Episode #115: Money Dials and Buys that Spark Joy

Emma: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast. This week, we’re talking about money dials, what they are and what our money dials are. We are also going to be sharing some of the best things we’ve bought in our thirties. These are the purchases that have sparked a lot of joy for us. And at the end of the episode, we’re bringing back a segment that we don’t do all that often. It’s called Ninety Nine Problems.

Elsie: Nice. I’m excited about this episode.

Emma: Yeah, it’s a little bit different. So I did a little Q&A on my personal Instagram now quite a while ago and one person was asking me about money dials. This is a thing that our friend, friend of the pod, Ramit talks about in his book and in his brand. His book is called I Will Teach You to Be Rich and he also has online courses and Elsie and I are just big fans. We are fangirls. We love what he does. We love all his advice.

Elsie: It really did change my life. So if you’re at a point in your life where you’re like I need to, quote unquote, get my money in order or it’s making me feel anxious or it’s making me feel stressed or sad or bad or any of those things, I would definitely recommend his book because it helped me so much. Now my relationship with money is very chill and it feels great. Got rid of the guilt. 

Emma: I like that a lot. He could better explain money dials but I think of them as areas like things that you like to spend money on. So when you can, you can turn them up and when needed, you could turn them down because that’s one thing he talks about. When you’re designing your own rich life is you should spend money on the things that make you really happy and ruthlessly cut costs in other areas. You can be totally cheap in other areas that don’t matter as much to you.

Elsie: The first time Ramit came on our podcast, he asked me the question, he was like, what’s the one thing in your life that if you could spend three times more or four times more, the joy, the appreciation for it would go up with the spend. That’s how I figured out what mine is and hopefully with me just saying that right now you’re thinking of what yours would be. It is a fun thought experiment and something that can bring a lot of joy and money freedom to life too. So do you want to share your money dials then?

Emma: Yeah. So mine are, I just picked three and I mean I think these can change over your lifetime, and the level at which you can do them changes and all of that. But anyway, mine are travel, so traveling. I like to see new places and I also like to go to the same place more than once. But I love photography and I mostly photograph food in my job, a little bit crafts and decor, but mostly things you see on our blog so a lot of food. So when I travel, I love to take pictures of landscapes or interesting buildings or it’s just something I really enjoy when I travel. So travel, personal home, that would be my second money dial, which obviously we all, whether you rent or own a home, we all like to care about our home. We have to live somewhere. Everybody lives somewhere. But I really love decorating and love looking at houses and thinking about houses. It’s definitely an area that means a lot to me, which you could probably guess from the subject of this podcast. But yeah, so personal home, and then my third one is skincare, kind of beauty, kind of self-care. That’s what I think of it, as this is one that’s really blossomed in my thirties because I didn’t care as much about it in my twenties. But now I literally like right now, show Elsie, you guys can’t see it who’s listening, but I brought my whole box of what Trey calls my creams, and it’s all just skincare and serums and moisturizers. It’s just I love to try new things and spend money on it when I can. So those are my money dials.

Elsie: So many people can relate to that, like taking good care of your skin is, I think it’s the best feeling.

Emma: It feels so good. Yeah, like just get it really clean or exfoliate or use a new mask. I don’t know. It’s just really fun. Anyway, so what are your money dials?

Elsie: Hell yeah. Ok, so for me, I really mainly just have one, which is my home, which I, as everyone knows, go crazy on and I did turn it up to a four or whatever. Other than that, I have a lot of stuff where it’s like making memories with my family and that can mean different things. It could mean traveling like right now it doesn’t really. We’re doing other things that, to me, mean just as much. So I didn’t want to put travel because it’s just complicated right now but I know that it will be in the future. But yeah, making memories in one way or another, like this year it’s definitely our pink house and another year it might be going on a trip to Japan, hopefully. 

