Episode #153: Autumn Bucket List

It’s time for the autumn bucket list episode! Each season, we create a bucket list of memories to make with our families. Plus, we’re answering a question from an overseas listener. 

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Show Notes:

–Click here to download the autumn bucket list

3 things on our autumn bucket lists

Elsie: Learn something new (either colorful pasta or pie making), start some new Thanksgiving traditions, and improve her photography and video skills

Emma: Move to her new home, work on a collection of seasonal kids’ books, and finish the first draft of her fiction novel (by Thanksgiving).

Listener Question

Describe the city/states you live in for your non-American listeners who have never visited the region before.

Emma lives in Springfield, Missouri

• We have all four seasons, it’s hilly, and we have a lot of lakes.
• It’s the third largest city in Missouri.
• The cost of living is low and it’s a good place to raise a family.
• There are great restaurants, coffee shops, and bars (like The Golden Girl Rum Club).
• It’s 30 minutes from Branson, Missouri, which is a big area attraction.
• Check out our Springfield archives.

Elsie lives in Nashville, Tennessee

• It’s a medium-size town with a large tourist industry.
• It’s a big bachelorette city.
• The downtown area has a lot of neon signs and country music bars.
• It’s very cozy, has a lot of history and incredible restaurants.
• Has lots of great hotels (see our tour of The Russell).
• A Beautiful Mess Guide to Nashville

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Episode 153 Transcript:

Emma: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast. Each season, we make a bucket list of memories we want to make with our families and it’s time for the autumn bucket list episode. We’re also going to answer a question from an overseas listener. Yeah!

Elsie: I love a bucket list episode. I think it’s fun because we do them all the time, I guess every three months. They’re different every time they change. We change and I sometimes think, especially now, I was thinking I should listen to the first one because I bet it’s so different already even though it’s only been a couple of years. 

Emma: I was gonna say it’s almost like a tiny podcast journal. It’s a live journal. We’re doing live journal as a podcast and it’s though bucket lists, apparently. So yeah, no, it’s cool. Oh, but first little story because I did the most suburban mom thing ever today and it was very fun.

Elsie: So we were gonna go swimming and it started raining. It was a little cold in the pool. So we were like, okay, what is something indoors we could do? We had a couple of hours to fill with our kids, a four-year-old and a one-year-old. I was like, I have the perfect idea. It’s like, we’re gonna go to the mall and rent these little car strollers. Where it’s like a race car with a stroller back, a push race car with a little steering wheel. Your kid basically just sits in it and then you just walk around and talk for several hours. That is what we did and it was so much fun. So malls are one of my happy places because they kind of never changed. The

Emma: I feel like a time capsule truly. It feels just like high school somehow. It’s wild.

Elsie: I mean, I know it does change but some parts of it really don’t. We got our Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. We didn’t really go in a lot of stores. We pretty much just walked around with the kids.

Emma: My one-year-old will take everything off the shelf. 

Elsie: Yeah, but yeah, it was magical. It made me feel really nostalgic. I don’t know, I think malls are a special place to go make your soul feel centered or something.

Emma: It was just so cute and the kids were being cute too. Goldie, her four-year-old was very like, go faster mama, I don’t want to ask her to beat me but obviously, we’re just pushing them. I don’t know, it was just really cute and funny.

Elsie: It was special. With a four-year-old, I’m starting to have those moments where I’m just happy she can still do this kind of thing because she’s getting big. So yeah, that was special. I’m glad we got to do it and we’ll put a picture in the show notes because we have a hilarious picture where we are being mall moms.

Emma: We sure are. It’s great. It’s a great life.

