Related: How to Propagate Plants, Best Porch Plants, Air Plant Care

Jade Plant

Jade plants are a popular variety of succulent houseplants. With proper care, these plants can live for 50 or even 100 years. Jade enjoys being in bright light, about 4-6 hours of it a day. Younger jade plants should be in indirect light, but more mature plants can handle some direct sunlight. 

Jade plants are said to bring good luck. Place your jade plant indoors in the southeast direction of your hall or living room to welcome wealth luck. Learn more about jade plant care.

Aloe Vera Plant

I love these plants because when I was child my mom taught me to break a piece off and use it for sunburns and burns. They are easy to keep alive, beautiful and useful. Aloe plants enjoy extended sunlight (a minimum of six hours per day) and should be placed by a window where they can bask in the sun.

ZZ Plant (Zamioculcas zamiifolia or Zanzibar gems)

I love these. They are beautiful and extremely easy to care for. They’re a nice alternative to a snake plant if you need something that’s sort of spiky and vertical for a certain spot in your home. These plants thrive in medium to bright indirect light for at least six hours each day.

Pilea (Chinese Money Plant)

Pilea plants love light. They do best in bright, indirect sunlight. Sitting by a window is a good choice for these plants. Learn to care for a Chinese Money Plant.

Boston Fern

This fern plant thrives in indirect sunlight. They don’t like to be directly in the sun, but they also won’t grow in total shade.

Golden Pothos (Devil’s Ivy)

This plant is super common and easy to find almost anywhere. They are beautiful and easy to keep alive! A golden pothos is an excellent choice for a first plant. Learn to care for a Golden Pothos.

Elephant Ear Plant (Colocasia)

Known for their heart-shaped leaves, these plants love full, indirect sun for at least six hours each day. Choose a pot that is at least 18 inches in diameter, or one gallon.

English Ivy (Hedera helix)

The English Ivy is flexible and can thrive in most lighting conditions. Its favorite is bright light. This plant loves humidity, so misting it daily is a great way to keep it thriving.

String of Pearls

String of Pearls is one of my favorite plants for its beautiful appearance. It’s a unique trailing succulent that looks like a string of peas. They enjoy a bright and sunny location in the home. Learn to care for String of Pearls.

Rubber Plant

A Rubber plant is a beautiful houseplant that I have had great luck keeping alive. A well lit area of your home is crucial to keeping this plant alive. These plant leaves need to be dusted with a damp cloth once in a while. Learn to care for a Rubber Tree.

Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum)

A Peace Lily is easy to care for and blooms flowers starting in early summer. Ideally, peace lilies enjoy bright indirect sunlight, and are a good plant to choose if you have a low light area as they also do well in shade to partial shade. How to Care for a Peace Lily.

Monstera

This plant is very versatile in what lighting conditions it requires. Monsteras like bright indirect light. They can adjust to medium light, but might get leggy in that environment. So, I placed her in a room that has large west-facing windows. How to care for a Monstera plant.

Fiddle Leaf Fig

If you get a fiddle leaf, then find a window with ample light. Be sure that it is bright, indirect light. Don’t stick it in a corner away from the sunlight. These are a type of ficus tree and are native to a tropical environment. How to care for Fiddle Leaf Figs.

Aglaonema (Chinese Evergreen)

Aglaonema plants are known for their hardiness and adaptability to a variety of conditions. They are able to thrive in both bright light and low light situations. These easy houseplants are adaptable even to spaces with little light. These are a great choice for an office or rooms with less natural light.

Parlor Palm (Chamaedorea elegans)

Parlor Palms grow best indoors with bright, indirect sunlight. They can also thrive as a low-light plant. They help to purify the air in your home as well.

Snake Plant

I love snake plants. I like the look of these and they will survive practically in the dark, but also tolerate the sun. They are adaptable to nearly any environment. Learn to care for a snake plant.

Cacti

Cacti are easy to care for and make great indoor plants. They require less frequent watering than most plants and they thrive in medium to high indirect sunlight. Cacti have a growing season from March to September, where they can grow rapidly. I often take my cacti outdoors during the summer and bring them back inside for the winter. It’s best to let them get very dry between waterings.

Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum)

We love spider plants. If you are looking for a natural air purifier, you will want to get a spider plant. A recent study indicates that spider plants removed 95% of toxic formaldehyde from the air in a sealed Plexiglass container over a 24-hour period. The spider plant is one of the most popular houseplants. How to care for a Spider Plant.

Calathea Plant (Prayer Plant)

Calathea Plants are easy to care for and present eye catching patterns on their leaves. Calatheas love to be in medium to bright indirect light. They can handle low light situations well, but their color and pattern may not be as vivid as it would be with more light. How to care for Calathea Plants.

Cast Iron Plant

Cast Iron Plants are easy to care for and thrive in low light. They do great in low or medium light and bright light should be avoided.

If you have a favorite indoor plant, we’d LOVE to hear all about it in the comments.

More children’s rooms: 50 Kids Room (and Nursery) Ideas, Kids Shared Bedroom, Reconfiguring a Closet, Daisy Painted Wallpaper.

The first thing we did before we moved in was paint the walls pink. We chose the color Sulking Room Pink by Farrow and Ball. At first, I was worried it was too dark (it reads almost brown in certain lights), but once the curtains and other details went in, I knew it was the perfect color. It’s rich and deep and balances a lot of the other uber pink decor.

We found the antique bed locally on Marketplace. The bed canopy is such great quality and comes in a bunch of different colors. For the mattress, we chose an Immunity mattress (Cinnamon) and I’ll be sharing a full review of it in an upcoming post (short story—we love it!).

For curtains, we chose to go with Two Pages Curtains for this room (and our entire home). I love the classic pleated look they have. I ordered a swatch book before choosing colors and it helped SO much. I highly recommend the swatch book if you are choosing colored curtains to coordinate with painted walls.

Our daughter is a budding artist, so we decided to create an art gallery in her room! As you can see, it’s comprised mainly of her own art. I plan to add more and swap out over time.

Etsy art included: Julie Andrews Print and the other piece is from Janet Hill.

Before we moved, I found this gorgeous antique vanity. She uses it to store all her makeup (I give her my old makeup every time I do a clean out and she squirrels it away and is OBSESSED).

Wood toys we love:

• Wood Stacked Rainbow
• Wood Animal Set
• Wood Play Camera
• Castle Music Box
• Wood Name Puzzle

This bear rug from Etsy was the first purchase I made for her new bedroom. I thought it was so cute and charming—and COZY.

Here you can see a little row of flea market art we have displayed along with one of the kid’s photos from Disney. I love mixing antique gold frame art with photos in ornate gold frames that are new.

It was our daughter’s dream to have a “real” tea set, so I started collecting blue china and have created a mix and match collection for her to play with. She spends so much time decorating and redecorating her table, I absolutely love these memories for her! The white table is new and the rest are flea market finds.

Can’t you just taste the (pretend) tea and cakes?

Another key element we leaned on when decorating our new home was vintage and antique light fixtures. This chandelier was an Etsy find. I found so many charming fixtures there, as well as locally at flea markets. They make a room so special and add a lot of historic charm. The sconces around her gallery wall match as well.

We chose the Lila area rug for this bedroom and the toy box is a DIY.

I was cleaning and decorating this room while my daughters were having a sleepover at my parents’ home. The instant she returned home she ran into the room and started re-decorating it her own way (before I even had a chance to take photos) and so these dolls are her personal touch. I think it’s important to let your kids be involved and put their touches on their spaces, even when they aren’t old enough to care about most details—they will love to organize their own things in their special, unique way.

I’m so excited to keep adding details to this room over time! We are collecting little mermaid and princess things along the way. It’s so fun.

Thanks so much for reading!! If you’re curious what other home projects we’ve completed recently, check out our dining room wallpaper and stair runner carpet updates. More to come soon! xx – Elsie

In this post, I will teach you everything I have learned about how to pack, how to move efficiently, and settle into your new home quickly. We’ll also cover budget tips and pointers for making the transition smooth for children.

I also have passionate feelings about the best packing supplies that streamline the process—especially if you are doing all the packing yourself!

Related: What I Learned Moving With Kids and How We Prepped Our Home To Sell.

Packing Tips For Moving

We chose to pack our own boxes because we wanted to take advantage of the chance to declutter and donate items as we packed.

I see the obvious benefits of hiring a mover to pack all your belongings for you, but I would at least consider doing it yourself if you feel you have a lot of clutter to get rid of. We spent time packing our belongings on nights and weekends.

Throughout this process, we saved thousands of dollars in moving fees and we were able to donate a lot of stuff instead of moving it and then donating it later. Here are my tips for doing your own packing:

• Get matching boxes. I completely understand how tempting it is to try to save all your Amazon boxes or procure some boxes from a local grocery store. But hear me out—it’s worth it to get boxes that are all exactly the same size. The boxes we used were primarily medium boxes with handles and bankers boxes (which require no packing tape). I highly suggest bankers boxes for books and heavy, small items.
  
• Use clothing bags for clothing and linens. We purchased plastic storage bags for moving all our “soft stuff” like clothing, bed linens, pillows, and even items like kids toys. These bags fit a lot more than boxes and create a plush layer that is great to use as padding in your POD for furniture, mirrors (or other items that you are very concerned about protecting).
  
• Label everything. Even if the box you are packing seems “random,” try to resist the urge to label it that way or not label it. Instead, make notes on the boxes of any items you may try to find later. If you want to do a color coded system, I recommend these moving box labels.
  
• Declutter ruthlessly as you go. As I mentioned above, one of the best perks of packing your own boxes is you can simultaneously declutter your belongings as you go. I recommend getting rid of anything that you don’t use, you don’t love, or that you’ve outgrown in style. I like to use the Marie Kondo “Does it spark joy?” method. Try to donate as much as possible.

Booking a Moving Service

After reading our friend Julia’s moving fraud experience, we decided against a moving broker or a full service moving company. I am sure there are many reputable options out there, but after reading her story we felt safest with a simple POD moving option.

Having used a POD in the past to relocate across state lines, we knew what to expect and felt good about the option.

The biggest difference between a POD and a moving truck like U-Haul is that you don’t have to drive to POD yourself. So once it is packed and locked up, you can drive to your new home (or even fly) with minimal belongings and you know your POD will make its way to you in a few weeks time.

The way our POD experience worked is that we booked an exact day that our POD would arrive—about a week before we departed from our home in Tennessee. Once the POD arrived, it sat in our driveway for around a week.

You can choose to pack the POD yourself or hire a local mover to help you pack it. We chose to do a hybrid approach. We packed the majority all our boxes ourselves over about a month’s time before the POD arrived.

On the day the POD was dropped off in our driveway, my husband loaded the majority of our boxes himself. He wanted to do this because he was meticulous about putting all the heavy boxes at the bottom. He packed each row all the way to the ceiling so there was almost no wasted space.

The next day, a moving crew arrived and helped us move large and heavy items into the POD that we couldn’t have done on our own. Since we sold most of our furniture with our home, we only had about 10 big and heavy items to move and it took less than an hour.

Once that was completed, we used every inch of the remaining space to fit more stuff into the POD. We ended up using 100% of the space within the POD and were able to fit almost everything we wanted into the space. What we couldn’t fit, we squeezed into our cars or donated before moving.

Why we like PODS – First of all, PODS are affordable. I haven’t found a more affordable option for moving across country. I really like that you have up to a week to pack so there’s time to get it just right (most of my mistakes in life are a result of rushing).

The POD system is extremely simple and straightforward. We felt protected from fraud and we saved a lot of money on the move overall. Our move cost under $4,000 total, which is a big savings on what it would have been with a full service option.

Cons of PODS (be careful for these things) – The biggest complaint that I hear from people who have used a POD for moving is that a lot of stuff was broken or damaged. You are basically packing a small semi truck back and then you don’t see it for about two weeks when it arrives in your new driveway.

What happens to them during their journey? This is unclear, but it seems like they maybe go to hell and back. Haha! OK, but really—you have to be very strategic in your packing! It’s up to you to make sure furniture is sufficiently padded and secured.

Assume that the items in your POD are going to have a VERY rough trip and pack accordingly.

There are several things we would NOT put in a POD and instead kept in our cars that we drive. One was very expensive equipment like computers, frame TVs, and my husband’s music gear.

Another thing is plants. I personally would not put plants in a POD unless you absolutely had to because they may not make it.

The last thing to be careful about is anything that can melt or freeze. Depending on the season, be careful and remember that this POD is not temperature controlled. I would not put candles and things like that in the POD as they could melt and make a mess.

The last con of moving with a POD is that you don’t know the exact day it will arrive at your new home. You will be given a window of time. So you have to be flexible and able to live without EVERYTHING in your POD for up to a week or two extra.