Emma: So as I mentioned, one of my money dials is travel, so I thought I would just say a couple of some of my favorite trips from the last years. As Elsie mentioned, I haven’t been traveling lately because of COVID and also I just had a son. I have a three month old so that kind of changes your perspective on it a little bit. But I do love traveling and I very much plan to get back to it when I can. Anyway, here’s three places that I went that were really fun. One was Iceland. I’ve been there twice and the second time I went was with a group of friends and that was just really fun to spend time with friends. The first time I went with was Elsie and Jeremy. But I just think Iceland’s beautiful and so interesting and I love taking pictures of landscapes and things like that. So love Iceland on that same wavelength or whatever. I also really loved Norway. I got to go there a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago at this point, and it’s beautiful and I can’t wait to go back and explore some other areas of that country because it’s so cool. Then another special trip that I got to go on some years ago was China. I went with the Larsen family as they adopted Marigold and it was wonderful. I mean, we didn’t do tons of touristy stuff. We did go to the Great Wall. That was really fun but mostly I was so grateful to be able to spend the money to go on this trip to see my niece become adopted. It means a lot to me to as Ramit would say, I was living my rich life because I got to spend my money on something that was so special and I will always cherish that trip. But it was also really fun to go to China. I’d never been to a country like that and so it was very interesting. I felt like I got a much broader perspective on that part of the world. So that was also cool.

Elsie: Every time I look back at pictures from China, I just can’t believe that you came with us and it means so much. I know that at the end of our lives, it’ll be one of the really meaningful things so I’m glad you’re there. Emma was with me when we saw Marigold smile for the first time in our hotel so it’s really, really special. Don’t make me cry.

Emma: Yeah, it was the best. That is the rich life right there.

Elsie: So I love all of that. That’s really inspiring. So when Ramit asked me that question about a year and a half ago, what would you do if you could up this one spend in your life home stuff? I immediately had all these visualizations in my mind of what I would do. Honestly, it was like moved to this house where we live now because at the time I had seen the house but I hadn’t admitted it to my husband. It was this whole thing and if you guys want to hear that full story, it’s in the episode, Oops, I’m Moving Again and I will link it in the show notes. It’s kind of a tale as old as time by this point and I can’t repeat it again. So when we bought this house, I knew it was my version of living my rich life because what I want more than anything in the world is a project like a big, inspiring, exciting possibilities, rooms that need to be renovated, rooms with no personality that are crying out for help, things like that. I really felt like I got that when we found this house and the layout is basically perfect but everything else about it wasn’t. It was just a really good possibility for me. So anyway, my money dial for sure is house stuff and it’s the one thing in my life that I don’t, like I would feel kind of guilty if I just bought a bunch of really expensive clothes that I don’t really need, just because I know I don’t really need them. It’s not a part of my value system. It’s not really a money dial for me. I actually really like affordable clothes. But anyway, I would never feel guilty though, if I buy something that I’ve been dreaming about for a year from Serena and Lilly, which is kind of expensive and fancy. But it’s different because it’s the thing I picked to be important to me and it’s been really rewarding. We’ve only just started renovating this home but the two rooms that I feel are really reflective of where I want to go are the room where I’m sitting right now, which is my husband’s office and a music studio room. My office just both feel so cozy and got the vibe. The home is definitely where the money is for me.

Emma: I get it. I get it. Yeah, a personal home is on my money dial list too and I love the home we’re in right now because I love the neighborhood. I love the home but I really love the neighborhood. I think one thing I’m realizing is there’s two big components to a personal home to me other than decor like a couch that I love or a rug that I love because I feel that’s what you think of when you think of money dials and homes and those are important. I love couches, I love rugs but what I really think is important to me is one, great natural light so I can do my work. I work from home, but then to have some kind of sense of community surrounded with your personal home. So the house I’m in right now, I go on walks a lot and very often I run into a friend because I just have a few friends who live in the neighborhood. A lot of times they’re out with their kids on their scooters and Trey and I will run into them while we’re pushing Oscar and his stroller or we’ll go to the coffee shop nearby or we’ll walk with some friends outside to one of the little restaurants that’s nearby, things like that. I think I just love that aspect of it. One thing that I’m kind of dreaming on for one day that I would love to spend money on that I’d love to have for my rich life one day is, well, two things. One dream is I really want to live close enough to an elementary school or a library or something where Oscar and I can walk there. I would love to walk him to kindergarten. This is kind of a dream of mine. I don’t know if it’ll happen, because boy, does that limit your house search but I just have it in my mind. It’s something like that. So that and then the other thing is I’d love to have a better outdoor space. I’d really love a pool one day. My idea is, so I have these friends, their parents have a pool at their house and all the time my friends and their group of friends are hanging out at this pool, which is their parents’ house. In my mind, I’m like one day that could be me. Oscar and his friends could hang out there or me and all my friends from my book club and their kids could come over and we all just swim together and hang out like I just would love to be the house where people come over to hang out. That’ll be amazing. I feel a pool would really attract people. So anyway, dare to dream. I don’t have a pool right now and I don’t know if I’ll get one but it’s just kind of a dream of mine.

