for different collections. 

Emma: So kind of different styles. So you’re more contemporary or all in certain areas and more classic oil paintings have certain areas. 

Elsie: Yeah. So the contemporary pieces are grouped together or they’re like they kind of have their own spot where it’s just one like the Julie Blackman. You know, it’s just kind of in its own spot by itself. And then I have a couple artists who I really love to collect. Esther Pearl Watson and Creighton Barrett, and they are both kind of like in this little hallway where it’s just them and it just like it may it makes it makes sense together because it’s like a little more bright and colorful and kind of like happy and I don’t know. I mean, it’s contemporary art. It doesn’t flow well with antiques. So, what? I think that that’s a really good thing is just to try slowly and be okay with moving stuff around some of the pieces that I bought for our living room ended up feeling better, like the snake, the snake is by, I think her name’s Paige Barnes Dorsey. I really want one of those. The snake is amazing. And I’m going to link all these artists. 

Emma: It’s kind of like a wall sculpture. It’s 3d. It’s not a painting. It’s like an actual 3d snake. 

Elsie: It feels to me like it’s maybe plaster or something like that. Um, I really want one. It looks like a ceramic and they’re hand-painted there. Anyway, they’re really special. I bought it for our living room. And then as soon as I put it in there, I just like could tell right away that it didn’t fit the vibe. And I tried it out in my office Where there’s, like, a very moody historic wallpaper, and it was, like, perfect. So I think you have to go very slowly and give it time. And then, I would say, like, as far as choosing what style, I think finding, like, the pieces that feel right in your room and then collecting around them. Like, in our living room, we had a couple of oil portrait paintings, and then I watched Harry Potter after my birthday last year, and I was like, I got obsessed about wanting to have just like, an oil painting-covered area of our home.

That talks to you, obviously. Yes. Yes. Yes. With a gummy, you never know. You never know. What’ll happen? I think collecting slowly. That’s the, the main headline is like, don’t rush it. Don’t try to buy all your art. Even if you have a great budget, don’t buy all your art in one month. Like buy it one piece at a time, one layer at a time, and then add to it. I think that for me, that’s. Like how I’ve felt like I’m like making a collection that’s truly perfect for our space. 

Emma: Yeah. And I think too, it can be fun too, this works best for pieces that are smaller, but like when you’re traveling, it can be really fun to get a piece. You know, add to a little, if you have like a little oil painting collection, that’s like in your bathroom or in a hallway or something, because then it’s like, not only a beautiful piece of art, but it’s like, oh yeah, I got that on my trip to Paris with my girlfriends or my family trip to Seaside or whatever, you know.

Elsie: That’s so special. So what about you? Have, how have you picked the style that works best for your home? 

Emma: So our house is pretty modern. So almost all of our art is very contemporary or modern or abstract, which I think can kind of go a number of directions. But I think of it as contemporary. The only piece that is very traditional is the family heirloom that I have. We have a portrait of my great grandfather, Karina’s father, Raphael, and it’s in my dining room. And it doesn’t really go with any other art in our house. But we have been thinking about collecting a few more, like, classical oil paintings to go around it that aren’t family heirlooms, just to kind of I’m having the similar thing where I put other paintings by it that are more contemporary and even when the colors go well together or, or it looks nice in the space with the wall color I have in there, it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t totally feel quite right. And even though, I don’t necessarily have as many like oil paintings or like have a love for collecting them quite like you, I do love that one because it’s this family heirloom. It’s my great-grandfather. And so I’m like trying to make him work in the dining room. So I’m like, I think he needs some buddies. I think I’m going to have to collect some, some things to go around him cause nothing’s really working yet. Mm hmm. But other than that, we have a lot of contemporary stuff all throughout the house. We have a lot of florals. We have a lot of abstracts. Many of them are from our mom. I also commissioned a piece from a woman in town, Erin Tyler. My husband, like, is in a co working space with her husband. So we also have some mutual friends. So that’s how I knew about her work. And she did this piece for us that’s like contemporary. It almost looks like a digital quilt, but it’s a painting. And it kind of is like an abstract of a pile of Oscar shoes. Aww. It’s these like very subtle tans. So like in bright light, it almost looks like there’s nothing on the canvas, but it actually has like a whole bunch of different tile pieces. It’s really neat. 

Elsie: I love that piece. 

Emma: Anyway, it’s in our entryway and I think it looks, it’s, it could go anywhere in the house though because the colors are so like subtle. And yeah, I have some like ones that are like. Pictures of like kind of geodes or rocks and different things like that. I’m definitely still in the collecting mode. You outed me in a past episode. You’re like, and I had this quote where she was like, when I’m 45, this house will look great. And I’m currently 38. And that is kind of how I feel where I’m like, I’m not in a rush. I would like to commission some more pieces. I would like to discover some more artists. I, when I see something beautiful in your house, like I very much want one of those snakes and I know they’re very desirable. So I don’t necessarily think I’m going to get one next month. A lot of times artists will sell out of things or they only have a few at a time. And it’s also kind of special to get it like for your birthday or for anniversary or, you know, so anyway, I’m not in a huge rush, but I’m definitely like moving things around in that phase, collecting more and more. And then we have one hallway. That’s like the hallway. Where all the bedrooms are that I’m filling up with black and white pictures of our family. So it’s not really like an art wall. It’s more of the, the family portrait hallway and it has like Oscar school picture and currently like one ultrasound of our son, our next son,so just lots of things like that. And I’m about to get those maternity portraits, I’m going to hang some of those up. If they’re very private, I might hang them up in our bathroom, we’ll see. So, I don’t know. 

Elsie: Yeah, in my bathroom I have, I have the this is like one of my Etsy prints. So I have a whole bunch of like a wall around our bathtub of the, what we do in the shadows, vampires. So at the intro of the TV show, they show paintings of them through the decades and so someone on Etsy made those into prints somehow. And, anyway, everyone, that’s like, definitely my funny art in the house. And then, on our guest room, we have a print, like, above the toilet. Actually, it’s like, paired with a fancy painting from Hunt Slonim. And then below it is a art print. Of the scene from bridesmaids with the food poisoning scene. And I thought it was like the funniest, like bathroom art ever. So I’ll link to that. I’ll link to all of it. But anyway, I think that having like a mixture of high and low is really cool. Like, I love it that like, I have like a fancy painting that was like a budget. And then I have like an art print that was probably like 20 right below it. And I got it custom framed. So whatever. 

Emma: Let’s talk about where do you buy art from and what are you looking for when you’re shopping? Okay, so list on your phone. Do you have measurements in your purse? Like I mean, like, how do you know?

Elsie: I do shop by size for the oil Portraits, especially now that our collection is like filling out Then now I’m like shopping for certain spots and I do think it’s good to shop by size. I think that Etsy and eBay are amazing. So I’ll tell you some of my search terms. I do French oil painting, antique oil painting. And then I usually do like oil portrait woman, oil portrait man, oil portrait child, and then I even have an oil portrait dog. So anything like that, those are all good searches. If you want like the more, like the more fifties, like the ones that kind of vibe with like the paint by number style, then search vintage. If you want more the classical, then search antique. 