Elsie: It’s the life. So in this episode, we’re each going to share three things from our autumn bucket list. We will link to or include in the show notes, somehow in the show notes you will be able to find your own autumn bucket list that you can download and do it for the season. So just a quick like why bucket list to start with? So I started doing this the first year I became a mom and it completely changed everything. So all it is is a list of things that you hope to do in the coming season and you can put for fall like go apple picking, go to a pumpkin patch, get a pumpkin spice latte, just like any little thing that you want to do. It doesn’t matter if you do them if you complete the list. I don’t know if I’ve ever completed the whole list but it’s pretty much an ideal list of things that you could do. So what I find is really life-changing about it is when you come to the weekend if you’re like me, you’re like what do I do with this two-hour window to be fun for my kids? If you look at your list, you might have something that has been extremely helpful for us and I will always do it probably my whole life just because it’s been so magical these past few years. On my list today I put a lot of personal things so it doesn’t have to be about kids it’s totally up to you to customize it for yourself. 

Emma: I put stuff sometimes that is about work or personal hobbies. I also have been doing bucket lists long before I became a mom so it’s definitely great for mom life and parenting but it’s also just really great. I think for feeling like you have, not balanced because that’s not really what I’m saying but just like a full life of things that you want to do that make you happy. 

Elsie: More simple pleasures in your life. 

Emma: Yeah, yeah. It’s self-care. You get it. 

Elsie: I do think it’s self-care. I think whatever you need more of in your life, you’re able to add that with this. So I highly recommend it. If you’re hung up on the word bucket list because that means dying. First of all, don’t be. But second of all, just change your list and make it say autumn to-do list. I don’t care. 

Emma: Yeah, autumn fun ideas. 

Elsie: We’re not gonna hang up on a word here. Okay.

Emma: You just call it fun idea list.

Elsie: Yep. 

Emma: You do you.

Elsie: Yes. Okay, so do you wanna go first or you want me to go first? 

Emma: I’ll go first. 

Elsie: Okay.

Emma: All right. The first one I put on my list is move because we’re moving. 

Elsie: Tell us everything. 

Emma: Sometime in September, sometime in September, hopefully, we’re moving. We’ve been renovating a house. We bought it last April. I talked about it in the first episode back this season and I’ll talk about it more at some point once we’re completely done. Not completely done, like forever, but just generally settled, I’ll talk about some more than I guess. 

Elsie: So have you planned like any kind of fall decor or even Christmas decor? Have you thought that far about your new home yet?

Emma: I know where I’m going to put the Christmas tree or one of them, I have more than one Christmas tree, obviously. But the main Christmas tree, where Santa will bring the presents, I know where that’s gonna go. It’s such a great spot for a Christmas tree, that obviously I’ll put a fake plan or something there the rest of the year. But I also thought I might become a person who does a Halloween tree because they’re just kind of cheesy, but I also kind of love them. So I might do it.

Elsie: I started making ornaments for mine with my little pottery stuff. But I don’t think I’m gonna get the tree this year, I think I’m going to wait until I have more ornaments acquired.

Emma: That’s where I was kind of going with. I  think I’m going to really focus this year after we move and settle on just getting the house. I’m not saying I’m not going to decorate for the holidays. I’m going to decorate for the holidays. But I just don’t think I’m going to go as in or put very much pressure on it this year, I’m just going to hold that loosely.

Elsie: Take it from someone who’s moved 18 times, I can give you advice about this. The first year that you do your holiday decorations in a new home is never the best year. You have to build it up, you have to do a practice run. Then you have to spend the whole next year thinking about it and then you can do your big shebang.

Emma: I would say that’s how I’m viewing this year for sure. So we did quite a bit of renovating and I’ve hit a point of more like decision fatigue area. We’ve got all the big decisions made but like you were asking me the day like you’re gonna put the wallpaper in the house. I was like, well, definitely the powder room but I don’t really know anywhere else. But probably because it’s like, essentially, I don’t really have the decor of very much of the house figured out. I’ve hired my friend Shaylee to help me kind of take everything we already own and let’s make it really great. But over time, I’d like to add a little more just basically like, let the house tell me what else we need, you know. So anyway, so I just kind of you this season is like I’m going to move which to me means try to enjoy that for what it is. We have a one-year-old, and I work from home. There’s some hard things with moving anyway but then those two factors, I think add to it. Then there’s a lot of organizing that goes into that, which I think is really fun but also tasks take time. So I’m viewing that as like, let’s have fun with that. 