To make up for this, we made sure we packed two weeks of clothing in our cars and you’ll want to pack other essentials (like maybe air mattresses to sleep on) until your POD arrives.

Moving Tips and Hacks

• Pack a “comfort box” for each member of your family, including pets. Items you will find in our comfort boxes are anything you can pull out the first night to feel comfort. Examples include the kids’ favorite blankets and stuffies, my favorite candle with a lighter to light it right away, favorite snacks, socks, tea or coffee. It’s also a good idea to pack essential items in an overnight bag like toothbrushes and a few changes of clothing. Your future self will thank you!
  
• Keep one box for super important items like passports, bills you will need to pay (basically anything that can not get lost for a month).
  
• Pack boxes fully. Don’t leave big gaps in boxes. We filled in many of our boxes with towels, extra clothing, even rolls of toilet paper.
  
• I have moved my clothing on hangers several times. To do this, you keep bundles of clothing on hangers and cover them with (unscented) trash bags that are turned over with a hole for the hangers. It saves a lot of time.
  
• Choose boxes that are uniform in size and have handles. Our favorite options are this size for bigger items (kitchen appliances, toys, etc.) and this size for books and decor.
  
• Label necessary items you will need immediately VERY clearly. Make them very easy to find. This could include sheets and blankets, towels, toiletries and daily use kitchen items like a coffee maker or tea kettle.
  
• Reward yourself for all your hard work. You deserve it!

Note: If any part of you feels guilty buying moving supplies instead of procuring freebies and cast offs, here is my pep talk. Most importantly, uniform boxes and bags will make your moving truck packing more tight and professional.

And remember—you can pass ALL of these items along to the next person you know who is in need of moving supplies. Nothing needs to be wasted. Almost everything can be used again.

Get Organized Before You Move

Here are some ideas for your pre-move checklist:

• Schedule utilities, internet, lawn care, or any other services needed for your new home.
• Schedule a stop date for services at your previous home. We typically do it right after the new owners take occupancy and let them know the date so they can schedule new services.
• Have your mail forwarded to your new address by USPS. Change your address on all accounts you use often (like Amazon, any bills you receive each month, your bank, etc.).
• Schedule a grocery delivery for the day you move into your new home.
• Change the address for any subscriptions you have that arrive each month.

Best Moving Boxes and Packing Supplies

These are the supplies that I personally used. It’s very annoying to have to run to the store for simple things like more boxes or tape, so stocking up before you begin packing is smart. I reordered a few things as we began to run low.

• Medium boxes with handle holes. These are our go-to boxes for larger items. We only used a few boxes larger than this. The majority of our stuff like kitchen appliances, kids toys and things like that fit within these medium size boxes. They are the best size so they don’t get too heavy you can’t lift them.
  
• Bankers boxes. These are the best for packing books, files and any kind of paperwork. I LOVE these boxes because they don’t require any packing tape (at all!) and once you learn to fold them they are quick and easy to assemble. I also love how easy the tops are to take on and off. I strongly recommend these boxes for books because they are stronger than taped bottoms and don’t get too heavy. We moved hundreds of books in these boxes with no issues.
  
• Clothing bags. These are great for clothing and also linens, pillows, and holiday decor like Christmas trees, garlands, and wreaths.
  
• Moving labels. These are great because they are color coded as well!
  
• Safer box cutter. I love this thing! It’s easy to use, works great and is far safer than a metal razor blade.

Tips For Moving Cross Country

Strategy is everything when moving across state lines with children and pets. Since the majority of our belongings were in our POD on moving day, we stuffed our vehicles with everything else we could fit.

Unfortunately, we ran out of space and had to give some items away at the last minute. This is common, so plan for it by packing your top priority items first.

On our moving day, I had the car with our dog and two kids, and my husband drove our other car, which was way more stuffed with belongings.

• Plan carefully. Since space (both in your new home and your moving vehicle) will probably be limited, plan as well as possible and try not to pack things you will need to sell or donate once you arrive. Also, be strategic in what you pack, prioritizing as you go and leaving optional items for last. If you are packing in a rush, it’s hard to purge as you go, so I recommend starting as far in advance as you can. Ideally with months or weeks to pack.
  
• Sell, donate, purge. Before moving, get rid of everything you aren’t sure will work in your new home. If your new space is a different era or style or if your preferences have changed, consider this an opportunity to start fresh. I downsized my closet by about 50% before moving and we ended up selling our house with most of the furniture included. Even still, I donated about five more kitchen boxes immediately the first week we were in our new home. Purging as you go will help to eliminate some of this wasted effort and make unpacking more of a pleasant experience.
  
• Ship helpful items to yourself. Because we used the POD system, I knew we wouldn’t have beds or mattresses. So, I shipped us some nice air mattresses to use the first week, along with some other useful items like cleaning sprays and toilet paper—all the stuff you need immediately.
  
• Create comforts anytime you can. When we pulled into the driveway of our new home, my in-laws were in the front yard waiting for us. My mother-in-law had offered to buy us groceries that day (I should have said yes!). We had a scheduled deep clean a few days before we moved in. We did the comfort box idea and I had candles to burn and our kids’ favorite blankets and pillows. Even with all of these comforts, the moving day is stressful and exhausting. My suggestion is to do as many of these comforting tips as you can, but also accept that no matter how hard you try, moving is an emotional experience with highs and lows. This is to be expected and normal.

Tips for Moving with Children and Pets

I’ve moved several times with our young children and we get a lot of questions about how to make it easier on kids. The truth is that leaving your school, the comforts of the home, neighborhood and town your child knows is very scary.

For our children, the big feelings seemed to come in waves and the worst of it was weeks after we moved when the dust began to settle.

In addition to the comfort boxes, which we talked about above, I have a few tips for navigating a move with children.

• Leave space for sad feelings. There is nothing wrong with missing your old home, school, friends, or life before a move. Leave space for these feelings and for your child to work through them at whatever speed they need to. Sad feelings about a previous home or school are not a reflection on how they feel about the new home or new school. You can feel two feelings at the same time—these are normal, healthy emotions.
  
• Create things to look forward to. When we first told our children that we sold our home furnished and that we were leaving all the furniture (even their beds), they reacted with sadness, which we expected. To help the kids feel excited for our move, we let them help us choose new beds for each of their rooms along with themes and colors for their walls. We also reminded them often of the reason we were moving—so they could see their family whenever they wanted. This was a huge help and comfort to us as the move approached.
  
• Do fun activities right away. The week we moved, my husband and I were overwhelmed and exhausted. If it were just the two of us, we probably would have ordered in every night and never left the house. With the kids, we found it useful to jump into new activities right away. We joined a pool where they could go swimming with their baby cousin, we walked to dinner in our neighborhood, and I took each child out for individual time like visiting the local bookstore and going out for ice cream. These extra activities brought the kids a lot of comfort and joy and gave us a soft place to land that first week.

Moving with pets. Our dogs have tended to be pretty flexible in all our moves. My suggestion is to give them a few extra treats, extra walks, and a consistent place to sleep from the first night. I have heard that moving with cats is more of a challenge, so if you have had that experience I’d love to hear your learnings in the comments.

If you have any tips for moving, packing or navigating change, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Love, Elsie

Choosing a wallpaper that evokes your ideal mood (mine is warm and cozy) is key. In this post, I will share photos of my wallpapered dining room, tips for choosing the right wallpaper for your space, and everything you need to know about getting wallpaper installed.

Related posts: 5 Creative Uses for Peel and Stick Wallpaper, The Best Floral Wallpaper, Affordable DIY Wallpaper Hack, Wallpaper Removing Tips, Painted Daisy Wallpaper, and Removable Wallpaper on Etsy.

Transforming Our Dining Room with Wallpaper

When we purchased this home, we instantly fell in love with this little nook that features original built-ins. It’s such a joyful, sunny space and I couldn’t wait to decorate it!

The room was previously wallpapered with a quirky, modern wallpaper featuring monkeys. When I shared it in my empty house tour video, many people commented that we should keep the monkey wallpaper. To me, that is the beautiful thing about wallpaper—it can be so wildly personal and expressive!

I knew I wanted a wallpaper that felt warm and cozy— almost an autumn-year-round kind of vibe. I also wanted a paper that could be from the era when our home was built, in 1904.

I considered a lot of different papers, careful to envision each one decorated with Halloween, Christmas, or kids birthday party decorations. I ended up choosing this Medlar pattern. The floral pattern felt the perfect mix of cozy, inviting and historic.

What to Consider When Choosing Wallpaper for Your Dining Room

• Always buy wallpaper samples. Wallpapers can be different in person than they appear online. If you are purchasing from a place like Anthropologie that doesn’t have samples, find the wallpaper somewhere else that does offer them. It’s always worth the extra $5-$10 per sample to see them in person. I keep a collection of samples because sometimes I find a home for a certain pattern later on as well.

• Consider the size and features of your home. Large scale prints look nicer in big open rooms, while super tight repeats can look nicer in smaller rooms. I always ask the advice of my wallpaper installer for whether or not they think a pattern will look good in a space. Rooms with a lot of angles need more forgiving patterns so that it’s less noticeable.

• Consider the era of your home. For my historic home, I want to use patterns that could have existed at the time it was built. More modern and funky patterns I think are a better fit for newer or mid-century homes. It’s worth considering if you can find a wallpaper option you love that suits the era of your home. Of course, it’s your home and the final call is yours—so choose what speaks to you and what you know you will enjoy for a long time.

• I always use a professional installer. In my experience, the price of the wallpaper is often about equal to the price of the installer’s labor. So, a large room with lots of angles might cost several thousand dollars for installation and a small room, like this breakfast nook, is typically under $1,000 for installation. The reason I always use a professional is because I am not a perfectionist and this job requires precision and skill. To me, it is worth it to hire a professional for this job.

• Many wallpaper installers will not install peel and stick wallpaper, so be sure to check. I strongly prefer traditional wallpaper over peel and stick unless it is for a very small space (maybe lining shelves or a closet). I have had a lot of issues with peel and stick wallpaper through the years that I have not experienced with traditional wallpaper.

Here’s how the wallpaper turned out in our breakfast nook. I love how it accents the original built-ins and big windows. It’s such a warm and friendly space!

Wallpapers I Considered for This Room

• Pirum Pear Wallpaper
• Blackthorn Wallpaper
• Maeve Marella Wallpaper
• Melograno Wallpaper

Elsie’s Dining Room Sources

• Floral Wallpaper (also available here)
• Round Dining Table
• Green Dining Chairs
• Beautiful Faux Roses
• Lantern Light Fixture

Thanks so much for reading! I am so excited to take you along with me as I slowly decorate our historic home. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments section. Love, Elsie

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We knew we wanted something clean and fresh that matched with the era of our home. Before we even moved in, one of my nieces asked if she could take her prom photos on these stairs—which is probably the greatest compliment a staircase can receive, don’t you think?

We wanted to bring her back to her historic glory!

More Home Decor Posts: What Increases the Value of Your Home?, Finding the Perfect White Paint for Your Home, How We Built a Hidden Room, Library Dining Room, or you can see all my past room tours.

The History and Transformation of Our Staircase

Our beautiful staircase was built in the 1920s when our home was rebuilt after a fire that destroyed almost the entire home. That is why many of the features in our home feel more 1920s even though the home was built in 1904.

And a side note for my fellow ghost-obsessed readers: No, no one was killed in the fire.

Now a little bit about the transformation! We knew we wanted to keep the beautiful unpainted wood, so we planned everything else around that.

When choosing the light and dark colors for our entryway stain, we chose a dark color that could blend seamlessly with the staircase’s original wood. When choosing a carpet, we chose something neutral since the patterned floors are already a statement.

I have ordered an amazing piece of art to go at the top of the first stair landing, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Oh … and can you imagine this space at CHRISTMAS?

The Process of Choosing a Runner

I chose our carpet runner in person at The Carpet Shoppe in Springfield, Missouri. This was my first time to choose carpet for a home (that can’t be right, but I’m pretty sure it is!).

I wanted to get antique rugs to create a runner, but since we were on a timeline and wanted to get the house prepped before we moved in, I decided to choose from a carpet they had in stock. Note: The Carpet Shoppe did not give me any type of discount, but I would recommend them to local readers because they were really nice and easy to work with.

I truly, madly, deeply wanted to go with a deep red OR a deep green for the carpet runner. My husband was nervous that I am creating a too-literal 1990s Home Alone house and voted for something neutral.

In the end, we went with a light color that looks great on the dark wood, but also has a lot of pattern to spot clean and hide any stains that occur.

