Episode #57: Dream Bathrooms + Covid Halloween Plans

Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast this week, we’re falling down the rabbit hole of dream bathrooms because sometimes it’s just fun to dream and I don’t know, I really like bathrooms. (laughs) We’re talking bidets, saunas, wallpaper covered water closets, all the fun and very important points that you would expect for us to cover. We’re also talking COVID-related Halloween plans, which is a very important topic this year. This week’s episode is sponsored by Canon USA. We’ll talk more about them later in this episode. Ok, so before we start talking about the dream bathrooms, I want to talk a little bit about my mini-makeover because I’m in the middle of that, which I think also is an important thing to just say out front is like we’re not all going to be making a dream bathroom. It’s 2020 and everything sucks.

Emma: Mhmm.

Elsie: Like that, you know, just get that out in front. You know, we’re not putting a dream bathroom in our house right now, and we’re assuming you’re probably not renovating your dream bathroom either because of COVID and whatever. But it’s just fun to talk about…

Emma: Maybe like one person who’s like a contractor. (laughs)

Elsie: Yeah. One person is like, “hey, this was my year! This was my bathroom year. I’ve been saving up for ten years for this. OK, I’m doing it.” We see you. We hear you. But you are the only one.

Emma: Yeah. The rest of us are dreaming.

Elsie: (laughs) Yeah. So I don’t know. I just think it’s fun to talk about and dream. Like one of my favorite things about home projects is saving some of them for later. You know, I don’t want it to all be done at once. That’s why I would never do a new build.

Emma: Yeah, it is kind of fun to spread it out a little bit because, one, it’s a lot of work and a lot of money. So just on a practical scale, but even on an emotional scale and also like a decision fatigue kind of scale, I think it’s nice to spread it out. So you get to feel like you enjoy making all these decisions because they are really fun. But when you have to do a ton of them at once, it’s actually really overwhelming. And you can feel like “I don’t even care. Just put white tile in. I can’t think anymore,” you know? And it’s like, well, you’ll probably be OK with those choices. But, you know, it’s more fun if you get to kind of dream and spread it out a little bit.

Elsie: It definitely is for me. I know some people like getting it over with, but I love spreading it out and I love renovating. Like renovating is a hobby to me as much as it’s our job. A little bit for the blog. More so it’s a hobby. So I would do it this way whether I had a blog or not. So anyway, we just moved into a new house two months ago, as you all know, and it came with the most nineties kitchen and bathrooms, very original nineties. Nothing’s been updated since the 90s. Like you can tell, absolutely nothing has been updated since then. So my main bathroom, I’ll tell you some of the features it came with, because you guys know our house is like kind of fancy. It’s a, it’s like a big fancy dream house. But, BUT, this is it… came with a leaking — like my vanity totally leaks. If I even try to wash my face, I have to, like, go over to Jeremy’s vanity to wash my face or else put a towel under it. Every single towel bar in the bathroom is broken off. So it’s just like two knobs on the wall throughout the room. Our shower only has one temperature, which is — it’s so crazy that, like, we just bought this house and like, they didn’t fix any of these things.

Emma: Tell them about the tub. I feel like you’ve maybe mentioned it before, but that was pretty…because you took care of it right away. But it was gross.

Elsie: All right. So when we got our home inspection, and I will say, like, we got like a nice big discount after we got our home inspection and we knew about all this stuff. So I’m not complaining. I’m actually just trying to bond with you guys, like, you know, like tell you the real story. Right.

Emma: That could be the name of this podcast: I’m just trying to bond with you. (laughs)

Elsie: (laughs) I love that name for a podcast.

Emma: It’s honest.

Elsie: So when we got our inspection, it came with like a lot of pictures, a lot of terrifying images of crawlspaces. And, you know, that’s how inspections are. They’re meant to be a little scary.

Emma: Right.