Elsie: It can weigh on you like when you first move into a new home. It’s hard to keep your perspective that like it’s not supposed to be perfect yet because it can be many months. Whenever Clea moved into her new home and she said she had everything put away the first night or whatever, I was like, what? I think for me, I know I still have boxes right now and we’ve lived here for two years in at least some of my closets. I don’t know, I think it’s okay if it takes you months or even years to settle into your home completely and to get your whole list done. Although I am very jealous of what she did and I want to know how.

Emma: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Then there’s also decluttering that has to happen prior to moving, but I think to me, I always think of it as two rounds. Round one is like okay, I gotta declutter because I don’t want to pay to move stuff that we don’t even need anymore or want anymore. Then you move in and I feel like you set everything up and then all of a sudden you’re like, oh, this doesn’t really fit, or oh, I didn’t realize we don’t really need this anymore because the house is different, or whatever.

Elsie: That is a great point. Yeah, you should definitely have two rounds. Sometimes your style changes a little bit just by moving to a different house even though you didn’t mean for it to. It just naturally does. 

Emma: Weird things like that. Yeah, we also have a couple of things in storage. So we have this sectional, there’s a few other things. I haven’t even seen those pieces in like a year.  I don’t know, I feel like we’re. 

Elsie: You have stuff in storage too?

Emma: Yeah.

Elsie: Fun. Okay, well, you’ll have to see how it all shakes out. 

Emma; Yeah, so that’s on the bucket list because I just want to basically be like, hey, this is going to take up a big chunk of time and I think you should try to enjoy it as much as you can. Let’s view this as a fun venture, not like a task to get through so I can get to the fun stuff. Let’s make this as enjoyable as you can because some of it is fun. I like organizing and decluttering.

Elsie: We like that. We’re all clapping from Emma. 

Emma: Anyway, that’s my first one. 

Elsie: My first one, I think that I might have said this one before, but I’m just gonna, I don’t know, I have no way of knowing. I mean, I guess I could like.

Emma: You literally do. You can go listen to past episodes.

Elsie: Okay. So over the season, I am feeling like, so we’ve just launched our kids’ site, and we have had a pretty intense year and a lot of stuff going on in my personal life. I just feel like I need to just kind of go easy on myself in every way that I can. So anyway, I thought I was kind of going on more of self-care theme or more of a cozy self-care, chill the f*ck out kind of theme. So anyway, I put down the I want to learn something new, doesn’t have to be big, doesn’t have to be difficult. I just learned to use my pottery kiln, which I should talk about that but I guess next episode or soon. I just learned that and I mean, like, oh my god, learning a new thing, it opens up universes. It’s the most creatively fulfilling thing that I have in my life. So I have a couple of things that I’ve been wanting to learn for years now and I just keep saying it and saying it and saying it and collecting the supplies, but just not quite getting into it yet. So the first one is I want to learn to make the colorful pasta, not boring pasta, not white pasta, colorful, the rainbow, the patterns, all that kind of pasta is specifically calling my name. It’s the kind of recipe I love the most like the sugar cookies. It’s like one part craft one part recipe. It’s just the joy of looking at it when you’re done. 

Emma: Yeah. Edible craft project. 

Elsie: Yes, yes. So I want to do that. Then the other thing I have never gotten into is making pies and I really want to do it. Yeah, because I still buy frozen pie crust. When I told this to Emma, she was like, that is so gross. 

Emma: I think it was on an episode, you were like, do you think it’s fine right? Frozen is just as good as made? And I was like, no.

Elsie: Okay, then we have proof. So yeah, I want to learn to make elaborate pie crests. It would be a good thing to do. Yeah, some lattices, some cutouts, just like, I don’t know, some weird ones. I mean, I love looking at them on Pinterest, and I’m always saving pictures of them. But I haven’t really made anything that was a super elaborate pie. So yeah, those are my two things. One or the other doesn’t have to be both. I just want to try something new and get all the way into it this season. I love it. What’s your next one?