Elsie: So, yeah, well, I know that you’re going to get one. I mean, how do you not know you’re going to get one? You are. Tell us about your skin stuff. I’m excited to hear about this.

Emma: Ok, so the reason I brought this box of skincare in here while I was recording today was I was just going to tell you everything that’s in it because and I will put this, this is more like, Yes, I’m going to tell it to you right now in the podcast. So if you just listen, you don’t want to look at the show notes, you’re still going to get the info. But this is one of those moments where it actually will be really beneficial if you go to our show notes. So and that’s at A Beautiful Mess dot com slash podcast. So if you go there, you can get links and like, really see everything I’m talking about, here’s my box

Elsie: That skincare. Hmm. I’ll tell you all it is bigger than you think.

Emma: All right. I’ll start with face masks. I only have two of those in this box. I have more, but I only have two. So one is this like brightening face mask. It is pumpkin and honey. It smells like pumpkin and it burns a little bit and it feels great. That’s my level on facemask. Does it burn a little bit? My second face mask is bloom effects, Dutch dirt masks. So this one is almost like a black color. When you put it on your face, it looks like dirt

Elsie: That when does it feel tingly or

Emma: Feels very,  its firming is what it feels like. Then it’s also a little bit grainy so it can be exfoliating depending on how you take it off but you can rub it off and it feels really nice. So those are two masks that I’m loving right now. Let’s do moisturizers. Yeah, so I have let me see here for moisturizers in a serum right now. So one is this Coco Kind Matcha Face Moisturizer. So this one’s literally green. When you put it on, it’s green and as you rub it in it, it’s not green anymore. So you could wear it during the day and it smells like matcha and it’s super moisturizing and I love it. I also just love that brand. They have a lot of great stuff. I also have One Love Skin Dew. This one kind of smells a little bit like coconut and it’s very light. you can wear under makeup. It feels really, really, really nice. This one I’ve bought multiple times. I love it.

Elsie: It. I love that one too.

Emma: The one I use at night all the time, Leahlani Bless Balm. If you’re only going to buy one moisturizer, this is the one. Love it so much. I love everything from her brand but this is the product that I buy over and over and over again. Then my last moisturizer is one that I’ve bought this many times and I’ve probably been using it the longest lush cosmetics and I don’t know how to pronounce it skin’s Shangri-La. I’ll link it because I don’t know how to pronounce it, but it’s really also very lightweight. You can wear it under makeup. It’s something I wear during the day. Then the serum I’m into right now is, I just got it and I actually really like it. It’s a Function of Beauty and they do the thing where you can take a quiz and you can get shampoo and conditioner or they now have added skincare stuff. And so I finally tried it and I really like it. It’s a serum so it’s kind of almost like oily. I do it at night and I’m really into it. It’s based on your skincare goals. I liked it. I got influenced by Keely, who’s a friend of ours, who does Lady Gang, and she has the SolaWave wand, which is like a red light therapy type wand. I have this renewed complex serum, so you put this on first and then you have this little stick that has a red light and you rub it all over your face and I’ve seen her do it on Instagram and she does it like pretty firm and I totally got influenced. I saw her doing it and she has amazing skin so I was like, I have to buy that. But it’s really like warms so if nothing else, it feels really nice. It’s just really warm and soothing. Then I also, I guess I should admit that all of my Instagram ads are skincare, like 90 percent. They really got my number. So I got this off of an Instagram ad and it’s called Muesli and it’s a treatment for melasma, which I have, which is like dark spots and it’s a hormonal thing and a lot of treatments for melasma, you can’t do while you’re nursing. I don’t know what the ingredient is but they just don’t let you do them while you’re nursing. This one, it’s called the spot cream, and they have two different versions their main version, which you aren’t supposed to do while you’re nursing and then they have a version that you can do if you’re breastfeeding or nursing, which I am right now. And so I just really appreciated that there was an option because I have melasma and I don’t love it and it got a little worse while I was pregnant. It’s a hormonal thing, and it’s not the end of the world, but I just wanted something that I could do right now while I’m still nursing my son. So anyway, I love this. I’ve been using it for almost two months now and I really like it. So highly recommend it. By the way, none of these are ads. I’m just telling you stuff that I like.