I know I will get questions (and probably judgment) about the choice to get a light carpet runner. I will be honest with you that we were in a time crunch and it was the only compromise that we seemed to both love.

I completely understand that I may regret this choice at some point, but I have also had many light rugs in my home in the past that the Internet told me would get stained and they ended up being fine.

Bottom line: I’m fine with the risk, so don’t stress on my behalf. If I have to replace them (hopefully very far in the future), I will get to do my antique rug idea at that time. Maybe something like this?

How Much Did a New Carpet Runner Cost?

The total cost for the custom carpet runner and installation was $2,700. The cost for the stair runner rods (hardware) was $1,150. The grand total was $3,850.

Stair Runner Rods

I have always admired stair runner rods. Admittedly, they are mostly aesthetic since the carpet can be fully secured without them. I chose to add them because of the historic theme of my home and they are a detail that may have been present in the original design.

I think they are absolutely beautiful and add so much detail to the stair runner.

Stair runner rods come in all different colors, but for me there was never really another choice besides gold or brass. Here is a link to the exact stair runner bars I used.

Here are some more star runner rods with various prices and finishes:

• Acorn Finial Stair Carpet Rod
• Polished Nickel Stair Carpet Rods
• Round Carpet Rod Set
• Carpet Runner Holder Clips

I am planning to share about our wood floors in another post soon. Let me know if you have any questions whether about the carpet runner or the floors. I am thrilled with how they both turned out.

I have to tell you, I am having the BEST time setting up this home for our family. I am envisioning so many happy years here creating, hosting, and watching the kids grow up.

We’re incredibly happy, so thank you so much for your support and kindness during this season of change for us! Love, Elsie

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The plant originates from the southern tip of Africa, and its uniqueness makes this plant a favorite for plant parents. String of Pearls is a creeping succulent that has green balls for leaves (they look like peas)!

In this post, I am going to share some tips on caring for a string of pearls. I will also share some other species of this plant family at the end of the post.

Related: Love plants? Learn how to care for Jade Plants, Rubber Trees, Snake Plants, Chinese Money Plants, Fiddle Leaf Figs, Peace Lilies, Calathea, Spider Plants, Air Plants, Monstera Plants, Christmas Cactus, Poinsettia, and Golden Pothos.

Potting

When you get a string of pearls from a garden store, what’s next? You will need some well-draining succulent soil mix, which you can buy at most garden centers. It has a mix of soil and sand.

The sand helps aid in soil aeration and lets the water flow more freely through the soil. I also like to put some extra perlite in my succulent soil.

Perlite is found in nature and is actually formed by volcanic eruptions. Perlite is great for helping your soil drain the water out faster, as well. 

For pots, get one that is about the same size (definitely not smaller) or a tiny bit bigger than the plastic pot that it came in (it will likely come in a plastic hanging basket). I like to use a terracotta pot or an earthenware pot. 

The most important aspect when choosing a pot is that it must have a drainage hole so the water has a way of escaping. If the water cannot escape the pot, then there is a good chance the plant could die due to being waterlogged.

Next, mix up your soil with a couple of scoops of perlite and have it ready to go. Take your pot and put a little soil in the bottom.

Next, carefully remove your string of pearls from the pot by gently placing your hand on top of the plant, slightly wiggle the pot until the plant pops out.

You might lose a few pearls (leaves) in this process, but that’s OK! Place your plant in the pot and make sure the plant sits about even with the pot’s rim. I put the roots about 1 centimeter under the rim and the pearls are all on top of the rim.

Don’t let the plant lay lower than the pot’s rim because water can pool on top of the leaves. 

The plant loves to drink up light and trail over the edge of the pot. Once you have the crown of the plant placed correctly, take the extra dirt and backfill around the plant. I like using a chopstick to push down the dirt around the plant.

Once you’re done backfilling the dirt, the string or pearls will likely need untangling (especially if you have a long one). Be patient during this process. If I slightly tug on a stem it could snap!

Carefully look for a whole stem and gently untangle it so it lays draping over the pot. I go around the whole plant until all stems are untangled. You will probably lose a few more pearls during this process too, but it’s OK! 

Note: Even though this plant has lots of amazing qualities, string of pearls plants are toxic for humans and pets if ingested. If a bead (leaf) falls off a stem onto the floor, then I will quickly pick it up so my dog does not eat them. 

Light

The string of pearls likes a bright and sunny environment in your home. An east or west facing window will work great. I place mine right near a window so they can drink up lots of light.

Try to avoid placing it near any vents or drafty parts of your home (near a door opening up in the winter, etc.). It will not like any kind of extreme air temperatures blowing on it. During the warmer summer months, you can also put it under a sun porch or covered porch to soak up bright indirect light.

Direct sunlight could burn your plant, so try to avoid it sitting in the sun for hours on end or they will get scorched. When temps begin to drop, bring your plant indoors.

Before you bring it indoors, always check for pests or bugs. When I was bringing in my succulents from our covered porch at the end of summer, I found a baby black widow hiding under a leaf. This has happened to me again a couple of years later!

My lesson was learned quickly so thoroughly inspect any plant before you bring it back into your home.

Watering

Figuring out a watering routine and getting to know your plant’s schedule will really pay off. String of pearls do not like to get soaked or sit in water for long periods of time. I like to say that I “moisten” my string of pearls instead of watering them.

This helps remind me that they don’t need excessive water. The plant has a shallow root system, so generally the top half of my string of pearls pot needs water. I use a small vessel with water in it and lightly water over the whole top of the plant.

Overwatering the string of pearls will be the biggest killer to your plant. You can tell if a plant is overwatered by the leaves looking squishy or they lose their deep green color and become a bit translucent and soft. 

If you are shopping for a new string of pearls, be mindful of this. You’ll want a plant with deep green pearls and soil that is not waterlogged.

Not sure when to water your string of pearls? It really depends on where you live and humidity levels. Dryer climates will require more water and vice versa.

You can test the soil by sticking your finger in a part of the soil to check moisture levels or lift your pot to see if it has any weight from holding water.

Make sure your water temp is lukewarm to cool (think of rainwater temp). The string of pearls will not tolerate extreme cold or hot temps when watering.

They love to be watered frequently in the spring and summer months (during its growing season), but back off on frequent watering in the fall/winter months. The string of pearls likes to dry out but not be bone dry.

How can you tell when it is bone dry? The dirt around the circumference of the pot will pull away from the pot. If this has happened, no worries, give it a watering and try to water your plant sooner next time to avoid the dirt drying out too much.

If this happened multiple times, it could affect your leaves and plant’s root health. Another aspect of root health is root rot. This can be detrimental to your plant.

Root rot happens when the roots stand in water too long and they eventually rot and die. It can be a very sad and slow death for a string of pearls.

If you suspect that your plant has been sitting in water for too long and it might have root rot, pull it out of the pot to inspect the roots. If the roots are firm and grayish white, that is great. If they are mushy and look blackish, then your plant likely has root rot.

If it’s not too far gone, you can try to snip the dead roots off and leave the healthy, firm ones. Placing the plant in fresh (not waterlogged soil) will help as well. 

What is the best kind of water to use? If you are using tap/city water, you can leave your tap water out in an open container for 24 hours so some of the chemicals evaporate. After 24 hours, the water is cleaner and healthier for your plant!

Fluoride and chlorine can build up in your string of pearls root system, so this method of leaving your water out will pay off in the long run. Using filtered water or collected rain water (if you can) is a great option, too!

If you have well water, then your plant will love that. My friends who have well water have THE best plants. 

Propagating

You can propagate the string of pearls three ways! The first way is by using water. First, find a healthy stem. I like to use stems that are at least 4-5 inches.

Using clean scissors or cutting shears, cut your stem. Remove any beads about 1.5-2 inches from the bottom of the cutting.

Leave the stem laying out for 24 hours so the fresh cut on the end of the stem can form a callus. Make sure it stays out of any sunlight during this healing period.

After 24 hours, place your fresh cutting in water. The side of the cutting with the removed leafs can be placed in the water. Keep the remaining pearls above the water line.

Be sure to change water anytime it gets cloudy and rinse out your vessel. Place in a sunny spot in your home. After 3-4 weeks you should see little roots sprouting from the cutting! 

Wait until the roots are at least 1 inch long before you plant it in dirt. Once it is ready to be potted, use a small terra-cotta or clay pot with good draining cactus/succulent soil.

I like to use a chopstick to create little holes for the newly rooted plant. Moisten lightly and your plant should start growing.

The next way to propagate is by using dirt. Using the same methods as above, you will snip your plant, wait 24 hours, and instead of placing it in water, place your plant in soil (well draining, succulent soil).

Use a chopstick (or pencil) to create a fresh hole for your new cutting, tuck the dirt around the plant. I like to mist my plant to keep the soil slightly moist and not bone dry.

After about three weeks, I give the plant a very gentle tug to see if it is rooting. If the new cutting stays in place, then I know new roots are forming. This is always exciting! If your plant has started to form roots, then it is ready for a watering.

Another way to propagate your string of pearls is by layering. I find this approach to be the most effective. Take a fresh pot of succulent soil, mist it, and then take a good long cutting from your string of pearls. Swirl or coil the cutting over the top of the dirt on the pot. 

Fertilizing

I like to fertilize my plant once a month during the growing season (spring and summer) using a balanced fertilizer. I use half of the manufacturer’s recommended rate when I mix my fertilizer.

I love liquid fertilizer because it mixes so easily with the water and I don’t have to worry about it not being evenly distributed in my plants.

One thing I love about this species of plant is the different varieties. Pictured above is “String of Turtles”—the turtles look like little turtles backs. “String of Watermelons” are plump and their leaves resemble a watermelon (pictured below). 

Aren’t they unique and whimsical? I hope you enjoy these plants as much as me! -Janae

Round dining tables are perfect for smaller spaces, and because the don’t have corners, they allow more space for seating than rectangular dining tables.

Round dining tables are perfect for family dinners, brunch with friends, and playing board games.

In this post, I’ve included a variety of dining table styles, finishes, and designs, plus the answers to common questions to help you find the best dining room table for your home!

Related: 25+ Round Coffee Tables You’ll Love, The Best Blackout Curtains, and The Best Floral Wallpaper.

What are the Benefits of Round Dining Tables?

Before purchasing a round dining dining table, here are a few benefits of owning one:

Space: Round dining tables save space (they typically seat a maximum of six people), making them perfect for smaller dining rooms, breakfast nooks, and kitchens.

Appearance: Round dining tables create a cozy and quaint atmosphere and oftentimes serve as the centerpiece of a room. They are very pleasing to the eye.

Meals: Round dining tables are great for sharing meals because more people can fit around the table and sit closer together (with more chairs), creating an intimate dining experience.

Kid-Friendly: Round dining tables are kid-friendly because they don’t have corners or sharp edges, preventing accidental bumps.

Does a Round Dining Table Need a Round Rug?

A round dining table looks best with a round rug. As you can see above, Laura’s dining table is an oval shape, so she picked a rug that fit the size of the table best. Basically, the rug you choose should correlate with the shape of your table.

As a general rule, you should choose a rug that is at least 24″ from the edge of your round dining table.

The Best Round Dining Tables:

West Elm

Pedestal Dining Table

This bestselling dining room table has a pedestal silhouette shape with a spun metal base and marbled top. The design of this brass table frees up space for more chairs, making it perfect for entertaining.

This round dining table is available in three sizes (seating up to six) and is also available in black marble with a dark bronze base.

Wayfair

Solid Wood Dining Table

If you’re looking for a unique solid wood dining table, this is a great choice. The top of the table has multi-toned wood that forms a starburst pattern. Handcrafted from acacia and mango hardwood, this table is built to last and seats between 4-6 people.

One reviewer said, “This table is beautiful and perfect for my space. I love the different tones and the distressed finish.”

Anthropologie

Travertine Dining Table

The amazing dining table from Anthropologie has cylindrical hardwood legs and a smooth travertine (limestone) top. It’s the perfect mix of a modern and simplistic design. This round table is great for small spaces and seats four to six people.

One reviewer said, “Easy to clean, does not stain, and it’s so sculptural and original.” Everyone compliments it.

West Elm

Mid-Century Dining Table

Looking a dining table with a glass top? This mid-century table from West Elm has a solid wood frame with clean lines. Perfect for small spaces (it seats up to four people), this tempered glass table is both sturdy and inviting.

If you love the mid-century look of this table, check out this larger expandable dining table.

Amazon

Drop Leaf Dining Table

Upgrade your dining room with this bestselling pedestal dining table. It has a classic, timeless design and two drop leaves so the table size can be easily adjusted. This round table seats up to four people and is available in 27 colors. Wow!