Elsie: And, you know, sober you up before you make a big decision. So it came with a picture of how our whirlpool looked when you filled it with water and turn the whirlpool on. And it was like black mold in the tub. It was super gross looking. And so we knew that it needed to be cleaned out. And it did say in the notes and the inspection like “this is actually very common. It just needs to be cleaned.” It’s not like a — something that can’t be fixed, it hasn’t been used in a long time and there’s like mold growing in there, which is disgusting. So anyway, Keely recommended to me this jet cleaning product. I’ll link it in the show notes because I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but we’ve been doing that, you have to, like, fill your whole tub up, turn the jets on, put some of this product in, and then let it run for 15 minutes and then drain it out and then do that over and over and over until there’s no more mold. And it did work. I will say it really did work. And I feel great now and it’s not that big of a deal. So if anyone buys a house with jet tubs that are questionable, this actually did a great job. So I’m happy about it. Other than being slightly broken. Oh, also, one more thing. Our bidet doesn’t work at all. It doesn’t work. Non-functional.

Emma: Now wait a second, let’s tell the listeners how many bidets you have in your new house, because this is very funny.

Elsie: There’s three bidets.

Emma: Oh, I thought there was more. That’s that’s still funny. But not as funny as I was hoping.

Elsie: There’s only three bidets. (laughs).

Emma: I thought there would be like five so dangit!

Elsie: And it’s not like the kind of bidet, like, people are buying now where they are like hooking it up to their toilet? It’s like there’s two toilets in the bathroom one’s a bidet and one’s a toilet. Yeah. So like, old fashioned looking bidets, I guess.

Emma: So you have to go to the bathroom and then kind of scoot yourself over to the other one? Like that’s how it works?

Elsie: Yes.

Emma: Ok, OK.

Elsie: Yeah.

Emma: I’ve never used a bidet ever. I’m not against it. I just haven’t, it hasn’t happened in my life yet so.

Elsie: Well when we did buy this house I will say I was like, how do you get a bidet education? Because, yeah that’s…

Emma: That’s tricky.

Elsie: …like tricky. So I did have to like get a, get a friend to teach me everything. That was the best method I could think of. (laughs)

Emma: Word of mouth.

Elsie: Because I learn most things from YouTube and this was like, definitely not something you want to learn from YouTube.

Emma: Right. Right. Yeah.

Elsie: Anyway, moving on. (laughs) So other than the bathroom being pretty broken, it also just has like generally like a bad vibe. So it’s huge for the floor plan of our house. On the downstairs below it, like the same square footage, there is the movie room, a hallway, the guest room and the guest bathroom. And then in the upstairs, all of that space is just the main bathroom and the closet. So it’s like very, very large, like kind of ridiculously large. Like, it bothered me the first time we saw it and I was like, what do we do with this? A little bit frantic feeling? So anyway, and it just like the vibe is like a zero, like there is no cool vibe whatsoever. So I feel like what we’re trying to do in this mini makeover is just give it somewhat of a cute look, you know, like just make it feel as good as it can. And then eventually in hopefully five years or not soon at all, I don’t want to think about it. We will eventually gut the bathroom and make it into like a real dream bathroom. It definitely has the space to have potential. But anyway, the mini makeover is imminent. It is now, I saw a notification on my phone that the hardware was delivered like yesterday and we’re going to be just doing a little bit of painting, maybe a little bit of wallpaper, maybe a pop of color in the water closet, or do you think I should do water, the water closet, a pop of color like paint or patterned like wallpaper?

Emma: Hmm. I mean, I like wallpaper, but either one’s fun.

Elsie: And I also ordered some shelves and just like put some art up, you know, so I’m just going to try to make it as good as it can be, like a rug, you know, as good as it can be for now. Um, anyway, I’m very excited to show it. It’ll be a blog post at the end of this month or maybe the very beginning of November. What were you going to say?

Emma: Well, it just needs more of a vibe. It’s all I was going to say.

Elsie: Yeah. Say your impression of it. Don’t you think it has no vibe?

Emma: Yeah, it has no personality. It’s a great, I mean, it’s like very, very spacious and like has everything like it has two sinks. It has a big shower. It has, you know, a water closet, which I like to call a toilet room. (laughs) So.

Elsie: Oh, my gosh, I have to tell you, it’s a funny story. Ok, so Emma had to explain to me that a two person shower has to mean that there’s two showerheads, not just that you believe two people could fit in it! (laughs)

Emma: Yeah I was like, two person shower, and she was like, oh, yeah, you know, it would fit. And I’m like, no, no, no. I mean, like, you can both be taking a shower. Like one person can be washing their hair and so can the other person at the same time, instead of taking turns.