Emma: My second one is I want to work on a collection of seasonal kiddo books.

Elsie: I have some things to say about that. 

Emma: Yes. So I really don’t have a lot of Halloween or Thanksgiving or just like fall, Autumn type kid books. So I’d like to add to his collection so that we have those for nighttime bedtime. I mean, we read books kind of throughout the day, but especially at bedtimes as well. So the routine, you know.

Elsie: So yeah, we’ve been collecting seasonal kid books since I guess five years. I just wrote all of the posts for Childhood Magic about the different holidays, for books for them. So some of them I didn’t have that many, like Thanksgiving, for example, I really only had a couple that was like vaguely fall-themed. So I got some new ones to try for that post and it was really fun. It did open me up because I think in the past it was like 90% Halloween and Christmas but now we even have like some St Patrick’s Day books. So you can steal some from my closet on the way out and I definitely support you getting into this because for anyone with kids or even just kids in your life. For me honestly, I love picture books and I would collect the books no matter what. But this is such a special collection because we usually add one or two a year. So you don’t have to add a whole lot. It’s like maybe the first year you buy a bunch but then you just add one or two a year or I do go a little crazy for Halloween.

Emma: The age too so you start to get different books like Oscar doesn’t have books with paper pages yet because he would rip that. He’s not there yet so you get different ones over time too. But yeah, we got a couple for Easter. I got him one in his Easter basket and one of his grandma’s got one in his Easter basket. I was kind of like, oh, we’ll see because he kind of likes the same books over and over. But we put those in and he really liked them. It was like about a bunny so it was really cute. So I was like, okay, he does like a new book. This is great. We’ll get Halloween stuff, Thanksgiving stuff, fall, whatever. 

Elsie: Yes, you’re gonna love it. 

Emma: Gives me something new to read too because I don’t read a book every time.

Elsie: It’s true. Yeah. The kids cleaned off their shelves by themselves and put up their Halloween books by themselves. They even told me which ones were too scary to put at the top where they can’t reach it. Yeah, it just warms my heart that now it’s like such a part of our life to switch out the books and the book collections. It’s definitely a tradition.

Emma: Well, it becomes a part of the room decor too. If you have the shelves where it’s more of a display and they can grab them, which is great because then they can get them too. So anyway, it’s almost like you’re kind of putting out some decorations in a way. 

Elsie: I’m so happy you’re doing that. My second one is that I want to put more thought and energy this year into Thanksgiving. So kind of like what we’re just talking about, I think that you build up your traditions over time. If you try to do too many new things all at once, then maybe nothing will stick. But now I know we have our established Christmas routine, we have our established Halloween routine. We do make Thanksgiving dinner, but I think we could add more to it. I was thinking we can make it like a multi-day event with like preparations. I was thinking possibly about the pie marathon, which is so cute. Maybe play a certain game or watch a certain movie or decorating the table together the week before in preparation, just kind of thinking about that. This year, I want to just put more into it so if anyone has ideas that are just really meaningful Thanksgiving ideas for little kids, I would love to hear. You don’t have to start all of your traditions with your kids in the first year. You can start them anytime. What’s your next one?

Emma: So this one is purely fun. So I’ve talked about this before, I talked about it in the first episode this season but I’ve been writing a fiction novel. I really want fiction writing to be a part of my career sometime in my life. So I’m basically practicing right now and trying to work on that. So anyway, I’ve made a lot of progress on my murder book, as I like to call it. So my goal is to have my first draft done by Thanksgiving and I think I’ll be able to make that. Then once I’m done with that first draft, I’m gonna like, leave it for a little bit, maybe until after Christmas, we’ll see. Then move on from there. So I’m hoping to write quite a bit this coming season, just autumn. What a great time to write, such a cozy season. This is the time, type, type type, drink some hot chocolate type, type, type so it’ll be great.