One reviewer said, “Easy to assemble, excellent finish on the wood, and sturdy construction at a great price.”

Wayfair

Faux Marble Dining Table

Elevate your space with a faux marble dining table. This round table seats up to six people and has a contemporary feel. It’s perfect for family dinners, it’s sturdy, and best of all, easy to clean.

One reviewer said, “Such good quality for the price! Way bigger than I anticipated and it looks excellent in our dining room.”

Target

Criss-Cross Dining Table

This affordable dining room table from Target has a unique criss-cross base and a thick, rounded top. This wood table (also available in black) easily seats four people and has a matching set of dining chairs.

One reviewer said, “Great table. This is a dupe of a Pottery Barn table (which has a price tag of $2k). Perfect size for a smaller space.”

Amazon

Tulip Dining Table

A white tulip table is a fun choice for a dining room and it’s small enough to use in a breakfast nook. This round table from Amazon is budget-friendly (under $200!) and incredibly easy to assemble. It’s available in two sizes and also comes in black.

One reviewer said, “This is the perfect size table for my small apartment. It can comfortably fit 2-4 people and looks stylish and simple.”

Wayfair

Traditional Dining Table

Elsie has this extendable wood dining table in her pink house. The design is traditional with an antique feel, and it has a self-storing leaf to make it larger. This natural wood grain table seats up to six people, making it perfect for entertaining.

One reviewer said, This table is GORGEOUS! Beautiful and heavy, it is exactly what I wanted.”

Amazon

Modern Dining Table

This round wood dining table has unique circular shape and lots of natural texture. The smaller size (seating up to three) would be a great choice for an apartment or small dining area. However, it’s available in three sizes, so it would work in a larger space, too.

One reviewer said, “Looks as beautiful as the pictures and super easy to assemble. Best purchase.”

Serena & Lily

Stone Dining Table

If you’re looking for a splurge dining table, the St. Germain table from Serena & Lily is a gorgeous option. It’s carefully handmade with a mix of brass and stone, and could fit in with a variety of aesthetics and home decor.

This round table seats up to six people and requires no assembly. It would look great with wicker chairs, but the options are endless!

World Market

Extension Dining Table

You can’t go wrong with this versatile dining table. It includes an extension leaf and seats up to six people. Available in two finishes, this table design compliments a variety of decor styles like modern, traditional, and farmhouse.

One reviewer said, “This table is sturdy and stylish! Easy to assemble, yet feels and looks indestructible.”

Links: Pedestal Table / Traditional Table / Mid-Century Table / Modern Table / Extension Table / Drop Leaf Table / Travertine Table / Faux Marble Table / Solid Wood Table / Pedestal Table / Criss-Cross Table / Stone Table

Shopping for More Home Decor Items?

• The Best Affordable Traditional Light Fixtures
• The Cutest Sofas Under $1,000
• The Best Living Room Rugs (Splurge + Save)
• The Best Full Length Mirrors (Splurge + Save)

You can find the podcast posts archive here.

A big thank you to our sponsors! Check out the offers from Athletic Greens, Calm, LMNT, and iHerb.

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:

Do you believe in balance?

Elsie – No, but there are things you can do to feel like you are on top of things like batch recording and setting boundaries.

Emma – No, there are different phases to life, so things change all the time.

How do you prioritize what needs to be done every day, week, and month?

Elsie – Make lists and have planning days.

Emma – Leave one day blank to account for extra things that come up.

How do you set boundaries with work and kids so you have time for both?

Elsie – Focus on what you are currently doing and be 100% into it. And remember “done” is better than “perfect.”

Emma – Work during hours your kids are in school or daycare, focus on your kids when they are home, do self-care time or hobbies after your kids go to bed, and respect how you are feeling (and say no to things).

How do you handle one area of your life needing more attention than others?

Elsie – Be honest with yourself about what you need.

Emma – Don’t worry about what other people think.

Listener Question: What would you be doing if you weren’t doing A Beautiful Mess?

Elsie –  Own a bookstore.

Emma – Be a fiction writer or a housecleaner.

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #187: Furnishing a House from Scratch
• Episode #186: Stranger Than Fiction – Comfort Rewatch
• Episode #185: Finding Joy in Hobbies (Deep Dive)

Episode 188 Transcript:

Emma: You’re listening to The Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen. This week we are talking about how to handle all the things from motherhood, life, and business. We’re discussing whether there is such a thing as balance and how we prioritize what’s important to us. 

Elsie: Woohoo. I love the subject. I think this is gonna be a really encouraging episode. I love business. I love being a mom. I think that I resent the characterization that you have to choose one or the other, or that you can’t be great at both of them at the same time. I was watching Hook yesterday with Nova for the first time, and it’s like the perfect movie portrayal of what I think is annoying and I love the movie. I’m not saying anything bad about the movie, it’s like a 10, but the idea that your phone would make you such a bad parent, that you need to literally throw it out the window so that you can focus on your kids, is kind of stupid. You know what I mean? I think that there are so many ways to be a good parent and be passionate about your career at the same time, and I wish that more movies would let characters have that. But, I think that it’s something that I’m really passionate about and I definitely think that on occasion, we’ve had our little bullies who wanna pick at us about you should be more this or more that. But I think that it’s something I’m very, very proud of, to love my job and love being a mom at the same time. 

Emma: Yeah. There are a million different ways to do it, they’re all valid.

Elsie: Right now while we’re recording this podcast, my five-year-old is watching a movie Tangled and my husband is packing our pod in the driveway, and I’m up here recording this podcast. One minute after I finish this and push save, I will be in my car going to car pickup. The balance, it’s imaginary or it’s sort of like a thing that you have to weave together yourself. And I think that that’s normal and healthy and I wish more people would be like, I don’t know, I like the idea that it’s supposed to be kind of tricky. It’s supposed to be kind of hard through these years. I wanna have my career. I never had a moment where I completely wanted to quit working, which it’s awesome if you do. I just didn’t have that at all. So I think finding a way to do both those things at the same time is very valuable. I think that you don’t have to be an overachiever, you don’t have to have your together, you don’t have to do it all, you can just do your best. The idea of, your best is good enough, I think is a really important and healthy way. Emma, one of her strengths is being a finisher. So I think it’s something that she’s like naturally equipped at and she’s like really challenged me on, is to just do it. Just do the best you can, do the most you can in this little amount of time each day, and then just be fine with it. Have peace with whatever it is that you were able to complete. 

Emma: Yeah. When it comes to thinking about balance or when people say, how do you balance it all? Sometimes a place my mind goes right away is thinking about perfection. And how, the reason I’m a finisher, or at least one of the reasons, is I don’t really believe in perfection. I think it’s like a thing you aim for, and we all have an idea about it, but it’s not actually real. There’s pretty much nothing that’s perfect, it’s not a real-world thing. And in a similar way, I would say, I think balance is kind of like that, it’s something to aim for. It’s something that when you have moments where you feel like you kind of have it, then be grateful. And there are other times when it’s just not, it’s like the thing you’re aiming for because you’re not gonna make it, and that’s okay. It’s better to have something to aim for than nothing to aim for, but I think at least in some phases of life and maybe all of life, it doesn’t really exist. And if you’re looking at somebody else’s life and you’re like, oh, it’s perfectly balanced. They have everything they didn’t have to make any trade-offs in their life. Trust me, you don’t know their life, you really don’t there’s no chance that you really know what’s going on in their life if you feel that way, because I get it, I look at other people’s lives at times and think that I get it. But the truth is I don’t really know what they had to do, like what their trade-offs are. 

Elsie: No, I completely agree with that. I think it’s very, very easy to look at someone else’s life and assume that it’s easier than yours. And I think that just teaching yourself not to do that is an important part of being an adult and being just a sign of maturity, just knowing that everyone’s going through probably much worse than what you think instead of having it much easier.

Emma: And it could be easier than yours, but I would also kind of argue, so what? Like how does that help you? If someone really does have an easier life than you, the only thing you should do is ask them for their tips. Other than that you don’t really need to dwell on it at all because it doesn’t affect you in any way. If they have an easier life than you, if you wanna use that as a way to feel angry or bitter, you can, but I personally don’t like feeling bitter. Anger is okay sometimes, but generally, I don’t really live in a state of constant negativity, it’s not helpful. So it’s like why bother with that? 

Elsie: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Okay, so one of the questions here is, do you believe in balance I would personally stay far from it. I just don’t, I think I believe in balance. I think there’s probably some good that you can find at times, but as far as a daily life and a daily schedule, my life is not very balanced at all and I don’t think that hurts me, I think it helps. So my big thing is batch working, which is just kind of by design an unbalanced life where like you have the day where you’re only doing this and another day where you’re only doing this completely other task. And I have lots of weeks where I do only one or two things, but I get so much done that it’s like enough for a month. For me, that’s the only way that I’ve ever been able to stay on schedule for my goals. So it’s essential, it’s not just helpful, it’s my path, and it works better for my brain because for me to try to have one hour a day doing this, one hour of day doing that, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I personally don’t thrive in a schedule that’s that way. It’s just too much for my brain to skip from task to task to task and have to be always changing, and I just think it’s an unpleasant schedule. And the other thing that helps me immensely to stay balanced, but I don’t know if it is balance is boundaries. So my boundaries, it’s pretty much, it’s really simple. It’s if someone has a work emergency and it’s nighttime, I don’t feel like I have to respond to it. If I’m in the middle of putting my kids to bed, I feel like I can at least finish that before I look at it and I feel fine with that, I feel nothing. And if someone texts me on the weekend and needs something, I also feel nothing about it. I’ll write back to it if I have time and if I don’t, I won’t, and I don’t think that that’s bad. Then there are lots of other boundaries like that, like logging off during a vacation and a lot of times when I’m having family time, I don’t do social media at all and I don’t really even keep my phone with me and it feels great. So, that’s a way of creating balance is having these boundaries where at times I’m sort of just doing one thing or the other.

Emma: Yeah. I would say I don’t necessarily believe in balance because I also like batch working and things like that, but I also just think two things with that is one, I think there are different phases of life. Depending on what you choose to fill your life with, of course. And everybody gets to pick stuff, but for me, I’m currently in a phase where I have a full-time job and I have a toddler, and those are two things that I chose. I love my job. I’m really passionate about my career, and I love my son, and I love chasing around a toddler. And those are just two things that take up a lot of time for me, so my life doesn’t feel very balanced. I don’t feel like I have a lot of time for myself or time for friendships, but I also know that those are important and that I’ll lose my mind if I don’t do some of that. So I focus on that and make an effort for it so that I don’t lose my mind because you can’t do your job or raise a toddler if you lose your mind. So don’t drive yourself where you’re feeling so burnt out all the time. But I think there are different phases of life. Like sometimes when I’m a little bit feeling down or feeling like, man, I wish I had more time to write. I wish I had more time to paint or do something around my house. I really wanna decorate this room and it feels like it’s never gonna happen. I think you’re gonna have these other phases of life when your kid’s older and when you’re older and it’s just gonna be different and life’s really long and you’re gonna have plenty of time to do everything you wanna do. I feel like just telling myself that is sort of manifesting it and it’s also reminding me that you’re in a certain phase and it might not feel balanced. It’s not gonna feel balanced, and it’s fine because you chose this. I really wanted to be a mom and I really love being a mom but it takes up a ton of time. And that’s kind of the other thing that I would say is that maybe I don’t believe in balance, I don’t know. But I definitely believe in trade-offs. So I think that there are lots of things in life we don’t get to choose, right, that’s certainly a thing. But there are many things that we do choose. I’ve chosen to get married, I have chosen to build my own career and work for myself. I chose to become a mother, these are things that I did get to choose. And with each of those choices, there were trade-offs, there were things that you know, changed or things that you can’t do anymore, and things that you get to do that you didn’t get to do before because you chose those things. And so with each of those big choices, I gained things and I lost things. And there are definitely moments where I feel sad about some of the losses, but I am really secure in my choices and so I’m okay with it. And I think that that’s important is if you’re feeling any kind of pressure of like, I should own my own business even though I’m not sure I really want that. Or I should become a mother even though I’m not sure I really want that. Like really think about it because there are gonna be trade-offs and it’s okay to choose a different path than somebody else, it’s totally fine. So, make sure that you’re really happy with those big choices in your life as much as you can control them because life is very unpredictable. But as much as you can because you know, I work, like right now I work so much less than I did before I had a kid. I still work full time, and he’s still in daycare full-time, but it’s just very different because there are lots of times he’s sick or there are doctor’s appointments we need to go to and just various other things. The daycare closes because they didn’t have power, that happened last week. Very random.

