#311: How to be the Ultimate Host

0:00Elsie You're listening to the Beautiful Mess podcast. Your cozy comfort listen. I'm your host Elsie Larson. Emma And I'm your host Emma Chapman. Elsie This week we're discussing the best parties we've ever thrown, tips for hosting that will save you a little sanity, and we're debating a hot take about Mister Doctor Seuss. And why I said Mister, you just really downgraded him there. He's a doctor, and you're a Mister, Mister, the one and only Doctor Seuss. And the hot take is funny. So let's jump in. Okay, so we are gonna start by talking about the best party we've ever thrown, and then I think we should also say what we think is the best party the other person has ever thrown, because we're sisters, and there's not very many parties that we have thrown where the other one wasn't invited.

0:12Emma That's true. Okay, so I'm not sure. I I guess I few more recent parties because we you know we've been throwing parties for a long time. So two that you've thrown in this house since living in Springfield this go round, two was so your very first like housewarming party slash it was kind of Halloween too, right? Yeah, it was a Halloween housewarming party. That was where we moved here. Very epic. It was. I remember it being so full in your kitchen. It was like impossible to move around. Like if you wanted a snack, it was like excuse me, excuse me. You had to kind of like brush your body through a whole bunch of other people.

0:20Elsie It was so loud with people's voices that it was making me physically ill, and I had to leave the room. And it was like that at the New Year's party too. Emma That was that's the other part I was going to be. I will say that Halloween party. I think that was the one where you did the really weird charcuterie, horror face. Can you explain that? Elsie I think he's called Penhead, but he is so he looks like a meathead with toothpicks sticking out everywhere. So he was made with little little sausages.

0:29Emma It was like a foam head like you get at the craft store. Elsie Yeah, a foam heads you can buy at the craft store, and then I covered it in saran wrap, and I think I painted it first so that the background would be red, and then I took those little smoky sausages and with each one with one toothpick, put them around the whole thing, and then I crafted him some eyes out of garlic cloves and olives. I kind of spent like many hours on this guy. Emma He was epic, and I remember him.

0:38Elsie You can still see him far back in my Instagram and TikTok. He's still on there. He's staying. He was epic. Emma It was the most terrifying, beautiful, inspiring charcuterie item I had ever seen in my life. I loved it so much. It was Pinterest come alive at Halloween, and he was incredible. So it was that, and then New Year's Eve. I think this past year, yeah, you hosted. We kind of rotated among our friends, and that one was super fun. I feel like it was also like pretty full. Like your kitchen would get very full, and there was dancing in the living room.

0:46Elsie We did. We like covered all the floors in confetti, and we still find confetti to this day. That I mean, I wouldn't say I don't recommend it because it was fun and it was worth it. And I, it kind of makes me happy when I find them. It is definitely not a thing to do if you're a perfectionist or type A or something. Yeah, I've hosted New Year's Eve before too, and I still have confetti like in my vacuum. Yeah, like you know, you empty out the tank thing, and it's like you can't get it all out. It's just like still in there, and that was years ago. So yeah, it's definitely like a bit of a thing, but it's fun. It's oh yeah, yeah. That one was happy too, and but okay, so Trey is always Emma's husband is always in charge of the dance floor, and so he did the music, and he turned up the music so loud that even though I was like in my own home, I like my skin was crawling, and I like a lot of people started hanging out in the pantry. So I was a pantry person. I was I was just in the pantry having a full conversation while people like looked through my cabinet.

0:58Emma She has a very large pantry, though. For the record, it's not like a tiny, tiny, tiny closet. It's like still like a room, like a small room. Elsie Yeah, it's like the size of an apartment's kitchen. Emma You can turn around in it, like it's you know. Elsie But yeah, just like drunk people looking through my cabinets, laughing about things. It was great. It was fun. Emma I have these little earplugs that I wear when I go to the gym, or like if if I'm just needing, if I'm an environment where I'm getting stressed because the noise, I'm a little bit of a like a noise bothers me person. So I would just pop those in before I would go to the dance floor every single time when my friends saw me doing it because I love dancing. But I was like, this is too loud for me. But all my friends are having fun, so I'm just gonna put in my little earbuds. Yeah, and I had my hair down so no one could see it anyway. And this dance, I could still hear the music, but it was just a little bit deadened for me.