Elsie: Ah, that’s special. That makes me really proud. Okay, my third one is a personal goal. So I really want to improve my photography and video skills. So I have been thinking about this lately, but I love to work alone. I have felt for years now that I was relying on a photographer when can I have a photographer and should I have a videographer and who can help me with this? I was just relying on other people so much. I realized that it would make me feel proud but also just more creatively fulfilled if I were able to execute all of my own creative work for our blogs myself. So that’s what I’ve been working towards and this season, that’s something that I want to put a lot of time into. So I think for me at least the only way to learn is repetitive practicing. So just trying and getting better and trying and getting a little like one inch better each time. So that’s what I’m hoping for this season. Tell me if you have any pointers.

Emma: No, not really. 

Elsie: Because you take your own photos all the time. 

Emma: I was gonna say I love photography and feel pretty good at it as far as like my work. So I do food photography mostly, as you guys probably know. Every now and again I have friends asked me to do portraits for them, like a family portrait or just something like that. I’m always happy to do it. It’s very fun, but I’m not very good at it because it’s a whole different bag. So anyway, I feel like good at the photography that I normally do for work which is a lot of food photography or small crafts or things like that. But I will say I could definitely get on board with working on my videographer skills because especially editing, I just don’t really enjoy editing video clips.

Elsie: My method of editing is like racing for the finish line. Just trying to do it the fastest possible way so I pretty much put no time or effort into it. So even a little bit more planning and effort, I think would probably be considerable for where I’m at right now.

Emma: Well, I like what you said about getting a little bit better. I feel like I could do that mentality of why don’t you just make your video 1% better than your last video, because I do sometimes feel overwhelmed by it. There’s so many things you can do with video editing, as opposed to editing a still photo, just transitions and text and music, and just all the things. So I think like, yeah, thinking about it more like that, I’m just going to make this one a little bit better than my last one, or I’m going to try a slightly different way of transitioning from the steps into the final piece or whatever it is. I like that idea.

Elsie: Fun. Yeah, I think that will be fun. I just really want to kind of focus on my own creative stuff a little bit more this season. I didn’t put anything like kid related on here because with our new site Childhood Magic, it’s like built-in now, even 100 times more than it was before, that we freaking will do crafts all the time. We do it every day. You’ve been with me all week now and has there been a day when we didn’t make art? 

Emma: No, Goldie is always drawing, it’s just always so cute. 

Elsie: So yeah, I definitely am still passionate about that. I just don’t feel like I have to make it a goal right now because it’s such a set part of our lifestyle. Alright, so we had kind of an interesting listener request this time. So it says, describe the city/state where you live for your non-American listeners who have never visited that region. So I thought it was so interesting because it’s hard to think of your own life and your own hometown as different or foreign but I thought it was a great question. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I wrote down quite a few notes and I’m excited to hear what you say because Emma, if you guys didn’t know, Emma lives in my hometown, where I lived my whole life. Now I live in Nashville where I’ve lived for seven years.

Emma: Yeah, yeah, when you put this on the outline, we were talking about it a little bit, I was like, it’s so interesting because I feel like when I go visit somewhere new, I’m hyper looking at everything, like what’s the weather feel like? What’s the town feel like? What’s the food like, blah, blah, blah. Whereas I think when you’re like, describe where you live, I’m like, huh, it’s pretty normal. That’s what goes through my mind. It’s like, what does that mean? It’s just funny. So I was thinking about how to describe where I live, trying to think about it as if I wasn’t from there and took a trip there.

Elsie: So first, say like, what the city is and then the general specs of it and things like that.

Emma: So the area I live, the state and region, I guess would be southwest Missouri. So I feel like it’s become famous recently from the show Ozark. So we get all four seasons. It’s actually really hilly, not mountainy, but very hilly. So when you’re driving around from city to city, it’s really beautiful especially in the summer when everything’s green and in the fall when all the leaves change. It’s just a really, really picturesque place. A lot of people actually don’t know about Southwest Missouri, but it’s actually really, really beautiful. We also have a lot of lakes. So there’s a lot of lake life. Yeah, I don’t own a boat or anything, but we rent boats fairly often and that’s a thing people do on the weekends or people will have a lake house. I don’t have a lake house but that’s sort of like a thing in our areas. There’s lots of lakes. So it’s actually really pretty. Lakes are really pretty and very fun if you like being outdoors, which I do. So anyway, that’s kind of a little bit about Southwest Missouri. As a region, I think you can hear my accent I grew up there. It’s not really southern. It’s very Midwest but there are people who have more of a southern accent

Elsie: Not as many as on the show Ozark though. I think that often Missouri is kind of maybe on the cusp where people think of it as more southern than it really is. 