Emma: And if you don’t know it all, maybe head to the library and go to the art painting section and check out a whole bunch of books and see what kind of things you look through them all or go to a museum.

Elsie: I love the Impressionist era paintings. So I have one in my bedroom above our bed that is an Impressionist era painting, but it was like 400 like, and that’s, that’s like a low price for a piece of antique art. You can search the era, you know, the style. There’s also a pretty good case to be made for replicas. I have a couple of replicas in my house. And if it’s a famous artist, then replicas can be like real oil paintings that are just mass-produced. And they’re not worth a lot of money, obviously, but that also means that they’re affordable, like for a couple hundred dollars, you can get one. And I think that’s pretty cool because there’s quite a bit of art that I love that I will not have a budget for in this lifetime. And I think everyone feels that way. 

Emma: Or there’s just one and it’s hanging in a famous museum. It will never be in someone’s home, you know? 

Elsie: Yeah. So I think replicas are pretty cool, especially if you’re considering getting a print. And maybe the price is like, not that different for a replica and it’s a real painting, just a little more of like a quality finish to it.

Emma: That would be kind of a fun job too. Like, I mean, I’d want to do my own work as well, but it would be kind of fun because I like doing other people’s recipes, you know what I mean? It’s true. I think it would be enjoyable. 

Elsie: I will say like a warning, be careful about replicas. Because I ordered one off of eBay and it was like, they paint it after you’ve ordered it. And it was very affordable, like, it was, like, less than a hundred dollars, but it looks so bad, compared, like, it was, like, not close to what the original looks like, so I would probably go for one that, where you can see a picture of, and it’s already been made, and you’re getting that exact one, not That’s it. Buy one where they’re going to like custom do it for you after they get your order, right? I’ll show it to you. You’ll love it. It’s real bad. Well, Etsy, eBay are both amazing. I’ve gotten so much art. I think that the prices, I will say, are all over the map, so choose the budget that’s best for you and kind of stick with it. That’s my tip with collecting antique art because it’s really easy to like, you’ll find pieces in every different budget, you’ll find pieces that are bargain, and then you’ll find pieces that are big investment, and I think you just kind of have to choose ahead of time. Like, I kind of have like a top budget for the antique portraits, and I try to just stick with that, like, whatever. I did have this one where I got really attached to it. I really wanted a white hair lady for our stairway, but anyway. And then flea markets are the greatest. Flea markets and thrift shops, every once in a while you have to be lucky, but I’ve found some really good bargains at those places. So it’s. Very worth it. Usually the prices in my experience are much cheaper than what you find on Etsy and eBay, which is cool. 

Emma: Yeah. I’ll also say two other little things is, so one, it’s very cool to just like become a fan of current and contemporary artists. And if you’re like, I don’t even know where to start. You can start on social media, just like start following some painters or sculptors that you see, maybe even a friend who’s into it. And a lot of times artists follow other artists or they’ll reference other artists work, like they’ll be like, Oh, it’s Friday. Here’s some follow Friday people. You know, like there’s like, here’s some other artists that I think are cool. And just immerse yourself in being a fan of art. There’s so much about social media that can be a drag or like that I can be like, don’t spend your time on there. Cause it can suck you in. I actually think it is a great place to learn about people who are currently making art, making sculptures, making all sorts of things. So if you’re like, I want to be a fan of contemporary art, but I don’t know where to start. There’s an idea. If you’re already going to waste your time on there, there’s a great place to be looking for artists and seeing what they’re up to. I agree. And then the other thing I’ll say is, and this depends on your town, but I don’t even live in a big city, there’s a lot of times there’s really interesting art projects going on where you live. This can be at bookstores, at breweries, maybe you have some awesome museums, like artists who are currently working street fairs. And I know that sometimes people will think of that as like, not real art, but I very much disagree. I’ve seen some of the most beautiful things, like at a random bookstore that was having some kind of art show one weekend, and I didn’t even, I’d never heard of them, and all of a sudden I love their work, and I start following them, and then maybe I buy a piece. Like, there’s Just all sorts of interesting things like that. So just keep your eyes open. I guess one thing I would say and like, look around your community. You’d be surprised how much art’s happening and like, there can be some really cool stuff that you might want to collect for your home. 

Elsie: I agree. I think Collecting art from your city or your region is a really good way to go. Some of my favorite artists, like we have the Julie Blackman and also her sister, Rosie Winstead had an art show recently. So we got one of those and it’s so cool to collect things from your own community. I think that there’s like a special joy and pride in them. I agree. So, a few more things for collecting contemporary art and where to look. A huge thing is to follow, so Emma mentioned social media, I think following on social media is great, but also make sure that you are signed up for email lists of any artists you like. I think the main way that you can buy original art, cause There are a lot of artists where you have to wait for months or years to find one that, like, when you’re ready to buy and they have one to sell. Most artists don’t have stuff for sale 24/7. So, being on those email lists is a great way to do it, and also the email list of galleries. Okay, and a great way to find galleries is, there’s an app called Artsy, and it’s also a web app, so you can use it either way you want. I love it. I just started using it to follow my favorite artists because it’s sort of like, it’s an app that shows you art from all different galleries in one place. So you don’t have to, because I don’t know every gallery yet, like I’m still like learning so much. So after I’ve bought a piece, then I’ll, like, usually follow the gallery and be on their email list and stuff. But you can start off by just, like, following all your favorite artists, and then individually follow their email list on their websites if you can. And I think that that’s probably, like, the best way. But a couple pieces I found were from the Artsy app when I had a favorite artist, and then, you know, eventually one popped up one day, and I had a chance to get it. I felt so lucky, because Sometimes you, I mean, you really have to wait for a long time for a certain artist.

Emma: Yeah, or they’re putting a few things up and they’re sold out immediately. There’s this gal, it’s wearable stuff, she does fashion, but she just had some dresses go up the other night and she was putting them up at 7 p. m. And that’s my son’s bedtime and in my mind I was like, I’m not going to get one, they’re going to be sold out by the time I finally get my son done. And sure enough, by like 7. 15 they were already sold out and I was like, I gotta get a friend to help me because this is just the time of day where Cannot be on my phone. It is read story time and I want one of these dresses because they’re these beautiful pieces she does, but she’ll only have like 10 or less at a time.

Elsie: No, one of my top favorite artists puts up about one or two paintings a month on her website and she like doesn’t have an email list. She only announces on social media, which is hard with the algorithm. Cause you don’t see it. You’ll see it two days later and you’re like, no, and I’ve never gotten one. And I’m still like someday I will, but it’s so frustrating. 

Emma: Yeah. But then when you get it, it’s the feeling of, Got it. Yes. I got a piece. 