1:15Elsie Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, thank you for those compliments. Okay. So I think the best party. I feel like I've thrown a lot of good parties, but the best party recently is our daughter Nova. Turned 11 in June, and we threw a Survivor theme. So the TV show Survivor themed birthday party. Emma This is what she wanted. Elsie Is this is what she asked for? She loves Survivor. It's what she watches with her dad. It's their special thing. She and she's obsessed with Jeff, and so we constantly do Jeff's like quotes in our family, like worth playing for. We do that all the time, like constantly. So that's kind of our our life. And so anyway, we threw a survivor birthday party, and I would just did the the invitations, which I got one from Pinterest that was like a survivor birthday party template, and then I just customized it and sent it out on my text messages. Easy, I did the decorations and I did like the food and stuff. So we had these little drinks with sharks in them that were really just blue Kool Aid and some things like that, and then lots of like palm trees, and there was like grass skirt around the island, and Jeremy did the the amazing part, which was

1:30the challenges, and he did it. He did spend like I think a full like four days on it, setting up for it, shopping, doing all. So they, but he did. He divided them into two teams. They had the buffs, which is like the little scarves from the TV show, and he, yeah, gave them these challenges, and they had kind of all the challenges from the show. So they had speed challenges like obstacle course. They had endurance. They had this one where the top of the tree house there was two ropes with two buckets, and the kids had to like run and get water from another location and put them in the buckets and go back and forth and see who could like get it the fullest. And then they had a water balloon fight, and then they had a survivor auction, which like I I've watched survivors in my family, but this is not my thing.

1:39Emma I don't watch survivors so I'm like, go ahead, explain. Elsie So what it is is they. have money. I get. I don't know. I don't know how they show how they get money, but they have like they each have money, and the kids had like fake dollar bills. So that's how we did it. And so some of the items he would like show the real item and be like, this is like stuff that little kids like. So he would be like who wants to bid for these like hot Cheetos or you know cookies or things like that, and then there would also be blind items that they got to bid for, and those ones would be either really good or really bad. So some of them were like cat food and like things like that. So the kids obviously thought that was the greatest thing ever because some of them got really funny prizes, and it was mostly just like fun stuff from the Asian grocery stores and yeah, like whatever funny groceries.

1:50Final thing, okay. And then the final thing was that he let the kids crush pies into his face. Yep, and I have video. Emma Yeah, my kids went to watch videos on my phone, you know, and that is a that is a showstopper. That one they request a lot. They're like, Uncle Jeremy, Uncle Jeremy, because it's one where he's getting a pie in his face. It's basically whipped cream, but yes. Elsie It was just pie pans filled with whipped cream. Yeah, but yeah, it was a very joyful party. I think it was. It will definitely be a core memory of her childhood, and she's kind of at that perfect age where she was very proud of it, and her friends, you know, being into it, and it was just-it was really fun. So, but a lot of effort, and kid birthday parties are way more work than they look like, and I think everyone should just know that going into it.

2:02Emma There's different levels you could do it too, but yeah, they definitely are. Elsie Yeah. So okay, let's talk about adult parties. What we kind of already did. We talked about like our adult parties. Like I have some different adult parties. A little. Oh, tell. I'm sorry. So tell me your best party that you've ever thrown, and then I'll tell you my opinion of your best party. No, okay. I don't. Yeah, I don't know what my best party has ever thrown. So I think I'm a little bit like high low is how I think of it. Oh yeah, I'm either like doing like a pretty out there party, or I'm just doing like a very casual thing. So I think that's the Missouri in us. I guess so. So my highs is for many years, and this was mostly before I had kids. Every Valentine's Day, I would do a wine pairing dinner with my friends.