Emma: That’s what I would say because it’s not like I don’t have any, we say things that are somewhat southern. I would think more though is the cooking, the food, like what’s traditional or what was nostalgic is a very mix of  Midwest and southern cooking, like country cooking. So that’s fun. So I think it’s like a nice mix. I really like it. If you’re not familiar with the United States Springfield, Missouri, which is the city I live in, is smack in the middle of the main United States. So not Alaska and Hawaii, but the rest of the states. It’s very smack in the middle.

Elsie: Continental United States. When I think of Missouri food, I think of fair food, like fried food. Yeah. There’s festivals and then I think of chili, things like that. The kind of food you would have at a tailgate party, football culture. That sort of thing. I think that’s really pretty accurate. Would you say? 

Emma: I think so. Then Springfield, Missouri, where I live is the third largest city in Missouri, which we don’t have major major cities like New York or Los Angeles, but it’s like Kansas City and St. Louis are the biggest cities, and then Springfield’s next. How I think of it though, is more like a college town. We have a lot of colleges and universities. I went to Missouri State, Missouri State is in Springfield, Missouri. So it is actually a pretty diverse area in that we have a lot of college students and people who come there for college and end up getting jobs or maybe getting married or something and they end up staying, they like it and they stay. So there’s a lot of that. I think it’s not really a small town, but I think it feels like a small town. You kind of get where you have a certain group of friends and you’ll see them randomly, like at places where you weren’t expecting.

Elsie: I don’t feel comfortable calling it a small town because I think people think of Schitt’s Creek type of like an actual small town. Yeah, like where our grandma lives, like an hour away, that’s an actual small town. But I don’t think it’s a medium-sized town because I think a medium-sized town is like Nashville. So it’s like a small, a big small town. I don’t know. 

Emma: I don’t know how much bigger or smaller it is in Nashville. Our airports don’t feel that different, honestly. So it’s kind of funny, but it’s definitely smaller than Nashville. 

Elsie: It’s probably like half as big as Nashville, population wise. 

Emma: It has a really great cost of living. It’s a great place to raise a family or not, just a great place to live. I really like it. I mean, I was born and raised there. After college, I lived in Los Angeles for three years, but then I moved back to Springfield, and I don’t have any plans to move. I really like it there. I think it’s great. 

Elsie: But I feel like you forgot something very major because you didn’t mention Branson, Missouri, which is only 30 minutes away from our hometown and it is a major attraction in Missouri.

Emma: I thought I talked about it a little bit with the treehouse episode where I was like, I stayed in this modern tree house for my writing retreat, but that was in Branson, Missouri. The drive from Springfield to Branson is very beautiful and picturesque and yet Branson is near lakes. It also has lots of shows and attractions and also has Silver Dollar City.

Elsie: It has kitschy stuff. Yeah, it’s magical. It’s funny. I love it. 

Emma: Really you can drive to quite a few pretty interesting places from Springfield. Springfield itself has lots of really great bars, restaurants, and coffee shops. If you were there for a whole week, you could go to all the different places. If you live there, it’s not like an infinite number. Like if you live in huge city, you could probably go to a different restaurant every week for a year. It’s not that big at all but has a really good mix and it’s really interesting, like the Golden Girl Rum Club. Which we’ve now had open for a long, long time. It’s a bar that my husband and I are part owners of, but I am the least important of all the owners, but that’s kind of become a staple of our square, of our downtown area so that’s really fun. I think Springfield’s like a shockingly cool place that nobody’s really heard of, although everyone once in a while we pop up in like weird movies or TV shows.