Elsie: Yeah, no, I am entering the summer break era of being a parent, which is a lot different from the daycare era, and I’ve learned that very quickly. But I think that it’s definitely, I don’t know I think, it’s an illusion that you have to have this perfectly balanced schedule. I don’t know if anyone really has that. Yeah. 

Emma: And I also think there’s really no point in being upset about not having it all. I think instead just think about what’s most important to you. Think about everything that you want as more of a pyramid and not so much like a straight line, because you probably can’t have everything, I mean unless you want absolutely nothing out of life, not everything happens the way we want. So I would think about it more like, what’s my top stuff? The time that I’ve lost getting to work in my career because I decided to be a mom doesn’t really bother me. There are moments when it can be frustrating, but I’m really happy with my choice. I really wanted to be a mom and I love it. So for me, that works. But if you don’t want that, then choose something else, it’s your life and we only get to live this one as far as I remember. But, on a more practical level, let’s talk about how we prioritize what needs to be done every day, every week, every month. How do we decide on that and how do we stay on track for it? 

Elsie: Yeah, I think that this is a really good question. So, my best tip is I am extremely reliant on the list for productivity, and so over the years I’ve learned that it’s important for me to have planning days in my schedule where I spend entire days planning, especially with blog content, I will sometimes spend several days planning a whole month or a whole season of blog posts and then I can sort of autopilot and just do them in the cracks. It’s just so much easier for me to get it done because I never have to wonder what to do, I just have to do the next thing on my list. So that’s been extremely helpful for me and I think having a good planner, having a paper planner, is essential. I guess it doesn’t have to be a paper, that’s just my preference. But yeah, having for whatever your business or productivity goals are, having a list that’s extremely detailed and where you know everything you have to do, that you never have to wake up and wonder, I think it’s very helpful. 

Emma: Yeah. I feel like if I have a moment where I’m like, oh, I have an extra two hours in my workday or my weekend and Oscar slept longer or something, he wouldn’t sleep two extra hours, but you know what I mean? If I’m like, oh, what should I do? I often will get kind of frustrated if I don’t. So I like to have running lists of things that are like chores, hobbies, and work things. And if I have extra time, I can just look at the list and be like, what could I get done? So then it’s like I never feel like I’m floundering because it’s not a big deal to waste time. We all waste time. It’s not a big deal. But it can be frustrating if you’re like, I feel good when I accomplish. That’s just me, maybe that’s everyone. But I feel really good if I get to the end of my day and I’m like, you know what? Maybe I didn’t get everything done, but I left it all in the field and I got as much done as I could, and that’s what happened.

Elsie: Yeah, and very similar to that, the seasonal bucket list helped me to prioritize my family life. When you come up to a weekend and you say you have an extra afternoon or a few hours to fill, you already have ideas ready to go for that. And you can just do one, just choose one and do one, I love that. I think that when you don’t have good planning, or at least for me, when I don’t have good planning in my life, it’s very easy for me to be unproductive. 

Emma: Yeah, same. Extremely easy. I also have started this thing, so like you, I’m really relying on the list. I have them on my phone and the Notes app. I also really like paper also my preference. So I have the get-to-workbook weekly planner, where it’s like you can see the whole week at once. I think I’ve talked about that on this podcast before. But anyway, what I’ve started to do in the last few months is I leave Friday pretty much blank because I kept noticing that things kept rolling over, not because I didn’t try, but a lot of times it’s something random came up that like I needed to pick up Oscar early or an appointment that I was going to take longer than I thought it would or whatever. And so a lot of tasks would end up rolling and so I would get frustrated a lot and now I feel a lot less of that frustration because I just leave Friday mostly blank, and a lot of stuff ends up over there anyway, so it’s still a full day. But it feels like I’ve solved my frustration because sometimes you just need to identify what’s bothering you and just change the way you do things so that it can work better for your life.

Elsie: Yeah. No, that’s a very good tip. How do you set boundaries with working kids so that you have plenty of time for both? 

Emma: Yeah, so I feel like at the age he’s at right now, we mainly rely on our daycare, so I think of daycare as like, those are my work hours, and if daycare is canceled or he’s sick and he needs to come home, then I never make myself feel guilty for stopping work and going and taking care of that. Obviously, if I have a major deadline or whatever, I can always ask Trey to do it. He’s very willing and can do it too, unless he has some major deadline. But I actually usually don’t have a lot of deadlines lately. That happens more in heavy sponsorship season, which is not right now for us I never make myself feel bad if I need to go pick him up early. And then for us too, we don’t really maximize the daycare time that is available, we take him from nine to five, which works for us. We could take him earlier and a little bit later he could stay, they have really long hours. Some people are like nurses who have 12-hour shifts and different things like that. We kind of picked hours that feel good to us. So it means I get a solid two hours of playtime with him in the morning based on his wake-up time and a solid two hours of hangout playtime, which does include bath time and dinner, but all that before his bedtime at night, and to me, that feels really good where I’m like, all right, I get these really nice four hours and then we get our whole weekend, and then the rest of the time I try to work and then once he goes to bed, that’s when I can do a hobby and hang with my husband or just do some elaborate skincare, which I like to do.

Elsie: Yeah, so my tip for this is to remember that these are the busiest years of your entire life If you have kids, especially the daycare, grade, school activities, sports, and things like that. These are very busy years, and I think it’s okay not to be doing everything that you would like to be doing during these years, because obviously it was, hopefully, a priority to become a parent and be a parent, and now it’s like it’s a part of your life that takes up a lot of time. So for work mode my current strategy, I’m kind of just trying to be a little more like Emma, and my strategy is the done is better than perfect, I just complete things. I stay with my list, and I’m just like focusing while I’m in my working hours and my mom mode hours, I just don’t think about work during that time. So I kind of compartmentalize. If I’m not on my phone and I’m not on my computer, it’s really easy for me to just hang out with my kids and do the cute things that they wanna do. They like really, really wanted me to watch Aladdin 3 yesterday, and I’m like so proud of myself that I watched half of it. It took a lot, I just don’t think that a movie like that should have a third sequel three. But, they love the sequels and they loved it, and they wanted to show me what Aladdin’s dad looked like and stuff, and now I know. So I just think that letting yourself pretty much have two lives. You know what I mean? That’s how I think of it. It’s like I have my work life, I put everything into it, and then I have my mom life and I put everything into that. I don’t know. It feels like it’s functioning at this phase. It feels pretty good. 

Emma: Yeah. And with the boundaries thing, I don’t even know if it’s a boundaries thing, but I feel like for me since I am an introvert. So my workday, I mostly spend alone obviously today Elsie’s bothering me because we’re on the podcast here, just kidding. But a lot of my work days, I spend completely alone because I just work from home and I create my recipes and I photograph things and I write and whatever, all my work stuff. And so a lot of times I feel like I’m lucky in that I get to recharge my being-alone battery while I’m at work. Which is kind of just double dipping in a way, it’s so nice. But when I do have a week where daycare was out or Oscar was homesick or whatever, or a couple of weekends back to back, we did a couple of family trips back to back recently, which was really fun and a huge priority for me. But also I could tell that my introvert battery was running low. And so I think it’s important that you tell, if you have a partner, tell your partner all your friends like I have a really supportive group of friends. And I had one friend who invited me over to make jewelry, which is my love language, but I was just feeling like I needed to be an introvert. I could just tell that I was like, I’m not gonna have anything to say because I’m just feeling depleted and want to stay home. And in the past, I would’ve felt kind of guilty about that, but currently, I just don’t because I’m like, I don’t have room for this guilt in addition to just being exhausted, so I’m just not gonna do it, and I also feel like I’ve built this supportive friends. I know that all my friends and my partner understand me and understand if I’m like, Hey, I gotta stay on tonight. I’m just tired, which I think is what I text, and she was like, I understand, cool. So it’s so nice. It’s like, thank you for not like pressuring me out when I frankly cannot deal with that right now. I just need some time alone to chill. 

Elsie: There’s always next week. Yeah, I love that a theme of this topic is becoming kind of like ignoring or shutting out guilt because I think that guilt can be such a burden to carry, whether in work or in parenting when frankly, it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t accomplish or achieve anything. It doesn’t make you better at anything. It just feels horrible. So finding ways to untrain our minds, that’s taken me a long time, but I think the more you can shut it out and kind of remind yourself that it’s not helpful, I think it’s really great. 

Emma: Yeah. I agree. 

Elsie: Okay, so the next question is, how do you handle when one area of your life needs more attention than others? I think this is a really good question. This is something I’ve been through recently. My husband has had a gigantic success in his business that came really hard and really fast, and it changed our dynamic, it changed our parenting balance. And it sort of changed his free time quite a bit over the past year. So, I kind of haven’t been working less. So we’ve had to be more strategic about how we share our parenting responsibilities. So my advice for this is a lot of times it’s a season, it’s like you’re going through a time, you’re going through a launch, a season, a project, a release, whatever. Starting a business and it’s really just like a temporary thing. So I think being honest first and foremost with yourself is important. I can be like the biggest liar to myself about time management things. And I think if you lie to yourself, then you’re gonna lie to everyone around you, accidentally. So you first have to be honest with yourself and then with your partner, and then obviously with your business partner, your bosses, whatever. For me, it’s Emma, my business partner. 

Emma: I’m the boss! Just kidding.

Elsie: Actually, she did put herself down as president and me as vice president on some paperwork that I saw. So I think that she is my boss a little bit. Technically according to the government.

Emma: That’s just forms where they’re like requiring, you know something and I’m like, well, President’s probably gonna, you have to fill more stuff out. It’s more of a burden. It’s what it really is. 

Elsie: No, no. We’re definitely 50/50 partners and she’s definitely more administratively active than I am. 

Emma: Yeah, sometimes. I feel like I really was, and then I also had a kid, and now I’m a lot more like, Hey, I need your help with this, or I can’t get this done, or whatever. Because it’s like, you run out of time for stuff. 

Elsie: But anyway, being honest with each other about what we need, I think has been extremely helpful. You know, and it is a little awkward, I think that we all wanna be like a hero and we want everyone to see that we’re hard workers and that we’re putting in the time and all of that. But I think that being able, to be honest when you need to do less or when you need to…

Emma: You need an extension. You’re like, I cannot meet this deadline. 

Elsie: Or when you’re just struggling. For me, my moving months have been kind of bad, and Emma’s very understanding about it. But I think I also feel like I will want to naturally pay a little bit of reckoning at some point and make up for it. 

Emma: Yeah, I don’t really care. 

Elsie: Well, anyway, I think that communication is really important and it does start with being honest with yourself because you know you can’t be everything all the time and don’t lie to yourself that you can.

Emma: Yeah, and I think too, you have to be honest with yourself, talk with your partner or whatever your support system is, and make sure everybody’s aware of what you’re needing and what’s going on because if you’re just having major deadlines at work and you don’t talk to your partner that might not be so great, obviously. But I think in addition to that, once that’s all in place, you really have to kind of sometimes put blinders on and just let people think, whatever they’re gonna think about you. People who are not in your inner circle and not in your support system because people are gonna make judgments about you and you just gotta let that go. Some people think that women shouldn’t have any full-time childcare, they should just stay home with their kids. And that is a belief that they are welcome to hold. But you, if you have chosen to stay in your career, you’re gonna have to let that roll off your shoulders and just ignore it. Or like a small example, this really doesn’t matter, but especially since Elsie’s been moving, but just generally too, we’ve been doing a lot more food blogging and we’re loving it, but we’ve had some comments here and there that’s like kind of missed the crafts, wish you didn’t do so much food. Why are you doing so much food blogging? And I think it’s fine. People are fine to ask questions. It’s really not that negative, it’s just more, to me it’s like well, you don’t totally know what’s going on with us and that is fine because we haven’t let you in on it. But I’m gonna keep my head down and keep doing what I think is best for us in our business because that’s what I’ve gotta do. And we’ve decided this and we’re intentional about it. And so that’s like a small example, but in a similar way. 

Elsie: I’m doing the opposite. I’ve been trying to tell them we have three writers. One of us is on maternity leave, one of us is moving and one of us only writes food. 

Emma: So guess what’s going to be there? Hey, I craft a little bit.

Elsie: No, I know you do. I always wish that I could be more honest and that people could just understand, but that’s a hard thing about communicating with an audience instead of with a person. The memo just gets missed.

Emma: Yeah. I think too, like those kinds of comments are really very minor and not even necessarily negative. So what goes in my mind more is if you have a family member who’s maybe judging you for keeping your career after you start to have children or just different things that people go through that I actually don’t have in my life, but it’s like it’s really hard to feel like you’re supposed to do it all, but there are only 24 hours in the day, we all live with that reality. It just is what it is. So we have to choose what we want, what’s important to us, what’s important to our families. And we gotta have to let other people have their judgments or make their assumptions and just let it go because they don’t know. And you’ve made your choice, so enjoy it.