2:12Emma This was just something where I would like kind of prep the menu for days in advance, and I'd make some of the menu ahead of time if I could. It depended, and then I would be cooking throughout the party, and we would have wine pairing with each with each course, and it was like five courses. I want to say I really don't remember. I didn't tape any of the menus, but and at these parties, I would do all the cooking, I would buy all the food, but then I would have guests bring a wine, and I would either pick the wine to pair, or I would just tell them, "Here's the course." Go to the wine center, or you know, somewhere where there's going to be someone who can help you, or look it up online, whatever. But find a wine that pairs with steak or whatever the course was, and then each guest would bring like a wine for the course, and we would also do it. This is from my sister in law, by the way. She does these, and they're very epic. And I just copy her, and I make a menu ahead of time. That's at everyone's table setting, and at each course, people read off what we're going to eat and what the wine pairing is. So,

2:24like, and it'll have like the wine description, like from the back of the bottle or from the website or whatever. And it's super fun. It's very adult party. Obviously, this wasn't what we did with kids. We did do a Christmas Eve one time though. Penny was there, and I gave her kid wine. It was even like in a little glass. She was old enough to have a glass. Elsie We always have the kid wine. I I usually drink it too. Emma It's great. Yeah, it's pretty good. So yeah, those are really really fun, and I love cooking and I love hosting, and I'll definitely be doing these again someday. But they take a lot of work, and so I kind of have to have like time in the kitchen by myself, and I still have that at the moment with my kids' age, but I will eventually. I have an idea where I'd really like to do kind of like a sushi making Valentine's at some point with my my some friends. I just think it'd be fun. Do sake, be fun. Anyway, and then my low, as far as like casual party, but they're super fun, is at least once or twice a year, I have a clothing exchange that I host, and it's just my friends from book club, and then a few other friends who I usually invite. You

2:38clean out your closet. I'm cleaning out my closet like all the time, but I just save my very best things if I'm about to clean it out, and I take it to the clothing exchange, and it's just exactly what you think. It's a clothing exchange, and then on in the kitchen, I usually have like a big charcuterie, and I usually tell people I'm going to have one or two wines. Bring more if you want. So it's not like I'm buying tons and tons of stuff, but people bring things. Sometimes people bring other snacks and stuff too. But it's just big charcuterie board, chips, couple wines, lots of sparkling water. It's very casual, but it's really fun, and we kind of go in rounds. So there'll be like two groups, and one group will go shopping in the shopping area where we put all the clothes out, and then one group will stay in the snack chat area, and we'll switch, and we'll kind of do that like it's timed. And then after a while, it's a free for all, and we're just kind of hanging out and chatting. And I just think it's a really fun thing to do, and it's also like there is sort of a built-in activity. So there's been a few times I've invited a friend who like doesn't know everyone quite as

2:49well, but I thought they would enjoy it. And it kind of is like you're talking to people, but then you're also kind of doing an activity. You're you're looking through clothes, you know. So it's fun, and it's a good way to clean out your closet too. Elsie Yeah. No, I love it. Okay, I was actually gonna say your wine pairing party. So you said the same thing I was gonna say. Those are so fun, and also we did once a wine ranking party. Oh yeah, we voted like, and it was I was kind of it was for our blog. It was a long time ago, but it was like you. She had all these sort of like affordable grocery store wines, and then we all rang to them and decided like which ones were the best. And I think that kind of thing is so much fun.

2:58Emma Yeah, it was super fun. I love ranking. Yeah, that's fun. Still on the topic of adult parties, we kind of talked about how we rotate New Year's Eve parties among a few of us, and this year, a friend of ours is getting married on New Year's Eve, so that's going to be different and fun. But anyway, the year I hosted a New Year's Eve party, here's kind of three funny things. So one, I definitely do the confetti guns like you, and it's a huge mess, and I think it's worth it. I'm for it, but I'm also not very Type A about my house. I'm my house is always clean enough is how I would describe it. Yeah, but it's not perfect. I don't think either one of us is type A. Yeah, I think we're pretty whatever. The other thing I really like to do if I'm the hosting New Year's Eve is right after midnight, after you have the moment of confetti guns and whatever, and if you you do champagne flutes, I think it's really cool to also have a non-alcoholic champagne. I also think when you have wine, it's really nice to also have a non-alcoholic wine. And we've talked about kid wine, which is kind of like sparkling grapefruit juice.

3:10Elsie Yeah. Emma They also make wines that are just non-alcoholic, and I don't know they would be safe for a kid to drink, but they're not really things that I think a kid would necessarily enjoy it. Elsie No, we get like the grape juice ones, and those are what our kids like. Emma It's kinda two different things. Yeah, and I, I think it's really good, basically, if you're hosting a big group, to have a non-alcoholic something available. You never know if someone's early pregnant. You never know if someone's taking a break. You probably know if you have a sober friend, but also maybe they're dating someone who's sober, and you don't know. Be like, you know. So it's always good to just have something available.