Elsie: Okay, but yeah, let’s talk about prints for a minute. So, my favorite, I have two favorite print artists who mostly just do prints. One of them was the person I just mentioned, Janet Hill. So it’s like so hard to get an original. I would totally collect the originals. I don’t have the internet sleuthing for it, maybe. So, anyway, I have a ton of her prints when you see my little, like, green bathroom with all the portraits, a lot of those are prints from her, she has an Etsy shop and a website, so we’ll link to her, and then another person I love is Emily Martin, she was an awesome artist. OG Etsy artists like she was I think she was like the top-selling Etsy artists in the early Etsy days But now there’s other places to buy her art. So all and you can only get prints really so I’ll link to those She also has puzzles. They both have puzzles that are really great. 

Emma: That’s fun. 

Elsie: Yeah, so there’s so many fun ways if there’s an artist who you just like You want to get an original, but it’s just not happening for you. I think it’s still such a good idea to collect prints in the meantime because you still get to enjoy it., It’s still a beautiful thing in your home. And maybe someday keep the dream alive.

Emma: Okay. So next question is more like something that very opinion and just something we hear from people. So maybe it’s something to talk about. We’ll see. But how do you know if a piece is overpriced or not? So just talking about art prices and should I spend my money this way? Or like, is this, Overpriced. Am I even buying it from the original source versus a secondary market? Just anything like that that you might want to tell people about.

Elsie: Okay. So obviously art can get expensive and it’s like an open-ended budget. It’s like getting interested in like a designer bag and at first you find like a small one that’s affordable and you buy it used and then suddenly you’re like looking at these ones that like, it’s a thing that can escalate and it’s super fun. So I would just say, like, I haven’t seen a lot of, like, scammy prices or whatever, I think that sometimes there is, like, a sticker shock, and it’s hard to reconcile the idea that two artists who look similar to you might have very different prices. But artists who sell in galleries almost always have a price that’s consistent across the board for all of their collectors. So it’s usually like the price goes by the square inch, so it’s like the bigger the piece, the bigger the price, which is fair. So yeah, overall I would say, Art prices can be pretty fair. If you want to make sure and like double-check, then definitely look up other pieces by the same artist. That’s the best way to tell, as long as it’s consistent and they’re selling pieces at that price, then that’s a good case that the market value is correct. 

Emma: Yeah. And I think the only time I can think of that’s more like a scammy situation Is when we were just talking about how some artists, they only have so many original pieces, they sell out very quickly. So sometimes you’ll see like this secondary market pop up where people have bought the original and presumably are reselling it because they were able to do the internet sleuthing or their son doesn’t go to bed at 7 so they were able to buy it and I wasn’t whatever. And those are moments where you might want to be a little more discerning or do a bit more research and just make sure that it really is the thing you’re wanting and not some kind of replica or rip off or not a real piece, like a lot of times artists will have their signature or kind of like clothes, it’ll have a certain tag, it’ll look a certain way. You just want to look for things like that just in case. 

Elsie: Yeah. Fake art is a real thing. And. It’s like having a fake bag. If you know that it’s fake, and you paid a fake price for it, then you’re probably fine with that. And if you didn’t know that, and you paid too much for it, then you’d be very upset, obviously. So, I think if it seems too good to be true, then maybe it is. But yeah, I think most artists keep their prices pretty consistent, and it’s normal that they go up over time like maybe once a year or something like that. So, ideally, when you collect art, then in five or ten years, if that artist is still active and selling, then they’re pieces that are similar to what you’re selling. You collected will be selling for maybe double which is really cool and it makes you makes the case for it being more of an investment. I personally haven’t really researched like art as an investment. I’m not that rich. I don’t know anything about it. I can’t speak to it. But I don’t know, for me, it’s a collection. It’s like a collection that brings joy. And it is nice to know that you could resell it, although it would be slow, if you needed to, in the future. I think that that’s nice with anything you spend money on that it holds its value. But yeah, I personally don’t consider it, like, a part of my investing.

Emma: It’s not for me either. I will say though, it never hurts to talk to wherever you get your home insurance, talk to your agent or however you’ve gotten it, about putting art in your insurance policy, just in case your house was to burn down or if you were to have a burglary. You know, even if you don’t have a piece, you’re like, well I have a piece that was $1,000. Is that really that big of a deal? Well, if you have a few of those throughout your home. Maybe you would want to insure that just in case the collection burnt down or something of that nature. But again, just talk to your insurance agent. They can advise you and tell you how much it would cost to add that to your policy. And maybe it’s not worth it to you, but maybe it is. It probably is. In the event that something were to happen like that. 

Elsie: Yeah, that’s some good common sense. Okay, I have to caveat on this hilarious local gem of a story. Oh. You know what I’m going to say? It’s like our proudest local story. Everyone’s going to love this. It’s kind of funny. I don’t know. I think it’s funny. Okay. It’s sad too. It’s sad and funny. So we have a art museum in our town. Springfield art museum. Is that what it’s called? It’s actually great. It’s a great museum for the size of our town. It’s like very a plus plus plus. So seven years ago, somehow, some way someone stole. So there was a collection of seven. Andy Warhol prints that were like the soup cans and they were like the screen printed, like, I guess you kind of call it originals, but you kind of call it a print. It’s hard to say with Warhol’s. 

Emma: But they were different soups though. 

Elsie: They were real Warhol’s.

Emma: It wasn’t all tomatoes. 

Elsie: Yeah. And it was like the pepper pot and you know how he has the different flavors. So there was like a whole wall of them and someone stole like, I think five, Out of the seven in the middle of the night and they never got caught. And I did read that the museum received for their insurance, I think like $750,000. And it’s like one of our local legends. So we always think like who in Springfield has like Andy Warhol’s in their basement. Because you can’t sell them. And I don’t know what you would do with them if it was stolen. I guess you like, I don’t know. People think maybe there’s a market where. People like that they’re stolen, or it’s like a little bit of a thing.

Emma: That’s definitely in the news from time to time. You hear about a rich family that’s bought all this art, and it turns out it was stolen from, you know. And maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they did. Who knows? Yeah. But the Warhols were never found. So, those ones. So. So who has them? Where are the soup cans? Whose basement are they in? 

Elsie: But the insurance, the insurance came through. So that’s what reminded me of the story. Okay, so next up, framing. 

Emma: Oh yeah. Let’s talk about framing because a frame can really be a big difference on an art piece, I think.

Elsie: I will say until I think maybe two years ago in my whole life, I never got a custom frame. It’s such a game changer. 

Emma: Ridiculously recent for me too, I should have started sooner and now I’m like, why was I not framing things? But anyway. 

Elsie: It’s such a game changer. I would like, you know, go to the store and buy frames. Right. And then I started, probably about 10 years ago, I started getting into the habit of framing things without glass because it’s just like strictly what works for our photos better for the blog, but it’s not always better in real life. It’s like way better in photos. Kind of way worse that real life  just the way it looks. 

Emma: It depends on the piece.