Elsie: No, yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think that that’s good advice. Can’t be everything all the time. Also, I think that changing, one of the things about being a blogger for 15 years that’s been very consistent, is a comment that will be like, I liked you better before. For 15 straight years, we’ve received that comment at all times, and we will continue to always, and I think that that has to be a thing that you just in life that you kind of have to give more weight to people who want you to evolve and change, and a lot less to people who want you to stay the same. You know like in high school when you write in the yearbook always stays the same. It’s actually a pretty dumb thing to write. Never change to a high schooler. 

Emma: Yeah, I’m sure I wrote nothing smart in any yearbook I ever wrote in. But I think too, if you want to grow and change, then you’ve gotta just make that choice and then other people don’t get to make the choice for you. They just don’t, they can say their comment, they can, whatever. But you are in charge of your life and if you want to continue to grow and change, then that’s all there is to it. You don’t even need to take in this other stuff, it’s just flies buzzing around your head, ignore it. But I think too, it has to do with what people are enjoying. As for us it has to do with what they’re enjoying from us and a couple of episodes ago, if you missed it, we were talking about hobbies. And one thing we mentioned right at the top of the episode was how David Bowie created an album right before he died. And I love David Bowie, I’m a huge fan of him and it’s not his most well-known or well-received album, he died shortly after, so I’m sure no one would leave this comment because oh my God. But someone could have been like, oh, I liked you better in the seventies. But it’s like, what makes him an icon to me is that he did continue to grow and change and put out work, and inevitably some of it will be better than others. And I don’t even know what his favorite album was that he created, but I could probably guess what his fans like or whatever. But I wanna be that person who keeps making stuff and keeps growing and changing, and I don’t really care if other people love it. I want that to be a part of who I am because I think it’s beautiful and important, but it’s not very balanced and it’s definitely hard, and I think you kind of have to ignore other people along the way to make that happen.

Elsie: Yeah. I think the goal to always keep evolving and sort of like following your own inner compass and having your own strategy that you’re comfortable with, that you chose on purpose feels really good to me, so good chat. I loved this episode. This is making me feel happy about life.

Emma: Wonderful. 

Elsie: Okay, so we have a listener question from Jennifer Kosmono. What would you be doing if you weren’t doing A Beautiful Mess? Okay, I’ll go first cause the answer kind of sucks, and I know you’re gonna make fun of me. Okay, so I love doing A Beautiful Mess and I’m so glad I’m doing it. And I’ve shared a bunch of times I wanna be an artist in the future, and that too. But this is just like a total second reality, this is a total alternative reality, okay. But the thing that I still have in my heart that will never go away is that I still wanna have a retail store.

Emma: Oh my God.

Elsie: I know and the desire for it never dies, it never goes away. I just like desperately, desperately want to have, I don’t know, it changes through the years, but more recently, it’s like a bookstore. That has a lot of candles and a little bit of home stuff. Like a cozy bookstore. Yeah, and I think I’ll always want that and I will just spend the rest of my life trying to fight off the desire to open another store because I’ve done it and it really did not make me happy doing it every day, but I still just, I don’t know, have the craving to try again. What about you Em? 

Emma: Yeah, so before I was really all in on A Beautiful Mess. I was already food blogging. I had two food blogs before I started. One was called From Scratch and one was called Food Coma. So I feel like if we hadn’t started blogging together, I probably would’ve kept food coma and just kept going with this. So I probably would still be a food blogger, but that’s a lame answer because I am a food blogger just in a different way. So it’s like, oh, you do the same thing, but with a different name, cool. 

Elsie: Think of a different answer that’s more interesting. 

Emma: Well, I don’t know if this is interesting, but as everyone knows, I really wanna be a fiction writer, so I would hope that I could have a career like that. But I wouldn’t mind if financially, I needed to supplement it in other ways. And one thing that I really loved, in my twenties, I used to clean apartments and houses when I lived in LA, and I actually really loved that job, I still think about it sometimes because when you think about it, it kind of plays to some of my strengths, which is I like being alone and working alone. I’m not necessarily great at cleaning, but I am a good finisher and I’ve always liked the satisfaction of walking in and like it’s dirty, and then by the time you leave it’s like clean and it smells nice and everything’s in its place, you know all of that. 

Elsie: You could be an audiobook mom.

Emma: Yeah. So I’m like maybe I could clean houses and apartments and also write fiction and between those two things, make enough to live my life or whatever. I feel like that’s what I would do if I had to start over. I don’t know, alternate universe type thing. 

Elsie: Nice. I sometimes enjoy watching cleaning videos on TikTok.

Emma: Oh yeah. 

Elsie: And they do make it look really fun. 

Emma: Yeah. Mrs. Hinch all the way, love it. 

Elsie: That’s cool. Yeah, I don’t think anyone would’ve expected that. That’s cute. So, it is time for our famous segment, A joke or a fact with Nova. Hey Nova, this week do you have a joke for us or a fact? 

Nova: I have a joke. 

Elsie: A joke, okay I’m ready. 

Nova: Why didn’t the skeleton go to school? 

Elsie: Why? 

Nova: Because his heart wasn’t in it. 

Elsie: That’s a good one. Thanks for the jokes. Bye Nova. 

Emma: Thanks so much for listening. If you have any questions or podcast ideas, please email us at podcast@abeautifulmess.com or you can call and leave us a voicemail the number is 417-893-0011. We’ll be back next week with a deep dive into some of our favorite summer things.

My favorite rubber tree is in a scene from the movie Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn. In the scene, they are having a lavish party and there is a beautiful, tall rubber tree in the room. That rubber tree is definitely a plant goal for me.

Maybe someday mine will get that big and beautiful! With proper care, the tree can reach up to 10 feet tall (sometimes taller) indoors! 

Related: Love plants? Learn to care for Fiddle Leaf Figs, Jade Plants, Calathea, Pilea Plants, Snake Plants, Monstera, Peace Lilies, Air Plants, Spider Plants, Christmas Cactus, Poinsettia, and String of Pearls.

The rubber tree is also known as the Ficus Elastica and comes from India and parts of tropical Asia. The shiny, leathery leaves give this plant a distinct look. There is really nothing like it! The rubber tree has a wonderful shape and is a great option for anyone who loves houseplants. 

Potting

When you bring home a new rubber tree, here are a few things to consider in regards to potting it. It might seem like a good idea to put your plant in a big pot so it has lots of room to grow, but the rubber tree prefers to be a bit crowded in a pot.

Try to choose a pot that gives about 2 inches of soil around the whole diameter. This will give your plant plenty of room to grow and thrive. When choosing a pot, earthenware is always a great option. Unglazed earthenware allows the moisture in the dirt to evaporate out of the pot and dry out faster.

A glazed earthenware pot will not have the same abilities to let the moisture come out. I use both kinds of pots but a really important aspect of the pot is to make sure it has a drainage hole so water has a way to escape (sitting water will most definitely kill your rubber tree).

Once you have your pot figured out, it’s time to think about soil. The rubber tree likes well draining soil. An all-purpose indoor mix works great, but I add some extra perlite to give the soil more aeration.

Perlite is an organic material that comes from volcanic eruptions and you can find it at most garden stores. Scoop some of your potting mix and place it on the bottom of the pot. Then, put your plant in so that it sits about 3 inches under the top pot.

Fill in the rest of the dirt, making sure your plant stays nice and straight. Use your hand to move dirt down as you move around the pot. Once the sides are filled, place a small layer of dirt over the top of your plant.

Once the plant is potted, place it in the spot you intend to leave it (rubber trees don’t like change). Repotting can sometimes make your plant drop leaves, so if this happens, don’t fret … it’s just getting used to its new environment.

A period of rest is vital for your rubber tree once it’s been repotted and placed in a new spot. Not sure about the best spot to put your plant?

Light

This plant loves to drink up the light, so placement in your home is crucial to maintain a healthy plant. The first thing when choosing a spot is to make sure that it doesn’t have a draft, isn’t near a vent, or has an AC unit blowing on it.

The plant will most likely drop leaves (or it can die) if it is near a draft. The rubber trees thrive on an indoor temperature of 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit. Find a place in your home with medium to bright light. Brighter light will help your plant grow faster.

If you put it in a darker spot of a room it can become “leggy” as it tries to stretch toward the light. If your plant is “reaching” then just place it in a brighter spot. The rubber tree has some beautiful variegated species that do require more light.

The tricolor variegated species has green, white and pink in its leaves. The white in the leaf requires more light due to lack of chlorophyll levels. They can “burn” easily so keep an eye on the leaves.

They will tell you if they are getting too much light. If there is any brown on the tip (burning), that means there is too much light hitting your variegated plant. 

Back to the non-variegated rubber tree. What if you don’t have great window light or you’re worried about your room being too dark? Placing a mirror by the plant will help bounce more light onto your plant.

Another tip to create a brighter environment is a white room. White paint will bounce more light around! Seems so simple, but it really is effective in helping with a low light situation in a room.

If you want to get maximum light on your rubber tree, then make sure the leaves are free of dust. I have found that the rubber tree can get quite dusty, so check the leaves every few weeks for dust buildup.

If there is dust present, then a damp cloth will work great to remove it. When dusting the rubber tree, be careful with new leaves. The new, thin leaves are very fragile and if damaged while they are young, then the damage will stay on the leaf its whole life.

When dusting mature leaves, make sure you place your hand under the leaf for support. Extra pressure on the leaf could cause it to snap while dusting. This has happened to me before and it’s quite sad.

When it snaps, there will be a white sap-like liquid that comes from the leaf where it was detached from the branch. It is completely normal but it can irritate some people’s skin, so wash hands just in case it gets on your skin.

Watering

Finding a consistent watering rhythm for your tree will help give you the confidence you need to keep your plant alive and healthy for years to come. If the leaves start to droop a bit, then you know your plant is very thirsty.

Rubber trees like to dry out but they don’t like to become bone dry. Another way to tell if your plant is really thirsty is when you’re watering and the water runs out quickly through the soil. Soil with more moisture will take longer to drain. If the water runs straight through, then give it another good soak.

The rubber tree enjoys generous watering but make sure it has time to dry out to avoid root rot (this happens when the plant is waterlogged or if it sits in water too long).

If root rot happens. then your plant doesn’t have a great chance of living anymore, so avoid overwatering at all costs. As a rule of thumb, let the top 2/3 of your plant’s soil dry out before watering your rubber tree again.

You can also stick your finger in the soil 3-4 inches) and feel if there is any moisture or pick up the pot and feel if the post is heavy from holding moisture. After watering your rubber tree, if any water drains into your saucer, discard the extra water so the plant doesn’t sit in water and get root rot.

Watering duration will depend on your climate and humidity levels. If you live in a drier climate, then your plant will need to be watered more frequently. Once you figure out your plant’s rhythm/duration of drying out, a watering routine should be really easy to adhere to. This plant loves consistency and will grow better with a steady routine.

Pruning

The rubber tree can grow tall if left unpruned. If left unpruned, your tree will have one long trunk. If this is your desired look, then great! This will make your tree grow vertical faster!

If you’d like to have more of a “bushy” tree, then you can use your fingers and pinch off a new growing tip to promote the plant to create more branches.

If you snip or prune a branch, then that part will split into two branches once the new growth comes in. Pruning is an exciting habit that produces great results over time.

Fertilizing

The rubber tree loves to be fed with fertilizer to promote growth. Fertilize your tree in the spring/summer (the growing season), but back off in the fall/winter months. Fertilizing your plant every other watering session is a good rule of thumb.

I love using a liquid fertilizer that I can add to my water. 

Knowing my fertilizer is a liquid gives me the peace of mind that the fertilizer is evenly distributed throughout the water (unlike granules or a powder mix). When choosing fertilizer, it will have three letters on the package: NPK.

The “N” stands for Nitrogen. Nitrogen helps with chlorophyll production, which leads to photosynthesis, which leads to a bigger, healthier plant! The “P” stands for Phosphorus. Phosphorus helps with keeping the roots of your plant healthy and promotes root growth.

The last letter “K” stands for Potassium. Potassium helps your plant distribute nutrients. It also helps your plant fight off disease. Think of it as an immunity booster for your plant! A standard fertilizer for houseplants will work great for your rubber tree.

Make sure to read the label of your fertilizer and follow the instructions. I like using half of the recommended fertilizer amount with the rubber tree. Using too much fertilizer can cause your plant to burn.

Burning means that too many nutrients have been stored in the root system and they cannot accept/absorb water anymore. If there is a chance that your plant has had too much fertilizer then give it a good watering to flush the roots. Don’t fertilize the next week so that your plant has time to recover and rest.