3:23Elsie We did our drink fridge as non-alcoholic this past year, and it was really easy to do. And it like it made me feel because we had like a bar, and we had you know like there was a lot of alcohol in the home, but like the drink fridge was sort of like the place. For and I, I felt like it was special because also I noticed that all the sober people really liked like the canned mocktails are they're really good now and you can any kind of wine store you can find like a ton of canned mocktails and things like that and they're just like cute and they're fun to try so I feel like that's like a nice treat for sober people, so they don't feel left out, or and they feel special.

3:31Emma Yeah, and there's a lot of really good non-alcoholic beers too. I'm not a big beer drinker, alcohol or non-alcohol, but I've heard from my friends that there's a lot of good beer ones too. So there's that too. Anyway, but the thing I was going to say about New Year's Eve parties is I think it's very cool to do some kind of snack hour, yeah, shortly after midnight. So I think you did Jimmy John sandwiches, which is like Subway sandwiches. Elsie We got like they have these like party trays of Jimmy John's, and I was so proud. I was just like carrying them around, trying to give everyone Jimmy John's, and it is kind of also like a little bit of a like an invitation for them to leave, or for them to start like getting ready to leave.

3:41Emma It's at least like a signal of the final thing. The party's moving on to the next phase. I personally am very very classy, and I did pizza pockets. Yes, so just you know, oven baked pizza pockets, and my thing. A couple of my friends have roasted me about this over the years, and they're correct, but I also think it's funny. The year that I hosted and I made my pizza pocket shortly after midnight, and we ate them, and everybody's still dancing and having good time. It was about one a.m. and I was just done. I was tired, and I went upstairs and I went to bed, and people still stayed at my house until like two or 230. Yeah, my husband's a little more like he'll stay up as long as you want to stay up. He's that type. And I just went to bed, and my friends still bring it up. They're like, "Remember that New Year's Eve where you hosted, and then you just went to bed and started. Wait, I'm like, "Yeah, and I turned on my sound machine and I just went to sleep. Sure, I was tired. That's what Jeremy did too.

3:52Elsie Yeah, that's fine. You always do when you host a party. You always do have like a small group of people who won't leave, and that's just like that's your job as that's your duty as the hostess. Emma Yeah, and I'm like, you can roast me for going to bed, or I could roast you for staying at my house too late. But I think we're both good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both are sign of a good party. So anyway, I think that's all I have on adult parties though. Okay, of anything else?

3:59Elsie Well, let's move on to kid parties. So we mostly do kids' birthday parties, but I want to do more. So okay, let's talk about Thanksgiving too a little bit because that's fun. I feel like that's like a kid, yeah, family and maybe Christmas. Okay, so yeah, kids' birthday parties we already kind of touched on. I feel like there's two routes to go. Either you can have it at a place where you know, like the types of place where you can rent a room, the skate place, the jump place, the you know, there's all kinds of like gymnastics. Those are the easy parties. So if you want to make it easier on yourself, more affordable, do that. But if you want to make it like two weeks of hard work and probably like hundreds or maybe 1000s more dollars, then have it at your house. And we, but I like I like to have one at my house. So, a couple of the fun things that we've done. So I talked about the survivor one when they were little. I always did like themes that were like the movie they were into, and that was really fun. And then this past year for January, our daughter Marigold won. She she has Emma and her both have their January

4:11birthdays, so there are Aquarius people in the family, and January is just like an unfortunate month to have a birthday because at least where we live, her birthday did get snowed out and it had to be rescheduled. So I think it ended up being in February. Emma Yeah, it was like on Valentine's Day or the day before. Elsie Yeah, but that's fine. So we found this mobile beauty truck on Facebook Marketplace. So Facebook Marketplace, I feel like it just has a little bit of everything. I somehow got locked out of Facebook, but my husband still like he like is a little addicted to Facebook Marketplace. So he found this truck, and it was called Sparkle and Beauty, and you can rent it out for I think two hours, and they just drive up to your house, and then they had this like pink carpet, and they had the little like I don't know what you call it, but the little velvet rope things, yeah, like they have like at a movie premiere, yeah, they had that, and then so the kids like walk up this like pink carpet into the thing, and then inside of the truck they had cameras and they gave me an iPad so I could stay in the house and watch from there, which was I