Elsie: I was like, oh, (laughs) nice. OK, OK. So moving on, (laugh) I’m excited to show all the decor. This is going to be a fun mini makeover. I love a mini makeover because it’s like no pressure. It’s like just make it the best you can and just try anything that you think might be cute, but it’s really not a permanent decision at all.

Emma: MHmm. Yeah, it definitely takes the pressure off, which is nice.

Elsie: Yes. OK, so I’m going to tell you about my dream, dream, dream bathroom, but first you have to tell about yours, Emma.

Emma: Well, so…

Elsie: Spare us no bidets!

Emma: (laughs) Yeah. If I ever learn to use a bidet, then I guess that’ll go on the list. But so the the functional things that I really feel are important in a bathroom double sink that’s important, so that everyone can just, you know, I like to clog my sink with face masks and I don’t want anyone to get onto me abolut it, so I just need my own sink. (laughs) So two sinks, that’s important. Big shower. I love a double shower. I think it’s just nice. And on days when two people need to take a shower at the same time, it’s great, you know, but, oh! And water closet, like a toilet room, because then like someone else can be using the bathroom in whatever way and someone could still be using the toilet.

Elsie: I think they really are just like, useful.

Emma: Yeah, it’s just practical. Like, these are my practical list, more or less, which of course you can go without these things. But these are just kind of things that to me, make a main bathroom very functional. So…

Elsie: But You have to make it dreamy too.

Emma: My dream thing is that I someday would really, really like to have a little sauna inside of my main bathroom. And I don’t know if I want to infrared or if I want a more traditional steam. I’m still kind of thinking on that or haven’t used enough saunas that I have a strong opinion one way or the other. But I really, really love, I’ve I’ve talked about my hot tub too many times on this podcast, and I just I have that thing. I feel like a lot of people have this where in the winter my toes and my fingers are just always cold. I don’t know. I guess I have bad circulation. I don’t know. At any rate, it’s really nice to just get nice and warm before you get into bed, because then once you get under the covers, I feel like you can stay warm all night instead of having that period of time where you’re like, I want to go to sleep, but my toes are freezing cold and I just can’t fall asleep.

Elsie: What are your thoughts on heated tile?

Emma: It’s cool, but I don’t really care that much. It’s really cool though. But we had…I stayed at a BnB one time on a vacation that had heated floors. It was in Norway, which it was very cold when we visited, extremely cold. So it was really nice and it made the house much more cozy. So I definitely think it’s really cool, but I don’t really have a sense of like how much it cost not just to install, but to like the utilities. So I guess I would want to know I’d want to do a little more research on that before I put it on my list. But because I just want to know how, much does this is it worth it to me? Because I also like cozy socks. I’m definitely a fuzzy socks person, so I’m kind of like, I don’t know. But the sauna is kind of a, I really, really want one one day. I just feel like it’ll really make winters…it’s just something to look forward to.

Elsie: Yeah, I absolutely think that having a sauna makes it a luxury bathroom.

Emma: Yeah. It’s very — and they can be so cute. Like if you’re going on Pinterest and just like Google, you know, modern sauna in bathroom or whatever, I guess you’re not Googling it. You’re typing it into Pinterest, you know what I mean? There’s some really, really cute ones. And they even can come in like kind of different wood colors because usually saunas are wood inside and they can kind of like, vary and they just sort can be really, really cute and just feel very cozy, like visually they look very cozy. And then obviously they’re very warm. So they are literally cozy when you’re inside them. So I’m just a big fan and I would love to have one in my bathroom someday, but that’s my dream. So… (laughs)

Elsie: I, I am going to steal that dream because I love it.

Emma: I know you already stole my wine cellar dream, so I’ll tell you my dreams and then you do them (laughs). That’s okay, I’ll just come over and use your sauna all the time. (laughs)

Elsie: It’s because I’m an Enneagram seven. I love to steal other people’s dreams.