Elsie: Yeah, it’s a really cute city. It’s where my pink house is. Okay, so let’s talk about Nashville a little bit. So I moved here seven years ago and we moved here for my husband’s career in music. I love Nashville. I would say it’s a medium-sized town but a lot of people think of it as a big city because it is more famous than it is big if that makes sense. So Nashville has a very, very large tourism industry. Over the past, I don’t know decade or so since I’ve lived here it has become like a bachelorette party city in a big way. I’ve heard people say that there’s polls about the most popular bachelorette cities and it’s definitely like up there. It’s interesting. So there is kind of to me Nashville has many parts to it. So if you go downtown, there’s a street called Broadway and it’s kind of like lots of bright neon signs and it’s all Honky Tonk bars. There’s live music coming from every single door you pass. 

Emma: How would you describe a honky tonk bar for people who don’t know?

Elsie: A country music bar. Yeah, just a bar that plays country music, and sometimes they play old classic country music. A lot of the bars are named like there’s like a Kid Rock bar, they are named after famous people. There’s a big mix and some of it is appealing to all different demographics. So yeah, that is a part of Nashville. But for me, it’s not really a part of my Nashville because I very rarely go there. I actually went there last week, right before Emma got here and I was like, I went to Broadway because a thing I’m proud of, I usually only go once a year. Yeah, so for me, it is too many drunk people. I like other parts of the city. There’s other charming parts of the city. I think that one of the misconceptions about Nashville is that a lot of people who come here on a bachelorette party or something like that, they only go to that one part of town. So they think of it as like, sort of like this big party, music drunk city. I don’t really think that that represents Nashville. It’s very cozy. The restaurants are incredible, like 10 out of 10. The restaurants in Nashville, definitely rival a city much bigger than it is. There’s so many you can never keep up. There’s always one you haven’t been to yet that everyone’s talking about, which is really cool. I think it’s an easy place to make friends. It’s a friendly place. I definitely think I learned southern things from living here. Like growing up in Missouri, I never felt southern at all, like at all. I still don’t really, but I did unintentionally, unironically, say ya’ll two times in my life since I’ve lived here. 

Emma: It’s just faster than you all. 

Elsie: I mean, if I were not self-conscious, I would just start saying it because most people say it. A lot of people who live in Nashville come from the more rural parts of Tennessee, which is most of Tennessee. So you meet a lot of people who grew up much more southern than I did, which is really interesting. It is a wonderful place and if you want to do a country music part of your American voyage then I would definitely recommend it.

Emma: Yes, it’s got a lot of history too because so many country music stars and then other stars have started their careers here or had big moments here. So there’s a lot of like that too, kind of like LA how there’s so many.

Elsie: There’s a lot of name-dropping, which I don’t mind. I like celebrity name-dropping, I think it’s funny. But yeah, if you were driving around with a realtor, they’ll be like that’s where Garth Brooks used to live and that’s where Reba McIntyre used to live. Every house we visited when we were house shopping for a couple of years, almost every house had gold records in the basement. It was just like gold records everywhere. Yeah, I think it’s really funny. I love it. But definitely, if you haven’t visited, you have to. It’s special. I think it’s unique. It’s an American city. There’s nothing else like it, right?

Emma: Yeah and apparently, if you’re planning a Bachelorette party, then this might be the spot.

Elsie: Yeah, I will say when we first moved here, there were not as many hotels and now there’s so many trendy, beautiful, gorgeous hotels with nice restaurants.

Emma: I like a hotel stay. 

Elsie: It’s very easy to stay in hotels here. Yeah, I would definitely do a hotel over an Airbnb if you’re coming to Nashville, just because it’s more of an epic experience.

Emma: Thanks so much for listening and as always, thank you so much for the listener questions and chime-ins we love to answer your questions and also just hear what you’re curious about. So if you ever want to write us you can at podcast@abeautifulmess.com. Yeah, see you next week.