4:25thought really nice. Emma That's really nice. Elsie And convenient. And it was just kind of cramped. Yeah, it was just kind of it. It was a the size of like a van, like a conversion van size. So it wasn't really that big, and. Then they had it fitted out on the inside, where each side was a little row of seats, and then they had the kids sit there, and they went between doing manicures, pedicures, and hairstyles, and the hairstyles were kind of like clippings, bright colored clip-ins, and then they had these like face jewels, and then they had a TV screen where they were playing Taylor Swift music videos the entire time, so it was just like a perfect kid.

4:35Emma It was so cute. I wasn't there. I saw the pictures, but I was like, "Should we do this as our next career? Should we get a van? This is incredible! I love it! Like, so cute! I was dying. Elsie It was really cute. And then they came to get me when the kids were getting off the bus, and they kind of did like a fashion show down the carpet, and so I took their videos and took their pictures, and then they came in and did cake, and that was the whole party. So it was so easy. It was actually pretty affordable too, and it was really cute. So anyway, I think just trying to like find things that work for your time of year is you know like is a big part of it though.

4:44Emma Yes, because I have two boys and their birthdays in the summer, so it's kind of a like one. It's like as they get bigger, it'll be like schools just gotten out, and then their parties will happen. So I'll have to like make sure I figure out. I make sure I can contact these friends. How am I gonna? So I'm thinking about that for the future. But anyway, for now, this year what we did for Oscar was a birthday at the park at one of his favorite public parks, and you can rent out the pavilion. It's extremely affordable. It's more just like they. I think they have you do it so that not multiple parties are trying to happen at the same time.

4:51So it's extremely affordable, and the only like risky run with that is if it was bad weather. And we got lucky where it was like rainy, and it did start to rain right as the party was over, like pouring. But it actually wasn't during the party, and that was great. So one little tip I'll say about parties for kids, and this is my own personal preference, but I like to put on the invite no gifts for friend parties. I really like to do no gifts because you know I've been to parties where I bring a gift for someone else's kid, and the thing is I don't really know their kid, and my kids they're young enough that like they don't totally know anything that they you know they're not helpful. If you're like, what does your friend like? They're like they just list things they like, and so I just think like you can end up with a lot of random stuff. So I think gifts are better for family parties, and we do a family party. It's a good time for the grandmas to give things, if you know whatever. And we do our own like birthday morning with our kids where we give them presents from my husband and I. So I like to do a friend party as a no gift party.

5:02Elsie Does it work though? Like, do people still bring gifts? Because I tried that before and it didn't work. Emma I put it on the invite and at this last party, we only had one person who brought a gift. Elsie Oh wow! Emma And oh wait, two. Okay, and there was probably like 15 people there. Elsie Well, that's pretty good. Emma So pretty good. And I think one of them he didn't receive the invite. He just got a text from Trey, and so I don't think he got a chance to see it. And then the other person, I think they maybe just didn't see it or whatever, and that's totally fine. But we didn't open the gifts while we were at the park because yeah, you know. Anyway, but I like that because I also just we have a ton of toys at our house. We give our kids toys all the time. I talked in the last episode about how I do an activity most days with my kid. I don't like though a lot of random plastic in my house though. I much prefer to manage the mess because I think it actually is helpful to playtime. So I don't really want tons and tons of extra stuff that really like their other kids' parents don't know what to buy my kids anyway. They don't know that you

5:21know, so I just always put no gifts. I think that's the way to go personally, and I always appreciate when I see it on another person's thing. So anyway, so for me, a party is like we're gonna do cake. If it's a time of day where we do a meal, then we're gonna do pizza or some kind of meal. Otherwise, I'll just have a whole bunch of snacks, and I'll make sure there's lots of water. And then we do some kind of activity that can either be built in, like if you go to a jump place or you go to gymnasium or whatever, then it's built in for you. But for us at the park, obviously, there's the playing at the park, the play equipment, and I have kids where that is perfect for their age. They love playing on play equipment and swinging on the swings and all that. But I also did a. It was a pirate theme, so I did a treasure hunt.