Emma: That’s fine by me. As long as I get to use all your shit. I don’t care. (laughs)

Elsie: (laughs) All right. Well, I love pinning bathrooms. I could just pin bathrooms all day, but I think that something that’s helpful for me and good for…my personality type is very like excited about everything, is to think, “do I love that for me or do I love that for you?” Because a lot of things with home stuff, it’s like it’s so just exciting to see it. But you don’t actually want to in your own home once you think it through.

Emma: Right.

Elsie: So, yeah, with dream bathrooms. I think that’s why it’s like I love, love, love, colorful, like really colorful bathrooms. But then I have to think about like how it would feel to live in it every day, you know?

Emma: Right.

Elsie: Once you pass that threshold where it becomes normal to you. Yeah. Like, is that still the bathroom you want? I’m especially obsessed about two-tone tile. I feel like I’m going to probably have two-tone tile in my dream bathroom because it’s just something I pin all the time.

Emma: What do you mean? What do you mean two-tone?

Elsie: Where like half of the tile is a color and half of the tile is white or like…

Emma: Oh, okay!

Elsie: Two different colors.

Emma: So it’s like a pattern kind of.

Elsie: Maybe, maybe a pattern or maybe just like a color break.

Emma: OK, cool.

Elsie: Yeah, I love that. So when Emma first came to our home, we were like talking about why is my bathroom so big and weird? We were like going through the whole house…

Emma: It’s very spacious. (laughs)

Elsie: And I will share like one of our personal goals for this house is to add value to it because of the neighborhood and everything. We know that we can add like kind of unlimited value to it. So we want to add things that are features that are like sort of like upgrades and fancy and things that are like appealing, even though we’re not planning on selling it, you know, forever or whatever, forever, whatever home. That’s what I should call it. (laughs).

Emma: Yes. Forever whatever home. (laughs)

Elsie: That’s a good one! I still care about making it more, like giving it more like these little luxury upgrades, because I do…I just think it’s like smart and also fun.

Emma: Yeah.

Elsie: So for our main bathroom, Emma talked me into the sauna idea and I’m kind of obsessed with it now because we’ve kind of we’ve spent kind of a lot of time searching saunas online and it can be kind of like another shower next to your shower, like the size of a shower, like they’re not that big as you’re probably imagining and they’re not like always like weird wood like orb objects like sometimes it just looks like another shower that has like wood slats in it and just like nice and modern and clean. And that is really appealing because I think that a sauna is definitely like a, woo!

Emma: Fancy.

Elsie: …thing on the list.

Emma: Right. If you see a sauna in someone’s bathroom, I feel like you got to put them down on your fancy friend list. Like, I don’t see how they can’t go down. Like, that’s just…

Elsie: I completely agree. Ok, wait. Before we keep going on our dream bathrooms, let’s take a quick break from our sponsor. Today’s episode is sponsored by Canon USA. We’ve been working with Canon for years and their printers are absolutely hands down, one of our most used products. Canon just released three new printers in their PIXMA Inkjet printer series. Make sure to check them out. Our team uses a few different models from the PIXMA series, and while they all have the color consistency we trust, it’s easy to find the model that fits your specific printing needs, whether it’s for crafting, photos, or office work. We love the ability to print from home even before 2020, and the quality Canon printers produce can’t be beat. To learn more, visit Canon.us/abm. And don’t miss my latest project, Halloween Printables. See more about this project and other Canon projects on Abeautifulmess.com. All right. So for my personal dream bathroom, the most important thing for me is that I do want it to have some kind of bold feature, some kind of design that’s like unique and original. That is very important to me. But equally important is that I want it to feel super cozy and I want it to be a sensory experience. So, yeah, the feeling of the tile on your feet, on your bare feet is very important to me. The how good are your towels? Super important. How fluffy is your robe? Like bath mats, just like all these little things. Like how good does your soap smell, even. Like I care so much, like ten out of ten about all of these things almost equally to how cute it looks in a picture.

Emma: Yeah, I agree with that. Every time I visit you, I feel like whatever soaps and things you have in the shower are like way better than what I have. (laugh)

Elsie: Oh thank you! (laughs)

Emma: Like, this smells amazing!

Elsie: Yeah. I think that stuff like that is, is really important and it’s just like these little, like whenever, you know, I got into like Ramit’s rich life stuff, I got really into the idea that it’s like, you’re never going to become poor by buying yourself fancy soap or by upgrading your shampoo (laughs), you know what I mean?