Elsie: Yeah, they can tell. They can tell.

Emma: Then the last thing, someone did send me in the mail, so I’ll say that but it’s not a sponsor or anything, but it’s called Bite. They do those toothpaste bits that you put it in your mouth. It looks like a tablet. So I have those and they’re cool but this is their whitening gel and I actually really like this whitening gel. It’s probably one of the best whitening gels I’ve ever used and you apply it with a tiny brush. I really like that because then you can avoid getting it all over your gums because it kind of burns a little bit so you can get it just on your teeth which is pretty much what I want. Yep, that’s it. The end. That’s everything in my skincare box, my creams box. I’m into it. Since I can’t travel. This is what I do now. I just do skincare.

Elsie: I know I feel like I want to hear people’s alternative money dials when it’s like Covid’s ruined one part of your life, which for many of us. It has not traveling being a main one. I’m OK with not traveling. The idea of doing it later though still makes me happy and brings me joy that there will be hopefully a time when we’re doing big, exciting trips again.

Emma: Don’t want to minimize how painful the last few years have been for anyone but I also think it has broadened my perspective and so one positive thing is I think I appreciate travel much more than I did before.

Elsie: Oh hell yeah, I appreciate everything more now. Have you hung out with friends? Like, it feels so good now. Yes, big time. Anything social is like a miracle now. Feels great

Emma: Gratitude level went up, up, up, up, up. So you know, there’s that. That’s the counterweight, the counterbalance to it all, I guess. Tell us some of the best buys from your thirties.

Elsie: I already said my McMansion. I think it’s OK that I call it a McMansion because that’s making fun of myself. It’s cute to make fun of yourself, right? Ok, but for real, all jokes aside, buying a house with a pool is probably the best money I ever spent and here’s why. So my kids, low vision, I think I’ve talked about this on the podcast once before but there’s like lots and lots of things that aren’t great for them. Any kind of sport with balls is just like, no, no, no.

Emma: Elsie’s daughters both have albinism. You said it really fast there so I just make sure people can hear it. They have really low vision. That’s part of it. Keep going.  feel like some people don’t know that, that that’s part of albino is low vision.

Elsie: Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. So when it comes to like kickball or something like that, those activities are not fun and our kids don’t feel included in them because it’s just something that they just can’t do because they just cannot see very far away especially in the bright sun. When we moved to a house with a swimming pool, we had kind of toyed with the idea for a long time of putting in a swimming pool or, you know, just an extra big hot tub that’s kind of like both or all the different ideas. We live in the South. I feel like it’s like the line of the south where it’s still kind of has Midwest weather though/ It’s definitely not the deep south. We definitely do not have warm weather year-round. So we have a hard four seasons here. When I thought about getting a swimming pool, I think I felt a little bit of like, what if we don’t use it enough? What if it’s wasted? There’s so many months of the year when it’s cold outside, but here’s my shining testimony of why it’s been great. We got a house with a pool and a hot tub together, that helps because we can absolutely use the hot tub 365 days a year. There’s never going to be a day even in an ice storm if you really want to you could go out and get in the hot tub, which is cool. Then also our swimming pool is heated, which really stretches the seasons. So we start swimming in around March and then we can probably swim until like November. So last year, we were swimming with no heater till October, I know for sure because we didn’t know how to use the heater yet. Remember when you came and visited, that was in October I think.