What if Your Rubber Tree is Dropping Leaves?

When you repot your rubber tree or move it, it is very common for it to drop a couple of leaves due to shock. Old leaves will fall off here and there as they age out as well. This is totally normal!

What if your rubber tree drops a bunch of leaves at the same time? This isn’t normal and it could be due to overwatering or other issues. If your tree’s leaves begin to droop, turn yellow and eventually fall off, then this is most likely due to overwatering.

The yellowing of the leaves is called Chlorosis. Chlorosis means that chlorophyll is not forming in your plant. It is amazing that plants can tell you what they need through their color.

If your leaf is turning yellow, it is likely a call for help. Back off watering and make sure your plant is drying out between watering so that it doesn’t get waterlogged.

If it continues to happen, pop your plant out of the pot and check for root rot. The quickest way to tell if your plant has succumbed to root rot is finding mushy, black or dark roots. If you see this, sometimes your plant can be saved but there is a chance the roots are done and the plant won’t make it.

If you can, snip the dead roots out of the root system and place the plant in a pot of fresh soil (not the waterlogged soil from the previous pot). Give your plant some time and hopefully it will come back to life! 

Another reason your plant’s leaves could be turning yellow is a lack of light. If this is the case, then set your plant in a brighter spot so it can soak up more sun. The sun is like medicine for your plant and this could cure your leaf drop problem. Also, make sure the plant is not near a draft as this will also cause the leaves to drop.

The rubber tree’s temperament is pretty easygoing and it is a great addition to any plant lover’s home. I hope these tips help and you’re able to enjoy your rubber tree for years to come! -Janae

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Show Notes:

Check out Episode #180: Selling Our Home Fully Furnished

Elsie’s Tips for Furnishing a House from Scratch:

• Have a list of things you want to get right away (a fast list).
• Make a list for things you want to get over time (a slow list).
• Work in layers:
  • For example, your base layer would be furniture, curtains, and rugs—things that make your room functional.

Here’s a link to my rug and the box cutter I mentioned.

Shopping Tips:

• Create a Pinterest board of everything that you want to buy.
• Go on eBay and buy coupons for places you will be shopping at.
• Make a mood board for every room.

Guilty Pleasure Treasure:

Elsie – Danny Loves Pasta
Emma – Cuticle oil pen 

Miss an Episode? Get Caught Up!

• Episode #186: Stranger Than Fiction – Comfort Rewatch
• Episode #185: Finding Joy in Hobbies (Deep Dive)
• Episode #184: Decorating the Exterior of Your House

Episode 187 Transcript:

Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen. This week we’re going over how to furnish a house from scratch since I recently sold a home fully furnished and had to start over. Plus, we’re going to tell you our guilty pleasure treasures. All right. So yeah, I think that this is going to be a fun episode. So before we jump in, Emma has had her house sprayed by a skunk three times in the last. How many months? 

Emma: Yeah. We’ve lived in our house for six months and three times our dog has gotten sprayed by a skunk and a couple of weeks ago, it was twice in one week. And it is so sad for our dog because skunk spray if you don’t know obviously it smells terrible, but it’s also like itchy and it makes him sneeze a whole bunch and he’s just clearly trying to protect our house. But I’m also like, Steve, no need, that skunk is not gonna get in the house, just leave it alone. But yeah, and then he smells terrible and then he runs all over the house. So then our whole house smells like skunk. And one night it happened, it was like midnight because skunks are nocturnal. So this week, literally before we started recording, I was like, hold on, I need a few minutes. I’m on the phone with the skunk trapper because we’re paying someone to come and trap them and take them away because we don’t really know what else to do at this point because clearly they keep getting in and it’s like we don’t live in a forest. I live like on a corner lot with a regular little fence in a regular neighborhood. I don’t see why we’re having this skunk problem, but we really are and at the moment our guest bedroom, which is where Steve’s bed is, smells so bad and it has for like a whole week straight. And I’ve tried everything the internet has said to try and it’s not getting better, and I don’t know. I think it is better, but it’s just intense. 

Elsie: So send Emma any suggestions you have for breaking a skunk curse because she clearly has a curse and it needs to be broken. 

Emma: It’s not good. It’s not good over here. You can’t come over it stinks.

Elsie: I’ve never had a skunk experience. So I mean besides like driving, everyone’s had that. But yeah, I’ve never had a skunk experience at my house and t it does sound really scary. Oh my god. 

Emma: It is not good. It is bad. It’s kind of funny too because I actually think skunks are really cute. Like the animals.

Elsie: Oh yeah, they are cute. 

Emma: But man, if you see when I’m like, run the other way, run as fast as you can. Don’t scare it. Like, I don’t know, it lingers. Ah. So that’s my personal story. 

Elsie: Damn you skunks. 

Emma: Feel sorry for me or not however you feel. I feel sorry for myself. 

Elsie: I think they do. I think that everyone feels sorry for you because you’re cursed.

Emma: I am cursed. 

Elsie: Well, I hope that that’s the last time. Three times sounds like enough. You can give us an update in a couple of months. 

Emma: I’ll let you know if the trapping worked if they got ’em. I don’t know. I have no idea. I’ve never called an animal trapper before in this way. 

Elsie: I’m like in this way because you did. 

Emma: Well, that was a dead animal. 

Elsie: A snake out of your house. 

Emma: We used to live by a forest and we had some major snake problems then, but now we have a skunk problem.

Elsie: I kind of think it’s a curse that’s following you from house to house. 

Emma: It seems to be. Although nothing really happened to me at Weller and I lived there by myself for a little bit. So maybe it’s Trey’s curse. It’s maybe my husband’s curse. I don’t know, we’re all cursed in this house now cause we all smell a little bit. Oscar’s room is skunk free at least. So that’s good.

Elsie: Well, I am excited about this episode. So recently we sold our house, furnished our house in Tennessee, and we had to, and I did a whole episode about that, a couple of episodes back. So we’ll link that in the show notes. And then today we thought we would spend an episode talking about what it’s like to furnish a house from scratch because I’ve gotten a lot of questions about it and I do think it’s interesting. It was fun, and it was definitely both very fun and kind of a lot of pressure to do it like so speedy, but I would say mostly fun. And I will say I’m considering this episode, I’m giving us one of those little mental bubbles, and I am considering this episode a judgment-free zone because I think that talking openly about buying furniture for your entire house was a little target on my back and I accept that, I get it, but it is like kind of what happened practically and like whatever. And yeah, I thought I would start with the judgemental story, just for the fun of it to sort of like influence everyone to not be this way. Okay. So you know how in your DM’s sometimes, I don’t know if this has ever happened to you but every once in a while, it doesn’t happen to me much, but someone will send a message that’s like obviously meant for their friend, that’s shit talking you, but it comes to you. 

Emma: Yes. That’s amazing. 

Elsie: Yeah. And I don’t know how it happens. 

Emma: It’s in their brain, they’re like talking about you, and all of a sudden they accidentally click over to sending it to you, that’s so funny. 

Elsie: And I think they maybe, I don’t know if they know it or not, but yeah, so I got one. I haven’t gotten one in a long time, and I got one the other day that just said she sold all her kids’ books and it like bugged me so freaking bad because, well, I’ll tell the whole thing. It bugged me so bad because first of all, I bought all our books recently, like last year. So we made the hidden Library only like a year ago, a year and a half ago or two years ago. It wasn’t even there. It was like, it wasn’t there, it didn’t exist. So, I guess what I wanna say in defense of myself and in defense of, I guess it’s a life lesson I learned throughout this experience. One of my friends on Instagram also, had her house burned down and we were sort of commiserating about it, this is a little bit of similar things, having your house burned down versus selling your whole house furnished is the realization that 99% of the things in your house are replaceable, and it’s something that I think we just don’t realize that, but it’s true for probably all of us. And yes, I have family photos and I have this really special painting of my grandma and I have a couple of pieces of clothing and a couple of mementos, my kids’ painting, and things like that. But overall, 99% of the things in our house are things I could just buy again tomorrow from regular stores and we wouldn’t even notice that they were different. And I think that that’s good. I think that it should be encouraging and it should be a healthy reminder that this is all just stuff. And even when it’s a curated collection of beautiful books where you picked out every single one and you’ve either read them or you intend to read them, it’s still stuff that you could replace in one day with a list and a credit card. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, anyway, from my perspective, I wasn’t really upset about the person, I thought it was mean, what they said. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, first of all, I’m thankful that I know now that everything’s replaceable and it’s not a big deal to me. I’m not crying over the books, and we will buy our kids just as many books, probably way more in our new home, and they’re not gonna be like lacking for books. I promise you for one single day of their lives they’re just not. And the other thing that I learned from this experience is that I was extremely honored to leave a fully styled, fully perfect kids’ library for another family to enjoy. And that was actually a really cool experience. I felt like I was compensated for making this beautiful thing and I’ll be able to make another one for my kids in the future. And I don’t know, I thought that was kind of cool too. So anyway, now we’re in the judgment-free bubble. 

Emma: Except for me, I’m gonna judge you as much as I want, as usual. 

Elsie: I know. I actually, love your judgements though. That’s fine. I can take it for sure. Okay, let’s chat about it. 

Emma: Yeah. So where did you start? I guess because I feel like to me it sounds so overwhelming to be like, oh, okay so they bottle the furniture. How exciting, positive thing, now that I’ve wrapped my head around it, so it’s like, what do you start collecting first? Did you make a hierarchy of needs or how did you even prioritize? Because obviously at some point you’ll run out of budget or whatever and just like leave some things off just like a renovations, but it’s like how did you know where to start and what was the process of that kind of thing? 

Elsie: Yes. I definitely have some shopping tips to share. So the first thing is, I think it’s important to have a list of things you wanna buy immediately, like a fast list, and things you wanna collect over time, a slow list. So some examples of things that I think would be good to put on the fast list are beds, bed frames, mattresses, furniture, rugs, and things that are foundational to your room that are annoying to move in and out. Just the base layer of having all the basic things, curtains, like that. And things that I personally think are better to do slowly are decor, wallpaper, details, collections, antiques, art, and even framing and hanging pictures. That’s something that I’ll wait a few months until I’ve lived there for a little while and thought about it a little bit before buying it all and putting it up. So, yeah, I kind of just think about it in two layers and the layer that I’ve been working on at first is kind of just like the base layer, which I would also call the furniture layer. And it does include curtains and rugs, but pretty much the things that make your room functional and comfortable, like having the right amount of tables and chairs. We talked before about how something annoying that happened was that during the pandemic we had just moved into a home and I didn’t buy all the furniture. Or maybe, I don’t know if it didn’t come, maybe it was back ordered or something happened, but I didn’t have any tables or any chairs in our home, we only had one on the porch. Through pretty much the most intense part of the pandemic when it was like staying home 24-7 times, and that was like a huge mistake. So this time, even though I would’ve rather probably spent more time and gotten all antique tables and things like that, I just bought good tables from Wayfair and called it a day and they’re done, they’re already set up, they’re already there. And I know that we’ll have a place to sit in a bed and the basic things. 

Emma: Yeah, basic things, that makes sense. Okay, you just mentioned Wayfair, but you’ve also mentioned that you really like changing your style. It’s gonna be very Knives Out one, Knives Out, originally inspired. So how much of the house so far at least, would you say is old things like antiques or one-of-a-kind versus, newer things like you mentioned buying a table on Wayfair, and how do you mix the two, I guess would be my follow-up question?

Elsie: So I would say it’s been 50/50 so far, with furniture and rug. So my wonderful, amazing father-in-law went with me to the flea market the other day. I had three days in Springfield, Emma, actually, we met our parents in St. Louis for a Mother’s Day weekend, and then I drove home with her, and then I had three days to spend. I didn’t even have a car, I just stayed at the pink house and walked back and forth from the pink house to our new house the entire time. 

Emma: And it rained a lot. I was like, uh oh.

Elsie: It rained a ton. I had a rain jacket that was good. And then, flew home after three days. So anyway, during that time what we did was we undid every single box, which was great, and got rid of all the boxes, and set up all the furniture. So we did get a good amount of new furniture, especially things with very specific sizes. For example, bedside tables, dining tables, sofas, and rugs were mostly new. Actually, I got a good amount of vintage rugs too. I think vintage rugs are really, really easy to find and specific.

Emma: You can buy those online. 

Elsie: Yeah, and then my father-in-law went with me to the flea market and I was telling Jeremy all the stuff I was gonna get, but I hadn’t been there in like a month. And he was like, how do you know they’re gonna have that stuff? And I was like, they always do and I just believed it would be there. 