Elsie: Yeah. And then last year I saw this person on TikTok or something who had this idea of taking your art prints. And you frame them, you, like, sort of, like, paste it down in the back so that it has to be really secure with, like, Mod Podge or something, and then you gloss over the top with, like, a textured artist medium, and it makes it look more like a real painting in a frame, so you don’t use a mat, you just find a fancy gold frame and use this texture medium, and I did that with almost all the prints in my bathroom, and I think it looks, like, a hundred times better. That’s cool. Yeah, it’s a really affordable hack. 

Emma: Honestly, you should make that a blog post or link someone if, if it is a blog post. Okay. You mentioned TikTok, but that’s kind of hard to link, so. 

Elsie: I could make it a blog post. It would be very easy to do. 

Emma: I don’t even use TikTok on my phone personally, so like, I would want the steps.

Elsie: Okay. And I think I’m going to do that with my vampire paintings. Like, I see them all the time and they’re, they’re still in the glass and they still have the mats. And I just started to feel like it looks like way worse. So I have this, so I do think it’s like a hack to make your prints that, and it could be like a 10 print. Like, even on Etsy, a lot of prints are like 2 and you just download them and print them yourself. But it ends up looking, I think, so much more, like, expensive in heirloom. That’s a good hack. My problem was, I wanted them to blend in with my paintings collection, because a lot of the paintings in that little bathroom are originals, and I wanted the prints because I love Janet Hill. And can’t get the originals. So like had to do the prints, but I wanted them to fit in. So I feel like it like helps a lot with that. If you’re like a gallery wall person. Anyway, okay, so custom framing, I think it’s a game changer. I think try out a couple different styles. So for Emma’s style, she gets the floater frames, and that’s also how I frame my art that I’m making things on canvases, I think, look. It’s an option. I think contemporary art looks really good in floater frames. And for me, like, antique art, I usually go for a fancy gold frame. So any place that does custom framing will have those styles. It doesn’t have to be expensive. The local, the craft store type of places like Michael’s, et cetera, those places have coupons and they have most of the basic styles and I think it’s usually not as expensive as you think it’s going to be.

Emma: Yeah. Especially if you wait for a sale or have a coupon and they usually will have like a wall of like one corner of the frame and you can literally take it off the wall and kind of set it on your piece and look at it a little bit to see if you feel like it’s gonna go well. If you’re nervous because it does cost money. So it is a bummer. I got a couple of pieces done recently and I just, I chose the wrong frame and now I’m going to redo it or paint it.

Elsie: I think you could paint those frames. 

Emma: Yeah, I think I will. Cause It would have been so much cheaper if I had just gotten them that color in the first place though, but it doesn’t really matter, but it happens.

Elsie: Yeah, no, it’s a little bit of a skill. It’s a little bit of a learning curve. So save things on Pinterest that you like how the frames look and kind of use that, but I think that, I think just go for it, and choose a consistent framing style, at first I would try out different ones, but then find what works for you, and then, I honestly have used the same styles of frames probably more than 20 times throughout my home, and you would never know, cause no one books that closely, like, it’s, whatever, you know? But I do like if they’re in a collection together, I do like to have a couple different styles instead of all matching frames, personally. 

Emma: I’m the same. I tend to do more matching frames for like a photo wall or things like that. I also, I’m not a big, I don’t do a lot of matting. Elsie just mentioned I do a lot of like floater frames, soft for canvas art. But matting is a way too that can kind of really highlight a piece that you have, it can also kind of slightly change the size. So if you have a piece that’s like a little bit smaller than you were hoping for your space and it makes sense to do some matting in a frame, then that can kind of fill it out a little bit more.

Elsie: That’s true. I didn’t mean to put down matting at all. I think that when you’re trying to do a classical style, not as much, but for framing photos and things like that, it looks amazing and you can get huge mats and they look really cool. So you can drastically change the style. I’m pro matte. So I just want to put that in the record.

Emma: It depends. So it can work and it can look bad too. It can look cheesy. 

Elsie: It’s like, if you’re trying to make it look like a painting for me, it’s like just the frame, no matte. If you’re trying to make it look modern or like a print or like a gallery wall that matches, I think mattes are great, custom framing is amazing. I also have, since I’ve been framing my own paintings. This month I found out that like the floater frames are not that expensive. The place I’ve used is called, I think it’s called pictureframes. com. It’s not that expensive. It’s like two nails to secure it in there. Once you have it at home, like anyone can do it for real. It is doable.

Emma: I also really like when you get something custom framed, I guess it could be different, different places, but most of the time it’ll end up where it has kind of the paper backing and it has a wire. And that’s what you hang it from. It makes it easier for you to hang it. Like, then if there’s nothing back there, if you’re just left to your own devices. So if you’re like, Oh, I’m nervous about hanging these in my home. I’m not the best. I think getting it custom framed is just going to help you too. So it’s a good move. 

Elsie: Yeah, I agree. Woo hoo, framing, framing. It makes such a big difference. 

Emma: Okay, and then how do you hang art pieces on your walls? This is a bit of a, really depends, because like how you hang like the sculpted snake on your wall, it’s very different than how you would hang like something that’s hung on a wire already. 

Elsie: Okay. So if it’s extremely heavy, then you need to use wall anchors. You just do. But other than that, most art is not extremely heavy. Almost all the art in my home is hung with just small nails, just like a little nail kit, simple. And then as far as like. If the back of your frame doesn’t have a string yet, a wire, you can have those added at the framing shop or you can add them yourself. It’s not that hard to do it yourself. I have done it. At most stores you can get a little kit that has like wire and like the little toothy looking things that you hang with and so you’ll have options. But yeah, I think just being brave and going for it is the thing, like, and I totally get it. I have something right now, it’s a plate wall, where I’m like, oh, what do I do? I’ve never done it. Like, when you’ve never done it, but then you just, if you just try it, almost everything is something you can learn online in two minutes, you know? It’s a beautiful world with the internet, so you can put art all over your walls, I promise. And don’t freak out about, like, if you don’t like how it looks. Just move it. Like, don’t forget about nail holes. I think that that’s like, you can fill them. It’s so easy to fix. You can fix it. I promise you. You can fill them. Just go for it. 

Emma: You should always have a little bit of extra wall paint in your house just for any reason. Like, you can bump up against a wall with a piece of furniture. Also if you’re hanging a whole bunch of pieces and you’re trying to get the spacing right, buy some poster board or have some scrap paper and cut out pieces of the things and just tape them up and make sure you like it. That’s an easy way to feel a little more reassurance. And if you have a wall where you move things around fairly often for me. This is only like family photos I will move those around fairly often as we get a new one. I might move something around I will use command strips for a wall like that because It’s just easier and I know that I’m gonna be taking the nails out all the time if I did nails So I will do command strips. If you’re a renter you might want to consider that I think if you do it extremely heavy piece, you’re just gonna need to hang it though but most small, medium, to even semi-large things can be hung with command strips if that’s what you need for your space. Something to do. But I would recommend a level. They’re not that expensive. Get a level. Don’t think your eyeball can just do it. You can’t just get it level. 