Emma: Probably not, that’s not the issue.

Elsie: Just like these little things that you never need to feel guilty for. It’s just like a splurge and it’s awesome and just enjoy it forever. I think that that’s special. Like, I love stuff like that. There’s just like a little bit more meaningful to you.

Emma: Yeah. And I also just on the flip side of it, there are lots of people out there who are, their business is making really cool fancy soap, or fancy decor or specialty like food items, you know, like that are a little more expensive than other things that you might be able to buy. But, you know, it is like, so I think it’s kind of like this almost symbiotic relationship of like, if you have the money, you do not need to feel guilty buying this because it’s also kind of part of somebody else’s income and life. And the thing that they’re doing and excited about, you know, but I don’t know.

Elsie: I love to be a true fan of a small business. That is a great feeling.

Emma: Yeah. It’s so cool.

Elsie: There’s no downside. It’s just wonderful. I think that in our — in my dream bathroom, it will be a little bit more neutral just but with some kind of a bold thing, I don’t know what. Like maybe a pattern tile or maybe like, I don’t know, like a two, I pin a lot of tile that’s sort of like checkerboard, you know, it’s like a white and a beige and it makes a checker like something like that, but not like hot pink. However, I do think I’ll do a hot pink or some kind of really bold, like powder room. So I feel like there’s a time and a place for that. But in my own main bathroom, I just kind of want it to be like the other thing besides sensory is, you know how some room designs just feel cleaner? I think that your bathroom should feel really, really, really clean.

Emma: Yeah, I agree. It’s a nice feeling because you go in there usually, I mean, you go in there for lots of reasons, but often to get really clean yourself.

Elsie: Yeah.

Emma: So if it doesn’t feel like a clean space, it can be kind of a downer or, you know, it just doesn’t really match the goals of what you’re doing. (laughs).

Elsie: Yeah, I definitely want it to be the most visually clean looking and feeling room in our home.

Emma: It can be very calming too, which is a good feeling when you’re in a bathroom, because I feel like, you know, it is like maintenance just to, like, take showers and things. But I also feel like it can really be kind of a self-care moment. You’re chilling. You know, you’re at the end of your day or it’s the beginning of your day and you’re kind of having a moment.

Elsie: Bubble bath face mask, glass of wine.

Emma: Right, right. Yeah, a little shot of tequila, whatever. (laughs) So, yeah, hopefully not in the morning. (laughs)

Elsie: Yeah. So currently we have a jet tub and I think it’s really cool. My kids love it.

Emma: Yeah.

Elsie: It’s very much like a kid toy, but for my own dream, I love a freestanding tub. I just love like a cool looking tub that’s just a little bit more concise, like this tub that we have. It’s almost the size of a hot tub. It’s like a little bit like. Yeah, silly feeling. You know? So it’s definitely not my dream tub, although it’s great for now and we will enjoy the hell out of it with those very clean jets. But yeah, a claw foot tub, free-standing tub like near a window. There’s like nothing cooler than that. That’s very cool.

Emma: That’s a nice vibe. Yeah. For sure.

Elsie: Oh so yeah I think that’s everything on my dream bathroom list I, I’m so excited to eventually do it. But um. Have you ever gutted a bathroom?

Emma: Yeah I did. We gutted our main bathroom in our house.

Elsie: I’ve only gutted one bathroom before and it was way, way, way, way, way better. So I think for all the like mini makeovers I’ve done two bathrooms over the years. It will be exciting eventually to like really gut a bathroom that has, for a bathroom unlimited space, you know what I mean?

Emma: Yeah. And you can kind of reconfigure a little bit, which would be pretty cool.

Elsie: Yeah. I feel like I should do the due diligence of giving it like a good three or four years of thinking about what it should be.

Emma: Yeah. You might as well don’t rush anyway. Once you get the broken things fixed. You know, it’s not like a big deal.

Elsie: Once it’s not leaking.

Emma: Right. Right. Yeah.

Elsie: Let’s talk about covid Halloween. Let’s switch to Halloween.

Emma: Switching gears!