Emma: She manifested the furniture.

Elsie: Yeah. But it’s true that they always do and actually the entry table that I really wanted, I had seen it before a couple of times ago, so it had been there for a little while. So I got a couple of sets of chairs and I think we got like 14 chairs and an entry table and he had to go to leave and go get his trailer because he didn’t realize how much stuff I was gonna get, and then we tied it all down and drove it back and it was just like such an exciting, good feeling. And I don’t mind at all buying stuff from Wayfair and Amazon and places like that a hundred percent, it’s just practical and functional. But I loved getting all these chairs with like character and personality and not having to pay shipping, not having to wait, that part of it was so great too. Yeah, I think I’m gonna try to keep going 50/50, I think it’s a good balance because I don’t think every single thing in the house can be antique, but I kind of want it to look that way. I don’t wanna have anything that you can tell is new or from Target, or from Ikea or modern or whatever. I don’t wanna have anything that’s like a new trend. So yeah, you’ll have to tell me if I actually can achieve that, but that’s my intention. 

Emma: Great. That’ll be my role. I’ll come over and be like, that’s new. And you’ll be like, no, it’s an antique. And I’ll be like, okay, that’s new, and you’ll be like, okay. Yeah, that’s new. That’ll be my guessing game. 

Elsie: Yeah, totally. It’s been so much fun. I had this moment a couple of years ago where, I don’t know my style just changed overnight. The house I wanted to live in, just like completely changed overnight and I don’t know what, I can’t pinpoint, I would say Knives Out had something to do with it, but also it was like, do you remember when we read the book playing big and I did the future self visualization. I saw myself in this certain kind of old house with sort of like a Knives Out house, a darker, richer, antiquey vibe. And that is previously not a style that I would’ve gravitated toward in any way. So I kind of love that I feel like I’m like living different lives in my design aesthetic. And we just switched over completely from like Palm Springs, Elsie, to like Knives Out Elsie and there was no in-between. 

Emma: I guess your Nashville house was the in-between, but it was like turning a nineties house into more of a Knives Outhouse. But, there are limitations.

Elsie: It had a little bit of both, you’re right though.

Emma: It had a little both. Okay, well what about some shopping tips? Did you get any antique shopping tips? Shopping for new stuff tips. Let’s hear it because you’ve been shopping a lot.

Elsie: Yes. I feel like a professional shopper. It has been pretty fun. It was maybe a lot to do the whole house because I ordered almost all the furniture for the house in one weekend and it was a little bit like a mind-bending exercise. I think I definitely got shopping fatigue. Where I’ve had to sort of like go back and that’s where I think the layered approach is helpful because it’s like, just get the base, just get the things we need, and then there are certain things where I know I can always add it later, but yeah my tips are, first of all, I had a private pin board with everything saved that I wanted to buy, and I did it for a few months before. Pretty much as soon as I knew that the furnished house sale thing was happening, I started this pin board of beds, dressers, rugs, all the main stuff, the things that are like expensive where you wanna get it, right? And I spent some time overthinking those things and I kind of just don’t worry about overthinking small things because I just think you don’t need to. But I think it’s good to overthink before you buy a 9×12 rug. And then another tip, I think I’ve said this before, but whenever I am buying large purchases from big box stores, I do this thing where I buy coupons from eBay, places like Anthropologie, Crate & Barrel, Serena and Lilly, places like that, there are just people who, they just get, a magazine or an ad in the mail and they put it on eBay, where you can buy it for, I don’t know, maybe $10 or $20, and you get like a 20% off coupon, which can be hundreds of dollars when you’re buying major purchases. Like when I bought my kids’ bedroom furniture, it was all from one store. So it’s like important to have coupons for things like that. So that’s a good tip. I don’t think it’s really that big of a deal in everyday life when you’re buying one or two things, but when you’re buying a lot of stuff it’s super helpful. It’s pretty much like a Black Friday sale or something that you can like, make for yourself. And then my other advice is to make a mood board for every room, which I know is annoying and I know is a lot of work. I honestly don’t do it for every room, but I do it for the rooms where I’m having trouble deciding. I think it’s really, really helpful, especially for bedrooms. If you have a wallpaper pattern, a pattern on your rug, or a pattern on your comforter or quilt that can become too many patterns really quickly. So it’s really good to just put them all in one place where you can see it all. And make sure that you get the right balance that you’re gonna be happy with because individual items are just so different from how items look together in a room. So yeah, those are my chopping tips. 

Emma: Well, you mentioned you were in town for three days, and you’re setting things up, tell us about setting up the house before your family really gets to see it because you were here by yourself. 

Elsie: Yeah, I would honestly say the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life is like a three-day period. It was so physically hard. After the first day I was like, I think my back is messed up. On the second day, I was like, I think my foot’s messed up. And on the third day, I had something wrong with me, I don’t remember.

Emma: And on the third day you rose again. 

Elsie: I had bruises, it was just a mess. And okay, here’s the funny thing, I have these safety knives, it’s a box cutter that’s a little safer for like children and stuff. And I will link it in the show notes because it’s a great box cutter. It’s definitely all I use it cuts through like tape and stuff really easily, but I actually stabbed myself in the hand with it. And what’s funny is I had already stabbed myself in the finger with a knife in my kitchen the week before. I actually stabbed myself in the hand with this box knife and it didn’t cut me at all. So I have to say it’s a great purchase. Everyone needs it. It’s not just for kids because I just thought of it as safer for kids. In case you accidentally leave it out with the kids. 

Emma: No, when I saw it, I was like, oh, I should buy one of those because I always get an Amazon box, I just open it with like our kitchen scissors because they’re just like right there in the drawer and I always feel like I’m gonna slice myself. So I was like, oh, that box opener looks great. 

Elsie: Yes. So yeah, it was very fun. On the last night, I painted a hole. There was this Vintage cabinet, it had been in Emma’s holiday house and it had been in my pink house garage for like six months, and we brought it over and I painted it to match the other. I’ve made a sort of like a temporary kitchen situation with cabinets, because our kitchen had almost no cabinets at all, and we took out the island to add a new island, but then there was like a ton of wall space all around. So we decided to just add a few cabinets from Amazon. And I got the hidden trash cabinet, so that was cool. And then we just had one in our pink house, so I thought I could just use that and not waste it. So, I just painted it real quick and it was so fun. I was listening to a teenage romance novel and just painting really late at night by myself and it was fun. So, yeah, it was extremely fulfilling. It was the best feeling ever to just work so hard, so fast. And then when I left, all the furniture was unboxed, all the boxes were off the porch. Thank you, Mom and Dad. The only thing that I didn’t get done was hanging curtains, so I’m still trying to find a poor sole to help me with that. But I mean, really I got pretty far. So I was thrilled and I definitely recommend it if you’re moving into a house if you can just give yourself a couple of days. And I did have, I will say a couple of paid helpers, people that I paid to help me all day, every day so we could get more done. 

Emma: Yeah because that stuff’s heavy. You need someone to help you move something like you can’t do it on your own. 

Elsie: And my father-in-law was the biggest badass of all time. Yeah, he should not have let me know that he has that trailer. Don’t you think that’s a bad life choice?

Emma: I was like, Ooh, I think this is now his job, he’ll see with her flea market fines and I’m just like, well, good luck Gary. Hit him a good Father’s Day gift. 

Elsie: Anyway, it was totally worth it, it was so fun and I can’t wait to move in and show the kids, we left cute things in their rooms to make them feel at home. And we booked a cleaning two days before we move in. So, that was pretty good. 

Emma: Yeah. It’s gonna be great. 

Elsie: I’m so nervous. 

Emma: Nah. It’s gonna be great. It’s already set up. It’s gonna be clean. It’s gonna be great. 

Elsie: Aw. Well, I’m excited, and yeah, for anyone who has a chance to sell a home furnished, my advice is to go for it and do it. Definitely speak up if there are one or two things that you just like love so much that you know are not replaceable. I’m not saying to sell like your favorite antique thing or a family heirloom or something. But no, I do think it’s good to learn the life lesson, that almost everything is replaceable. And honestly, you could buy a whole new house of stuff in a weekend and it’s okay, it’s not that big of a deal. So I don’t know, I feel like that’s a good reminder that the most important things in our home. It’s honestly not, the books, books are amazing, but really it’s the memories of reading them and making stuff, it doesn’t really matter. If all your books are gone, you can just get more.

Emma: Yeah. You can get more and write new ones every year, it’s magic.

Elsie: It is magical and I want to collect books till I die.

Emma: Yeah, same new ones too. I love buying new books as they come out. It’s so much fun.

Elsie: Yes. My pre-ordering is pretty aggressive right now.

Emma: I love pre-ordering because then it’s like sometimes I kind of forgot that I pre-ordered it and then it just comes in the mail as the book comes out, and I’m like, yes, past self has surprised future self and I’m so happy. Then you like have the book right as it comes out and it’s so cool. Okay, let’s do guilty pleasure, treasure. Do you have a guilty pleasure for us? 

Elsie: So my guilty pleasure treasure this time is Danny Loves Pasta and I don’t think I’ve talked about him on the podcast before, have I? I don’t think so. 

Emma: I don’t think so. I’m not on the podcast. 

Elsie: So, first of all, I just wanna plug, Danny Loves Pasta’s cookbook, which releases on June 27th. It’s a pasta cookbook. It’s a novelty, if you like, Rainbow Pasta, things like that, cute, beautiful. If that’s your kind of thing like those videos on Instagram and TikTok are kind of like my entire soul. And it just brings me so much joy. So it’s that sort of thing and anyway, he made a cookbook. It looks very beautiful. It’s very rainbowy. But the other thing I wanted to say about him is that he is the reason I rejoined TikTok. So I deleted my TikTok in exactly March of 2020 when the pandemic began, and I felt like as a mom, but working mom with two kids at home, the pressure, I think a lot of people at that time were like, we’re staying home. You should blow up your TikTok and I was just like, oh my God I can barely survive right now. So I deleted my TikTok for two years and didn’t look at it at all or log in for two years. But then Keeley sent me these, Danny Loves Pasta videos where he was making Harry Potter house scarves pasta, and he got me to rejoin and I actually do enjoy TikTok again now. So I feel like I have to give him credit for that, that he did something so special and joyful that he made a whole app that can be oftentimes toxic and annoying. He made it joyful and a happy, wonderful place.

Emma: They should make it like a button in TikTok and Instagram where like if you rejoin, you can put in the name of the person who inspired you to rejoin, and then they send them 20 bucks or something, or 50 bucks. Wouldn’t that be amazing? 

Elsie: Honestly, yeah. I feel like it was special because I didn’t think I was ever gonna rejoin. 

Emma: And then you saw that Harry Potter pasta and you’re like, well, okay.

Elsie: I knew that there was a happy world out there. Okay, what’s back yours? 

Emma: My guilty pleasure treasure is so random. I was showing Elsie before we started recording, but I mentioned a few episodes ago about how I got hypnotized for not biting my nails and I’ve been doing great with that, which is awesome. And anyway, I recently bought myself this cuticle oil and that is my guilty pleasure treasure that I wanna talk to you about. So, this one is like $4 on Amazon. I can link it in the show notes, but basically what I like about it is it’s a good cuticle oil, I like that, but it’s really small. It’s the size of a pen so you can keep it in your purse. I keep mine on my desk so it’s shaped like a pen, and then on one end, it has a brush. It’s very similar to if you ever saw the dazzle stick that we talked about, how we clean our jewelry. It has a brush on one end, so you just take the cap off and then it makes a little clicking sound as you push the oil through the brush. I’m gonna do it for you. I don’t know if you can hear that, but, so it makes this little clicking sound and then the oil comes up through the brush and then you just brush it on your cuticles and I love it. I think it’s something to do. I mean, I love the cuticle oil, but I think it’s like the clicking sound.

Elsie: My cuticles are I think that they’re naturally a little bit above average, but they’re, as far as taking care of them, I would say it’s below average. So I can do better, I could try. Okay, so I guess let’s go to a joke or a fact with Nova. Hey, Nova, this week, do you have a joke for us or a fact?

Nova: Joke. 

Elsie: Okay. 

Nova: What does a peanut go, like? 

Elsie: What does he go like?

Nova: When he tells a joke. 

Elsie: What? 

Nova: He goes nuts. 

Elsie: Oh, that’s a good one. That’s very good. 

Emma: Thanks so much for listening. You can submit any questions, comments, or if you just wanna write us and be sweet, we get those a lot and they often make me cry. And you can write us at podcast@abeautifulmess.com or you can call and leave us a voicemail of questions. And that’s 417-893-0011. We’ll be back next week with tips for how you can do it all. Spoiler, you can’t.