Elsie: Yeah, okay, and another thing about hanging art, we should probably, like, make a blog post about this, but, like, don’t hang your art super high up. It’s sort of like the thing with the curtains, where people, like, so many people do them wrong, and they don’t know they’re doing it wrong. Art should be eye level, like, almost always. And like reasonable eye level, maybe like if you’re short, maybe it can be a little tiny bit higher. It’s kind of like an old people thing when people like hang their art almost up to the ceiling. It looks so bad. So you hang your curtains, hang your curtains, almost the ceiling, and your art. Everything like that is eye level. 

Emma: Yeah. Okay. And then what are some of your favorite art pieces in your home? This is going to be hard for you becasue you have so many. 

Elsie: Yeah, no, okay, so as far as, like, the contemporary artists, I’m just trying to collect, like, my favorite artists. You know, like the ones I can afford. I think my very favorite piece I’ll show it to you later is this. I got an Esther Pearl Watson original recently, and it was just like something that I wanted for like 10 years. So it was like very special. And the Julie Blackman was, Emma got it for me last year. I know we’ve talked about it before, but it’s like the biggest piece of art in my home. So it kind of like makes a big statement in that way. 

Emma: Yeah, I have a Julie Blackman too. A different one and we just love her work. So it’s very cool. It’s very cool to have a piece. Yeah, it makes me feel cool. 

Elsie: It’s very cool And then as far as collecting vintage and antique art, I consider it like very intuitive I think that if You like it, you like it. Like, there’s not more to it than that. Just collect art that you like, and don’t worry about it. If you don’t like it, then just don’t, you know. And then the more you do, the more you’ll develop your own taste for it, and you’ll start to, like, see little things in it, and little nuances that you didn’t see before.

Emma: Okay, anything else we want to say about collecting art? 

Elsie: No, I would just say no matter what budget you are on in life, I think that there’s some kind of art. To collect and it makes your home more magical. It’s, it’s a huge way to personalize your space and it brings me so much joy. 

Emma: Love looking at other people’s art in their home. Like if I get invited over and I just always like know right away, if I like want to walk around someone’s house, if they have interesting art, it’s very fun. So yeah, you should be one of those people so that I can walk around your house. 

Elsie: There’s so many styles. There’s, there’s so much to it. I feel like we’re probably not doing it justice, but that’s just like our getting started episode and it’s a whole world.

Emma: Okay. Now it’s time for a joke or a fact or a meditation with Nova. 

Elsie: All right, Nova, what do you have for us this week? 

Nova: A joke, but first I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for. All of you who ordered my cookies, I’m so thankful that you’re on the podcast. And so now, let’s have some jokes. What kind of music do all balloons hate? Pop music. 

Elsie: That’s a good one. 

Nova: Bye. 

Emma: Thank you so much for listening. You can submit your questions or other episode ideas at podcast@abeautifulmess.com or you can call our voicemail, which is 417-893-0011. We’ll be back next week with the listener question all about sisters, being sisters, sister addiction episode. And we’re going to do a book report on the courage to be disliked.

You can find the podcast posts archive here.

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And if you’re looking for a specific code you heard on the podcast, you can see a full list on this page!

Show Notes:

Decor inspiration:

DaVinci’s art studio – very beautiful

Danielle’s farmhouse – limewash exterior, very cottage core

Other cozy inspiration (fashion, food, drink or anything?)-

DaVinci’s painting of Danielle

Netted hair pieces

Danielle’s costume at the ball with the wings and her face covered in glitter

Braided hairstyles

All the dresses

Jewelry – necklaces and broaches

Rate this movie from 0 to 5 crowns

Elsie – 5

Emma – 4

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #225: Easter Traditions
• Episode #224: It’s Spring Bucket List Time!
• Episode #223: Buying Furniture for Your Home – Deep Dive

Episode 226 Transcript:

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Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast, your cozy comfort listen.  Today we’re rewatching the 1998 movie Ever After directed by Andy Tennant and starring Drew Barrymore and Angelica Houston. Okay, just like right off the top, I have to say Angelica Houston slays in this role, and is one of my ultimate icons because of Morticia Addams, like of all time, but I thought she was a very good evil character in this movie. I loved her. 

Emma: Yeah, she’sone of those actors that I think of as like a character actor, because I do feel like she does a lot of villains or just like more severe roles, but then you can tell she can just act. She’s just a good actor. But I do think of her as some of the things like Mortica Addams.

Elsie: Yeah, she’s in a Wes Anderson movie. 

Emma: She’s amazing. 

Elsie: Yes, she’s an icon. I mean Drew Barrymore is too, but Angelica Houston, I feel like is my number one. 

Emma: I hadn’t really watched this in quite a while too. And I was just like, how young is Drew Barrymore? I usually am not googling like actors names right away, but I was like, I have to know. She looks like a child to me.

Elsie: How old was she? 

Emma: She’s 23. She’s a baby. She was 23 when it came out. So she was probably 22 when they were filming. 

Elsie: So you know how back in the day on our about page of our blog, we had all of our team do their crushes, their celebrity crushes. I remember one of the men who we worked with at one point put Drew Barrymore in Ever After. And I always remember that and I got it. I was thinking about it when I was watching her especially with like her glitter face and I was like, okay, I do you get it. She’s just like, so radiant and beautiful and just like magical and really unique in this movie. 

Emma: This is a very fun damsel in distress slash damsel who’s pushing back the whole time, you know? It’s a very fun character. Very fun take on Cinderella. Love it. So I guess we should describe the movie if anyone hasn’t seen Ever After then you just heard that it’s kind of a Cinderella story. So it’s if Cinderella was a true story, it would be very much like Ever After. Danielle’s father dies when she is young and her stepmother makes her work as a servant. One day Danielle pretends to be a courtier. Is that how you say it? 

Elsie: Courtier

Emma: You can tell I’m very Midwestern.  Courtier to help a fellow servant escape from being taken to the Americas. I believe as a slave. She captures the eye of the most unlikely person the Crown Prince of France, Henry. The two fall in love, but they are up against Daniels ruthless stepmother and her spoiled stepsisters, mainly one stepsister. One of them is actually pretty nice. However, with a servant’s help Danielle’s kind stepsister, Jacqueline, and Leonardo da Vinci, at danielle’s side. Danielle and Prince Henry’s love can survive even though he’s a prince and she’s just a servant girl.

Elsie: It’s incredible. 

Emma: So it’s a Cinderella story more or less.

Elsie: Yes, a tell as old as time, but with Leonardo da Vinci. Which I thought that was a nice touch. It’s very unhinged. And I like the painting. I’ll probably talk about like eight times the episode. The painting was one of my favorite parts of the whole movie. It’s really magical. After I started Googling the Mona Lisa and like looking at I was like, does Drew Barrymore look exactly like the Mona Lisa or what? Like, she kind of does. So I feel like she has that like classical oil painting look in this movie. 

Emma: I agree. DaVinci in this movie, his character, him being in at all is unhinged. And just like his relationship with the prince and just things he does. He’s also to me like the funniest character has the best one liners. So it’s a blast. 