Elsie: My favorite topic of all time is Halloween. It’s all I ever want to talk about. And if anyone wants us to make this an all Halloween podcast, just let me know…

Emma: We’re already medium in. (laughs)

Elsie: So we want to talk a little bit about, like COVID related Halloween plans. So I will say, like, if you’re a person who’s like I’m trick or treating no matter what and I don’t care, this part’s not for you.

Emma: It sounds like you already have your plan.

Elsie: Sounds like you already have a plan.

Emma: Anybody else, here are some ideas.

Elsie: More talking to people who are concerned about the dangers of COVID…

Emma: Live in areas where that’s not going to be possible. You know, so.

Elsie: And I’m not saying that it’s bad to go trick or treating. I think everyone has to decide for themselves. And it depends on where you go. It depends on how many houses. It depends on how well you know, your neighbors or you know whatever.

Emma: It depends on how COVID is going in your community. Some areas it’s spiking still, some areas it’s not as bad. So those are things to check with your local health department or the news if you don’t know, you know. Good thing to check.

Elsie: You better know. (laughs) But I will say for us, we’re not going to do big trick or treating this year. I’m not saying we’re not going to do any trick or treating because we might go to like a friend’s house and do like a quick run. We haven’t decided that yet, but we’re definitely not going to do normal trick or treating. And for our house, we probably will leave candy on the porch with the light on. And just like, come what may I type of situation?

Emma: You could put a little hand sanitizer right next to it.

Elsie: Yeah, I think if we did open the door, I would feel like it was my responsibility to wear a mask. Yeah, so if we do do that, I definitely will wear a mask.

Emma: Yeah.

Elsie: I don’t think we will though. So for our kids, we’ve just been talking about like other ways we can make it really special for our unique situation. Our heartbreaking thing isn’t really trick or treating, it’s that we’re not coming to Missouri for Halloween. Last year we had our first haunted house. It was the beginning of an annual tradition. And this year we have to take a pause. So we were a little bit bummed out about that because it was super fun and super special. So this year we’re going to try to make it special in other ways and then hopefully we can continue the tradition next year. So, yeah, I wrote down a couple of ideas that we’re going to do with our kids. And if you’re like, what do I do? I need help. This is for you. OK, so the first one is dress up and trick or treat no matter what. Do you have a door? Yes. Do you have costumes? Yes. You can go trick or treating at your own house! And here’s a cute idea my friends told me. So if you have any, if you have a Jack and Jill bathroom or any other room that functions like that, where it’s like one room, two doors, you can make your kids go back and forth, back and forth, like through the different rooms to knock on the different doors. And one parent can just stay in there with the candy and like act surprised over and over again. I thought that was the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.

Emma: Yeah, I love it. It’s very funny. It’s very homemade Halloween. I love it.

Elsie: Yes. Also this year for the blog, we made a Halloween Countdown calendar and it was Emma’s idea. Emma gets all the credit and…

Emma: It’s Elsie’s calendar.

Elsie: It’s my calendar, though, and I made it adorable and I’m super proud of it. So I’ll link it in the show notes. And what it is, is it’s kind of similar to a holiday advent calendar where each day in October, leading up to Halloween, kind of get a little treat. You can have you can put a candy in each pouch or you can put we put a printable in the post that has activities and they’re easy activities like play the monster mash or like, yeah, watch Casper. It’s nothing that’s like going out and risking your health. It’s just simple little things you can do at home, baking cookies and whatnot. I love a slice and bake cookie.

Emma: Who doesn’t.

Elsie: So yeah, the countdown is super fun, if you don’t have time to make it, well I would say just make time to make it because here’s the thing. I didn’t have time to sew it all so I made it with glue. It’s really not that hard.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. If you ever get stuck on a sewing project, have you heard of glue? (laughs)

Elsie: (laughs) That’s so true. That’s pretty much my whole M.O. because I’m not a, I, I regret not being a great seamstress and I kind of hope that someday in my life I might be. But for right now, glue.

Emma: Glue. (laughs)

Elsie: So and the third one is, like I have been wanting this, I have been campaigning for this all my life. So there’s…this is my moment. OK, you can celebrate Halloween all month. You don’t have to celebrate Halloween on just Halloween. Candy, craft projects, spooky music. You know…

Emma: Yeah you can get dressed up!