5:29Cute. So my husband helped me. I don't know how to use AI very well, but so he made the treasure map using AI. I don't know how he did it. Oh no! I guess you could just type these things in. I don't know. Who gives extremely out of touch? Okay, so and I'm revealing myself now. Anyway, he made the treasure map. I told him where the treasure would be at the park, and they had to find it. And I had just wrapped it in plain brown paper, and it had a big painted red X on it. You know, X marks the spot. You get it, pirates. The kids had the map. They. Went to find the treasure. They got a little bit of help. They didn't quite find it on their own, but you know they basically did. We did a little warmer, cooler situation.

5:36They got there, and what it was was just a giant box of sidewalk chalk. There was a lot of sidewalks at the park, so they lots of them like made all these different obstacle courses and things like that. And then there was also one of those big fabric parachutes where kids will-if you remember back in my day in PE class-they would get out the parachute. Elsie It's the best day of elementary school for everyone. Emma It was pretty fun, and you just kind of like wave it. Everybody's around in a circle, and you wave it. Kids can run underneath and switch places, and that really only lasted for maybe maybe five to eight minutes. And then the sidewalk chalk lasted though for most of the party, cute, and so that was really fun and gave it like here's something to do. And then there's also a playground, and we're gonna eat these cupcakes, and that's that. So I also think, depending on the age of your kid, but I think two hours is the right amount of time because I don't know about you, but I've been to a lot of kids' parties where like I don't really know anyone, and I am happy to talk to lots of other parents I don't know or family

5:50members, the grandparents. I'll talk. That's fine, no problem for me. But I'm also like, I don't. This doesn't need to be four hours. Like we could just, yeah, two hours. Two hours is a good amount of time, in my opinion. Totally super fun, and you're going to avoid any big meltdowns or fights. Hopefully, yeah, keep it in the fun zone. Elsie No, I think that that that that is that's great. I think these have been like a lot of fun ideas. Let's see.

5:56Before we move on, I wanted to like touch on Christmas and Thanksgiving because we do like big family dinner, and I think one of the cute things you can do for that is like a kids table with kids stuff, you know, on it. You know, their own type of drink. I think one time we did like the Harry Potter pumpkin juice, yeah, for Thanksgiving, and that was fun. We have recipes like that on our blog, abeautifulmess.com, like a million of them. Emma My sister in law made butter beer when you're oh your Thanksgiving, which was adorable.

6:03Elsie Butter beer is a good one. It's on there. Emma I was drinking it. It was great. Elsie Yeah, we have this Grinch Punch that's like bright green and it has ice cream in it. That's cute. So yeah, I think for kids parties, the thing that I like to do now that our youngest is eight is that she can set the table and she can like sort of like make the stuff because she likes she likes helping so that like she like gives her her own thing that she can do, um which is really fun. Okay, well let's do one more thing. Let's do impromptu parties because I think impromptu is one of the hardest things to be good at. So, okay, for an impromptu party, so let's say like it's midday. Like usually, you have like one or two hours to get ready. So you probably first of all you have to clean up your house, like however severe that is. But I would just do like a 30 minute, like just best you can do in 30 minutes is good enough. That's what kind of thing.

6:17Emma Light a few candles after that, and be like, this is it. Elsie Yeah, and then I would just go with like one good appetizer, like a cheese board or something like that, and then one special drink. And then if you want to put like wine, like white and red wine, that's a bonus. You know what I mean, but yeah, I think that's enough, and I think that like you play a little bit of music in the background, and also I think one of the biggest hosting tips ever is to not let yourself be stressed where it ruins it for you, you know, because also it also ruins the vibe for other people, when they can tell you're stressed, like it's just not-it's a mood killer. So the most important thing is that you don't care too much. And Emma and I have had like all these funny things happen, like terrible things happen at parties, where like like this year at Thanksgiving, our turkey was frozen and we didn't know it was frozen. Oh yeah, forget about it. On the day of, it still worked out, and it was fine. Yeah, that was epic. I remember I had this like dinner, this like fancy dinner I made for friends, and the next morning I

6:30realized that the potato, the twice baked potatoes that I made, were still in the oven, like that. I never even took them out. Yeah, I just left. I guess I left them in there to stay warm or something, and then I just forgot that they existed. Emma You're like, the oven's on. Turn it off. Oh well. And the next morning, you're like, wait a second, these are just here. Elsie Like, but it's like whatever. And like things get broken. Things, you know, like things spill. Whatever. Like I think that like just having a good time is the thing people remember, like the vibe and the mood and the conversations. I think if you have like one interesting like conversation starter question that everyone answers, that is pretty good. Like you can get pretty far with that.