Elsie: It’s fun. I would definitely say it hold up. Although I think for me, it was best enjoyed in the 1990s but I still think it’s a wonderful classic. I do have to say just like I put it up on the same shelf with the Brandy Cinderella. I think that Brandy Cinderella is still my number one but they’re, you know, almost the same, but also very different because that’s a musical and this isn’t. So anyway, I guess that’s just like choose your own adventure.

Emma: This one’s a little more they’re trying to do more of a period piece. Yeah, that one’s more of a Disney musicial.

Elsie: This one’s trying to be like a Jane Austen Cinderella.

Emma: Yes. Yeah, I would say so. So if you like that kind of period piece feel. I think then this is your Cinderella. 

Elsie: Yeah, I love them both. So decor inspiration we loved, hated, strong reactions. So I will say this movie was not as much of a decor banger as I was expecting it to be. I thought it was very beautiful. But I also kind of thought it was like pretty cliche. It was like, you could have used the same sets for like any movie from like A Knight in Shining Armor period like type of vibe. 

Emma: There was also a lot more time spent outdoors. Then I remembered, like there’s less time inside palaces or inside country manners or whatever. So there’s a lot of just like being out in the woods. And there’s a lake and cliffs and different things like that. So, which is cool, but not really really any decor to speak of.

Elsie: Yeah, the decor is good. But I will say though, for me, the thing that was way above the decor was the fashion in this movie. So specifically makeup and hair. Yeah, the hair pieces, so they have like a lot of kneaded hair pieces that are like so cool. I want to try to get one of my daughters to do a costume like that like a period princess because I think that she would really like it. And I just like really liked those knitted hair pieces. So I want to get one and then the part at the end, obviously when she’s wearing the wings, and she has like jewels glued on her face, and she has like almost her whole face is covered in glitter. And she’s like, very powdery white. It’s like a vibe. Like I’ve never seen another look like that. It was very original. And it was definitely to me the main moment of the whole movie. 

Emma: I feel like a lot of people probably tried to do that kind of vibe for their prom because it was just this like moment.

Elsie: I should have it. I’m not even gonna say what my prom looks were but they were so bad compared to that. And I really really blew it.

Emma: I had one fairy one, but I didn’t go this fairy length so really messed up on that. 

Elsie: We did senior pictures of Emma where she was wearing fairy wings. So I did want to talk about the fairy wings because I feel like with this movie and Romeo and Juliet, it’s like fairy wings are the ultimate 90s iconic thing. I don’t know. It was like a moment in time.

Emma: I also feel like butterflies were such a thing in the 90s too. So something about wings. People were into delicate wings. It was the era for that in the 90s. DaVinci makes her wings because He says I’ll have to make the wings. Presumably he makes them for her right before the ball.

Elsie: He is the best character. 

Emma: Yeah, he is. 

Elsie: Oh, his little art studio. That was very, very beautiful part of the movie. I can’t say there was like a room that like threw me other than the party at the end where she like comes in and it’s mainly because of her outfit. So it’s mainly because of the fashion. And I think the art studio was probably my other favorite. 

Emma: I did like her farmhouse. They show the exterior of it a lot. They’re inside it for some scenes, like there’s breakfast scene where you see like their dining room and things like that. But you actually see the exterior of it a lot more as she’s like, feeding the pigs and like in the very beginning when her father’s riding away and he has his I guess heart attack or something where he passes. And I liked seeing that. It’s very like that look that people are kind of into right now the lime wash kind of wall vibe, where it’s all one color but it looks weathered. It was very cottage core. I mean, it is a cottage. It’s a farmhouse in France, I guess. And so I thought that was really pretty, but not really anything to speak of like, I would definitely vacation somewhere like that. It looks like a very, like relaxing place to read a book, hang out.

Elsie: Get eggs from chickens. 

Emma: Yeah, that’d be cool. 

Elsie: Live on the land. I like it. It is very beautiful. I mean, I don’t know, I think that that’s a funny thing about period movies is that like the poor people houses and the rich people houses are kind of equal because the poor people houses are so aesthetically pleasing.

Emma: Yeah, well, and also, this is so random, but I’m very into kitchens. And I think most people are and I think like a kitchen is, I mean, almost every Nancy Meyer movies we’ve talked about on here, or just generally we talked about the kitchen for a long time. And they either usually don’t show a kitchen because it’s like where the servants prepare the food. The main characters usually don’t hang out in the kitchen. It’s not like the heart of the home like it is in modern times as people cook for themselves. If you have servants, then you never go into your kitchen. So I feel like you just don’t see spaces that feel homey, if that makes any sense. Because it’s just a whole different way of life presumably. I’m not really a historian. I’m basing this off fictional movies and books. So I think that’s part of the problem is I’m like well, I want to see like how you made your fridge look cute, but that’s not a part of this era of time. It’s just not going to be part of this, you know, and I don’t really want to see like a pot boiling over a fireplace like that’s cool but it’s not to me like, oh, that’s inspiring decor that inspires my kitchen. I’m like, no, I have a stove. Like, you know, it’s just so different. So I think that there’s like, kind of a disconnect there with period piece movies where like, there’s not the same thing to appreciate because it’s just a different way of life. 

Elsie: That’s true. When I had to explain to my kids that people just don’t have servants anymore, it’s just not a thing that’s done because it’s in all the princess movies. So they didn’t understand that.

Emma: Like, well, you can pay someone to help you with certain services., like cleaning your home. But that’s not a servant and you don’t call them that.

Elsie: Yeah, times have changed. Okay, so back on track. Is there any other cozy inspiration that really like vibes you in this movie?

Emma: I think so. In addition to the kind of hair nets that you were talking about the kind of like they have like little pearls.

Elsie: Braids, a lot of good braid and a lot of puffy headbands that are iconic.

Emma: I thought, if you want some braid inspiration, this movie is there for you. Because there’s a lot of up dos that are sometimes messy, like she’s gonna go work in the field. And sometimes they’re like going to a ball. So there’s a lot of like, different hairstyles that I thought were very inspiring if you’re a long hair gal. 

Elsie: I wonder if that was Drew Barrymore’s real hair not because it was so long too. 

Emma: I assume it’s extensions. They’d be so much easier to braid but I don’t know. Beats me.

Elsie: Yeah, I want one of those dresses. But I feel like there’s just not enough occasions in life to wear Renaissance clothes if you’re not interested in going to a renaissance fair. You just want to wear the dress. You know, it’s a little hard.

Emma: When does it come up? I agree. No problem. 

Elsie: I like those like aprony looking dresses, you know, with like the underdress. Those are really cute to me. 

Emma: Yeah. Kind of a corset type top. It’s a look. 

Elsie: Ah, yeah. And like the one that has like it had like, open elbows. Do you know what I’m talking about? It was one of the Angelica Houston dresses. Yeah, her black dress is like I think it was my favorite dress in the whole movie. And she was wearing it quite a bit. It was like a black velvet. You’ll see it when you watch the movie. I was mostly into the clothes. Not gonna lie.