Elsie: Decorating your house together.

Emma: Have a little dance party in your costumes.

Elsie: We got out our tub of fall and Halloween decorations and we just put it in the living room and let Nova do her way with it, like she decorated it her way and it was awesome.

Emma: Yeah!

Elsie: There’s a spider on everything. It’s so cute. So, yeah, I think just spread it out and just try to enjoy each day and try to remember that, you know, just because one part of our year, to be honest, many parts of our year are not the way that we want them to be or the way they normally are, there’s still a lot we can hang on to right now. And we’re making those memories with our little kids. They’re going to remember what they had. They’re not going to remember what they didn’t have this year.

Emma: Yep. Mmhmm.

Elsie: Preacher moment over! Amen. (laughs)

Emma: Hallelujah!

Elsie: Ok, so before we go, we haven’t done an embarrassing story in a while and Emma has a really funny…

Emma: Seasonal.

Elsie: Seasonal-related…

Emma: Funny and seasonal. (laughs)

Elsie: OK Emma, take it away.

Emma: All right. So for our app company, we had a video call. It’s like a once a month video call we have with another team for Filmm, which is one of our apps. And I always work from home. So I was still home and I was just in my office room, which is now — it used to be a guest bedroom and then it was my office because I really wanted a door. If you’ve listened to our podcast for a while or read our newsletter, you know that I was very like, needing an office with a door. I just wanted to be able to shut the door so that I could have meetings and things. And I got it! So I was in my, you know, smaller than my last office space, just a guest bedroom sized room, and I had a pumpkin candle burning because, of course, you know, I’m kind of obsessed with candles. Elsie likes to troll me about it, but I love candles and…

Elsie: They’re a little bit toxic.

Emma: Yeah, she thinks they’re toxic, agree to disagree.

Elsie: This is one of our biggest debates!

Emma: It really is, that and your pink and lavender chairs. (laughs) But so I’m always counting down the days until I can start burning pumpkin candles. Basically, I am that kind of basic person and I have no regrets and no remorse. I love pumpkin candles. So I had one burning and it was the kind that has the wood wick where it kind of crackles when it’s burning. And I just love that sound. It sounds like a tiny fireplace and it smells great. So I had that going and it was new. So this was like the first burn. I was letting it burn for a long time so it could get its memory burn where it burns all the way to the edge. So you don’t get that weird…where it burns straight down and doesn’t even use all the wax.

Elsie: This is a candle lesson. You need to learn, yeah.

Emma: I’m into candles. I’m into tea and I’m into candles. (laughs) So I’m cool, anyway. So this wood wick candle is burning, and I’m on my video call with this other team and all of a sudden my smoke detector starts going off in my house and once one starts going off, they all start going off. And so I, I muted myself and I got up and went to go check. So I was like, is there a fire in my house? But I didn’t see anything anywhere. And they were still going off like crazy. So then I just got off the call and couldn’t get back on because I had to deal with this. And it turned out that my pumpkin candle set off the smoke alarms in my house. And so I couldn’t finish my video call for work like a true professional.

Elsie: Oh no!

Emma: Yeah, but, you know, I feel like if you’re going to set off your smoke alarms for a pumpkin candle, that just shows like your commitment to the autumn season.

Elsie: How many candles was it?

Emma: It was just one!

Elsie: It was only one?

Emma: Yeah! I was just one candle, but it had this kind of thick wood wick and my room isn’t huge. It’s just like bedroom size, like it’s kind of a smallish space. I guess apparently it was way too small of a space for this candle. (laughs) So. Yeah. So that was really embarrassing because everyone else on the call was like your smoke alarm’s going off. And I’m just like running around trying to figure out what it is. And I just had to get off frantically. And then later I was like, OK, it was a pumpkin candle, everyone. Sorry about that. (laughs)

Elsie: Yes I love it! I wish I was on that call so bad.

Emma: It was very cool. I seemed very cool and together and professional. (laughs)

Elsie: Thank you all so much for listening to our podcast this week. Thank you for sharing it with friends and for leaving us a review. We read some of the reviews this week and they were very kind.

Emma: Thank you.

Elsie: We love you and have a great week.

Emma: Bye!