6:41Emma Yeah, just ask about some some kind of memory that like you all would share. Like, what was it like when you grow? Doing high schooler, I don't anything. You can be anything, especially if your group is like very, very mixed. Then just like something everyone could have an opinion on, avoid politics or religion. I would. I don't really see the point, but you know, if if you're specifically like your friend group is like into that, then great, that's great. But you know, otherwise, if it's very mixed, it's like you never know what's going to happen.

6:48Elsie Just do it on Thanksgiving; it'll be fine. Emma Yeah, that's the time to do it. Yep. Elsie Okay. Well, that was fun. I hope that was helpful. If you're hosting, I mean, everyone's hosting at some points, but just like do the most, do the least, but just have fun. Okay, so let's move on to the hot take. Do you want to read it? This one's really funny to me. Emma This hot take comes from Megan, and she says Dr. Seuss books suck. Okay, maybe they don't all suck, but some books are just pages and pages of tongue twisters and gibberish that my logical brain finds rather annoying to read. Don't get me wrong; I typically like strange and silly books, but something about Doctor Seuss stories and illustrations just irk me. After spending a busy and tiring day with my two sons, who are both under five, the last book I want to read at bedtime is Fox and Socks. Ha ha! I understand that they may be great starter books for new readers, but they are not enjoyable for this gal, Megan. I'm with you.

7:04Elsie I'm also going to give a soft agree. I I never really read that many Dr. Seuss books to my kids, but I will say I do enjoy rhyming books. I do enjoy rhyming books. I think that Dr. Seuss little book might be like excessively rhyming, but some of our very favorite books were rhyming books. Emma I could recite Little Blue Truck for you right now, the entire thing, and I don't have it in front of me. Elsie Llama Llama. We had we had so many fun eras. Yeah, Doctor Seuss. We never we never really got that deep into it, so I'm not really sure that I have like a strong, big opinion about it. But I will say that from some of the writing classes I've taken, anytime that it gets into children's books, which it doesn't usually, but like anytime it does, they always say don't write rhyming books anymore. Like if you're pitching a children's book in 2026 as a person doing it for the first time, rhyming books are kind of not cool, not not the thing to do anymore, which I think is interesting. So it might mean that like the market has enough of that already. That was kind of how I took it, and yeah, because like a lot of the most

7:18famous, you know, classic books are rhyming books, but it's like maybe there's enough of them already in the world. But I, I don't know. I still like them though. Yeah, the wonderful is it called the wonderful things we will do. Yeah, that was my favorite. Emma That's what I would say. I like have a couple Doctor Seuss books that I like. Most the other ones I really don't like. We have the Oobleck book, and I actually really hate reading that one. It's like I don't know that you know what the Ubleck book is generally. No, it's like Bartholomew, and he has this crazy king, and the king's like a dumb. It's the Dr.

7:26Elsie It's a Seuss book? Emma Yeah, it's a Doctor Seuss book. Elsie I don't know it. Emma I bought it in part because you can also make Oobleck. It's like green slime, basically, but you could make it from household items. I think it's cornstarch and flour and water. I'm not really sure. You can Google it. Elsie It's on childhood magic. It's on childhoodmagic.com. Emma I've forgotten the recipe, but it's definitely on there. And anyway, it is fun to make with your kids. And so I was like, oh, let's read this book. And I was like, wow, this is long and just annoying to read. And I love to read to my kids. I read a lot to my kids, but no, I'm with Megan. I'm like, listen, reading's awesome.