Emma: Yeah, clothes, makeup hair. I was very into all that. There’s quite a few jewelry. There’s like brooches and necklaces that are kind of part of the story. Those were fun and felt very like stuff you would see at a flea market. You know, I don’t know, very enjoyable. There’s one scene to where she’s like in her underwear. I think they’ve gone swimming, I guess but  she’s still basically wearing like a gown. 

Elsie: Very covered up underwear.

Emma: Yeah. 

Elsie: I don’t remember that. 

Emma: It’s the scene where the gypsies capture them. And they’re like Drew Barrymore, you can take anything you can carry. And then she takes the prince and they all laugh and then they become friends. Which is my favorite scene in the movie because it is such a funny and daring thing to do. Yeah, but she’s wearing this like hilarious underwear that looks awful, because it’s basically a gown tied around her weird.

Elsie: I think that that kind of stuff would be scary.

Emma: Seems like a lot of laundry. 

Elsie: I love modern underwear. You know what I mean? It just like does the job, to the point. Like, no extra stuff under there. Okay. So before we do the rating, I do have to do an impression of the ending because I finished it this morning by the way, I do that almost every time.

Emma: I show up and she’s finishing the movie, always. It’s like 9am And I’m like, wow, you really leave this till the last second. 

Elsie: I do and this one, I actually watched most of this with my kids. But then, you know, there was like 30 minutes left or something. So I got to watch the good part this morning. Because the last 30 minutes I do feel like is kind of like 75% of what is aesthetically pleasing about the movie. So anyway, this is my impression. So first of all, he’s like, in love with her. And he’s like, who is this mysterious, beautiful, magical woman and he’s like, mom, I don’t want to marry anyone else except for her. And she’s like, okay, fine, but she’s already engaged. So, anyway, when he thinks he has to marry the wrong person, and he’s about to announce it. Then she walks in and she’s wearing her beautiful white gown with the wings and the jewels. And she’s like, I really have to tell you something, and he’s like, whatever it is, it’ll be fine. 

Emma: Which is a real gamble, when the person you love says I really need to tell you something. You should maybe listen, like what is it he has to say.

Elsie: He’s like, I’m gonna marry her. And the evil stepmother is like she’s, what do they call it? She’s a servant, actually. And he’s like, ewww actually you’re servant. What? Nevermind. And that to me was like, I’m sorry, but you’re not forgiven. You’re not forgiven five minutes later when you want to marry her. 

Emma: If we’re gonna do some script critiques. Here’s the thing. This guy sucks. The entire movie. She’s like, well, so you read Utopia, but you’re still a dick. And he’s like, oh, yeah, definitely, I’m a prince. That’s most of their falling in love dialog is she’s like, don’t you think that everyone should have rights? And he’s like, ewww no, I’m a prince and other people are commoners. And I guess she’s into that. I guess. I can see why he likes her. He feels challenged and no one else challenges him in his life, probably because he’s a prince. So he’s like, oh, this is interesting conversation. But for her, I’m like, why do you like this guy? He seems like an absolute dick. Like, every conversation you have with him. You’re like telling him what a dick he is and he truly is saying some like, not cool stuff. And then when he finds out, she’s a servant. He’s a dick. And I’m like, that’s not surprising. This whole movie, he was doing this whole time. So yeah, this is kind of, you know, DaVinci had a lot more faith in him than I think I would have. I would have been like, I don’t know DaVinci I think he’s gonna be a dick when he finds out about the servant thing.  And he was. I thought you were gonna do an impression of the wedding scene. He’s about to marry the princess of Spain. I think I can’t remember what country, the crying.

Elsie: That was an amazing scene because he lets her get all the way up there. I mean, they really drag it out. And then he’s just like ha na. 

Emma: He just laughed. You have to see like, I’m not going to do an impression. But I cannot imagine that actresses audition, because she doesn’t have any other lines. That’s your audition scene, there’s no other lines. So that’s what she came in to do one day in an office was this crazy crying for like a solid probably like three minutes walking down an aisle with a veil over her. She’s crying because she was in love with someone else and he realizes I’m in love with someone else. It’s this funny scene, but her crying is hilariously ridiculous. And I thought you’re gonna do that? 

Elsie: Oh,yeah. No, it was 1990s gold. I feel like it hit the right comedy marks of the era. , I thought it was beautiful gorgeous, beautiful gorgeous. So I’m just gonna give it five out of five crowns. I basically don’t give any movie that comes on our podcast for a complete episode like less than that.

Emma: I’d give it four. 

Elsie: Because the guy’s a dick too much.

Emma: Because the guy’s a dick too much. 

Elsie: They could have made him redeeming but I don’t feel like they usually put that kind of effort into the prince characters. 

Emma: I mean, they give him the whole like, he’s like, I’m gonna make a university that’s free for anyone. But then he’s still a dick to her when he finds out she’s a servant. So I’m like I don’t know, man. That guy sucks. You could have done better Drew Barrymore. I know he’s a prince but you could have better. You could have been like, DaVinci, do you have any nephews? 

Elsie: Yeah, okay. That’s an idea. 

Emma: Seems like a fun family to hang out with for the holidays. 

Elsie: Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that’s fun to imagine. They should do another movie that’s just about him because I do want a DaVinci movie now but with that exact character. 

Emma: Yeah, he was good.

Elsie: Trivia Time. One of the few adaptations that depicts one member of the step family as being sympathetic to Cinderella, or Danielle in this film, is this version. Jacqueline is rather friendly with Danielle compared to her abusive sister and mother. Yeah, that’s why in the end, she doesn’t have to become a cleaning lady or whatever their punishment is. She gets to just like, be happy and be normal.

Emma:  She wants to marry that other guy who’s like the prince’s right hand man or something. I don’t know. 

Elsie: Yeah, she gets to get married and have a happy life because she was a little bit nice.

Emma: I thought she was pretty nice. She clearly doesn’t really have any power in her family. So it’s difficult to affect change with no power.

Elsie: Good point. 

Emma: I think that she, you know, made it clear her feelings towards Daniella. I thought was pretty good. I thought she deserved to not be a cleaning lady like the other two. 

Elsie: Good. Yeah. That was sweet. Okay. 

Emma: As depicted in the film, the real Leonardo DaVinci kept the Mona Lisa with him all the time until his death. Interesting. I love it. I can’t think about being like so into one piece of art that you’re working on that you just keep it all the time. I’m a very like, finisher. You know what I mean? I’m very like I’m done with this. I’m sick of this. I like get tired and once I’m done with something I like want to move on. It’s interesting to think about like, kind of perfecting something or just maybe he wasn’t even painting on it. He was just keeping it until his death. Interesting. 

Elsie: Maybe he just loved it. I like that. It’s just a personal attachment. Yeah, it’s interesting. In the Gypsy scene where Danielle carries off Prince Henry, he was just too heavy for her to carry. So the crew had to put the actor in a harness with wires to make it look like she was carrying him off. That’s funny. I couldn’t tell.