7:42This book's no fun to read, but I do like. I think it's one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. We have that one. I don't know if that's the title, but that's how it starts at least. And I really like reading that one for some reason. And I think too, like I kind of remember that one from our childhood. So like the illustration, something in it kind of like gets me. It feels I feel a little nostalgia as we too. So I guess that one I like. I don't really like Green Eggs and Ham. I find that one kind of annoying too. They're also I don't know what the deal is with this. You could look it up, I'm sure. But some of the newer Dr. Seuss books seem to be written by someone else, it's like a mixture because we have this one that's like an ice cream truck one, and the rhyming in it is actually very good and not so much slant rhymes like you know classic Dr. Seuss, and that one's pretty fun to read too because it makes sense and there are things in it that you can recognize. There's so many made up things in some of the books that I think it can be kind of like. I think it's supposed to be whimsical, but it can feel. I think Megan feels this very

7:53tedious, and like kids are like, "What's that? And I'm like, "It's nothing. It's actually nothing. I can't answer your question because this this book is bull. Okay, so you. Yeah, yeah, but I also like some of them. I have my favorites, and then some of them I find very tedious, and I don't like reading them with the kids. But okay, luckily none of the tedious ones turned out to be favorites. Thank God. Elsie Well, the good thing I can say about Dr. Seuss is that when you go to Universal, because we, you know, the the Harry Potter world part is so busy. It's like a huge park with all these different categories, and every single person is just stuffed into the Harry Potter section. So the thing that we used the Dr. Seuss part, which was neighboring for, was to take breaks because there's no lines. There's no nothing. It's just empty, pretty much compared to the Harry Potter. And there's like little kids stuff. So our kids liked those rides. They were very like that, you know. And and the style of like the, you know, because they make it into like architecture. His illustration is cute. You know, it's very cute. It's sweet. So, um, so

8:05yeah, I think it's like a nice little. They probably won't keep that park forever, based on like how popular it looks. I don't know, maybe it won't. But I don't know. Maybe it's just for little kids. But yeah, it was a nice break, and we would go over there. Also, if we wanted to get food, you could like it's like short food lines, and just kind of. I like that your defense of Dr. Seuss's well, his park's not very popular, so it's nice, nice break. I well, it was also cute. It was also cute, and it is cute. The Harry Potter, because we we did an episode about this, so I don't have to get back all the way into it. But my biggest beef with the Harry Potter park is that they don't have anything for little kids and but in Doctor Seuss world, right next to it, it's only things for little kids. So it's like it's a thing to do.

8:13Emma Yeah. No, I agree. But I remember doing it anyway. Elsie But I just didn't really read the books that much, so I don't even know if we have any. Like I, it's like I don't know why I just like never bought them. Emma I actually think I got the one fish, two fish one at a thrift. I buy books a lot at thrifts for my kids, and I and I wipe them down real good. But anyway, I think it's kind of fun. Elsie Yeah. Emma I don't know. It's a thing I'm always like kind of looking for, and it ends up being very random. It feels kind of like going to the library where you're like, I'm just looking around, and there, who knows what'll be here? It'll be fun, you know.

8:27Elsie Yeah, love it. Okay, well, that was fun. Thank you. Send us your hot takes anytime. We love them. We're gonna keep doing it every week as long as you all keep sending them, and it's like a pretty popular part of our inbox right now. So I think we're gonna be going for the rest of the year. Okay, so let's toss it over to a joke or a fact with Nova. Hey Nova, what do you have for us this week? Nova A joke. Elsie A joke. Okay, I'm ready. Nova What do you call a fake noodle?

8:38Elsie Hmm, I don't know. Nova An imposta. Elsie 10 out of 10. Nova Have a good week. Emma Okay, before we go, here's an idea from Danielle. She says leading up to the start of every season, source listeners' personal seasonal traditions and share a few of them on podcast episodes. It could be a complement to your own bucket list and holiday tradition episodes, but a way to source new ideas and share sweet stories from from your listeners, and a way to get listener submitted content every season, like our annual ghost story episodes, so love this idea. So please go ahead and start though, so that we'll have them ahead of the seasons. So send us your personal seasonal traditions for Halloween, Thanksgiving. You could go ahead with Christmas if you want, but fall stuff, back to school.

8:54We're going to be recording those episodes. I mean, sooner than you think. It's probably in a few weeks tomorrow in my mind. So send them in. We would love to share a few of them with episodes. That sound like such a fun idea. I also love getting ideas from other parents and just people of like cool stuff to do. It's like oh yeah, simple awesome thing, great idea. I'm going to do that now. So send them in. We would love that. You can write us at podcast@abeautifulmess.com, and as always, we love you.

8:59We'll see you next week.