Emma: I think I could lift up my husband the way she does. She puts in like kind of over her shoulder. I don’t think I could lift Jeremy. He’s quite a bit taller.

Elsie: I’m going to try it now. I’m going to try. Now I’m just curious.

Emma: She doesn’t walk that far. I mean, presumably in the movie, she would have to walk further. But like what they show the audience is not too far. I don’t know how tall that actor was compared to Drew Barrymore or anything like that. It’s not a criticism of Drew Barrymore or her strength. I’m just like, huh, I wonder if I could pick up my husband. I’m like, I think I could but it would be hard.

Elsie: What if you could do it, but you were making like horrible faces the whole time? Because that’s probably how I’ll be. It’s like, yeah, you can technically do it, but I wouldn’t want to do it on camera. 

Emma:  I’m like, I could do it but I’m six months pregnant right now.  So give me a little bit not right now. In the original Grimm version, this step mother and daughter had their eyes picked out by birds. In this version, the set mother and daughter are forced to work in a laundry type place. Usually, these places they use lie of soap and after prolonged use would cause blindness in the laundry. It’s really sad. 

Elsie: I guess they’re saying that it’s like sort of the same outcome or like a little nod to the original but without the pecking. That’s weird. I don’t know. I do think I love the like, true trivia about how fairy tales are like, very messed up. I think it’s very, like fun and cool. And like, I don’t know, it’s kind of vibe. It kind of makes the old days seem Vibier than you usually think of them as well. 

Emma: If you’ve ever, like been working on your book, and you’re like, oh, is this too offensive? I’m not trying to be. I don’t wanna shock everyone. And then you read something like this. And you’re like, the Brothers Grimm didn’t care. They’re just gonna say, you know, it’s like, whoa dude, you really went there. 

Elsie: Yeah. And it’s supposed to be for children. I think  that’s delightful, in a way, you know, it’s fun. Okay, one of the few Cinderella stories where the Prince and the Cinderella character in this case named Danielle get to know each other and fall in love over time before the ball, rather than the love at first sight at the ball itself. I like that. I think I think that falling in love at the ball is like kind of boringer than this. 

Emma: Yeah, we kind of already mentioned the 90s Romeo and Juliet  adaptation because the wings, and they do the whole fall in love at first sight, which is, I think part of the play too. Although do they have the balcony scene and then they fall in love? I think they do fall in love at first sight in the real Shakespeare version. Anyway. Yeah, I think either way, you kind of have some things you’re up against as a story writer or person making the film film director whatever you’re doing, you know, because again, I kind of feel like he’s such a dick every time they talk in this movie that I’m like, why did  Danielle like him? Almost feel like love for sight would have made some more sense until you hear him talk and you’re like, oh God, this guy. 

Elsie: Huh? Boo. 

Emma: Boo. Okay, moving on. The only Cinderella story where the Cinderella character in this case, Danielle is not the only servant kept in the house. There are three other servants who stay Maurice, who Danielle bought him back, Louise and Paulette. In most Cinderella stories, the stepmother gets rid of all the other servants and only keeps the Cinderella character to use as a slave to do the work.

Elsie: I mean, I think that makes more sense than selling candlesticks to pay your mortgage. So I don’t know. But it’s probably just like nice having more characters. 

Emma: I feel like it gave her people to talk to and like situations. I think they also free her before the ball. So it’s like, if they hadn’t been there, there would have been some difficult, she would had to figure that out. You know, she would have had to Rapunzel herself out the window or something. I don’t know. So yeah, there’s that. I will say though it’s kind of interesting to think about, she was like I got rid of all the other servants except Cinderella for money reasons. I’d be like that’s actually in some ways, as weird as it sounds a small like little bit of mercy, because Cinderella couldn’t have been the best servant. She grew up kind of privileged, so she probably wasn’t the best cleaner. So she would have been keeping her because she was the stepdaughter, you know, as opposed to keeping whoever would have been the most experienced quality servant. So in a way, it would be like showing a bit of mercy just to keep her.

Elsie: I think that she, like, I don’t think she was really showing mercy though because I remember when she said like, did you ever love me? And she was like, I don’t know, do I love a rock in my shoe? I think she just was like, well, I have to keep this stepdaughter who I don’t love anyway, so I guess I’ll just make her a servant. 

Emma: I think in this version, they’re trying to show us too that she did really love the father. The stepmother really loves the father. And like his dying words is that he loves his daughter. I think she’s feels some kind of jealousy. They kind of show it on the actresses face. Angelica Houston does this kind of look where you’re like, oh, she’s a bit jealous here.  I think they’re trying to give us some kind of impression like that, which is like being jealous of a child is obviously stupid. But, you know, I think that’s what they’re kind of trying to do. She felt a competition with her stepdaughter.

Elsie: That makes sense. Okay, well, I love the movie. Lots of famous people. I think it’s definitely a fun rewatch, if you haven’t seen it since the 90s. I don’t think I had seen it, definitely in more than 10 years, but I’ve maybe seen it once since the 90s. So it was fun to like, see how it held up to my imagination. For some reason. It was like a lot different in my memory. Like I remembered it very differently. So and I have no idea why. Just like the way it looked.

Emma: Yeah, had definitely been well for me, because I was like, how old is Drew Barrymore? Is she even out of high school in this movie? I was like, okay, she’s 23. 

Elsie: She was a child actor. 

Emma: Yeah, I was like, is she 18 in this movie? She looks so young. Yeah, she’s 23. 

Elsie: Amazing. So it’s time for Nova’s joke or fact. Hey, Nova, what do you have for us this week?

Nova: A meditation. 

Emma: All right. I’m closing my eyes. 

Nova: Imagine you just got onto a plane. You draw on your pad of paper. You take some deep breaths. And suddenly, we’re here. You go out. And you see Florida. You go and book a room at a hotel. Stay and go to the beach. You order some ice cream. Sit on a lounge chair and watch the waves up down. Then you go back to the hotel, sleep. The next morning you get some room service. Imagine what you’re going to eat. It tastes good. Then you have some lunch. How about an ice cream sundae to round it off. And then you go back, you see dolphins. Then you see a starfish. Then you quickly get up and you search for some seashells. Then, suddenly you trip on a beautiful seashell. You put it in your bag and keep on walking. You see some crabs digging in the sand. You dig up some clams. Then you go back to your hotel. What a day. You sleep for the last time, pack up your bags, go back home and take the picture out that you secretly had all along and you forgot something. That your friends are with you all along. 

Elsie: Love it. That was my favorite one. So relaxed. 

Nova: Now open your eyes. And first before I go. Let’s take three deep breaths one more time. Remember, always take deep breaths when you need them. They will help you be calm enough. And remember, every time I do a meditation first, we’re gonna do at least three breaths before we do it. Bye.

Elsie: Thank you so much for listening. If you have a comfort rewatch movie you would like us to talk about it, you can submit it at podcast@abeautifulmess.com or call our voicemail at 417-893-0011. We will be back next week with a deep dive into art.