Emma: Yeah, I remember. It was chilly, but it was fine.

Elsie: It was a little bit cold but nothing you didn’t swim in when you were a little kid, right? So anyway, it’s just been so good for our kids’ self-esteem. They can both swim fully now and they’ve had their safety lessons. They can do like treading all these different things. They can both swim to the bottom. It’s something that they feel really, really good at and that their low vision doesn’t hold them back at all so that’s really special. I love that we can do it year-round. Like there’s a lot of homes in our area that have like a tennis court or something and like nothing against having a tennis court because I actually would be pretty interested in learning tennis but I just can’t imagine that anything would be as useful as what the swimming pool is for our specific family. So that and then I’ll put in a note for the fire table. So the fire table is such a good buy. We bought it at our last home and we moved it to this home and it even has like a little chip in it and like, don’t even care, who cares? The fire table’s so awesome because you can use that year-round as well. It’s actually better during the colder parts of the year. I probably wouldn’t use it that much during the summer, so it kind of stretches your outdoor space into something that’s good for the four seasons, which is cool. It’s just so much fun to go out there and make a couple s’mores. I can’t wait for the age when our kids start having friends over. I just feel like, yeah, the fire table, swimming pool and then my last one is the pizza oven. So we definitely did splurge on our pizza oven and the reason why is because I got so nervous and intimidated, like last Christmas, you know, I bought the one that wasn’t really a pizza oven and I kind of really messed up Christmas for my husband’s gift. He didn’t care. He was cool about it. But I was like, I’m going to make this up to you. I’m going to get us a really good pizza oven. So I just got one that our friends had because I knew it was good and I knew they loved it. I knew it made like restaurant quality brick-fired pizza. It’s called brick fire, wood fire. It’s with wood, yeah. So I knew that it can make restaurant quality wood fire pizza and a thing that I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet in our money dials is for me, house stuff that means a lot to me is like a sofa or like a really cool looking room where I can take a million photos and that’s meaningful to me and it makes me happy but for my husband, it’s actually like cooking stuff is his thing. He is like super super super into cooking. Like this past weekend, he made tacos with our grill and after he was done, he told me these tacos bring me more fulfillment than music ever could. Which is so cute. He just loves cooking and it’s like one hundred percent hobby for him. It’ll never ever be his business at all, which I’m jealous of that. I think it’s great to have that in your life and the older we get, the more we’ve come to value and treasure our hobbies. As we’ve been starting to barely verge on designing our kitchen, it’s very much his kitchen and like, I’m just living in it, you know what I mean? It’s like his functionally and the things that he has like special attention for Chinese food and Mexican food and pizza, obviously. I have my sugar cookies and I have like a few things where but for the most part, I’m like a Pinterest mom I really like making like deviled eggs and stuff. He likes, like cooking, like cooking recipes that take the whole day, where he starts in the morning and you have it for dinner. So we’re very different in those ways. Whenever we spend our money on something that makes cooking more fun, I feel really good about that just because it’s something that I know is a lifelong hobby for him and really meaningful.

Emma: I love that.

Elsie: That’s my buys that sparked joy.

Emma: We were bringing back the segment that we lovingly call ninety-nine problems, but don’t worry, it doesn’t actually have ninety-nine. It’s just small. Yeah, it’s one problem each. It’s just like a small thing, really. The idea is just like, I feel like we talk a lot about really how and that’s how we are. That’s really what we’re like, you can probably tell, but also we’re just trying to be really honest and transparent and sometimes there’s little things that are hard and so that’s what this segment is.

Elsie: Yeah. For the comments that we get that are like, can you show something real? Can you show something bad? Can you show something that’s not a glorified version of reality? This one’s for you. All right. You go first, Emma. Emma’s Is sad. Oh my god, OK.

Emma: Mine is a little sad. So as I’ve mentioned, and as you probably know, I have a three month old son, so that’s new in our life and we have a dog. His name is Steve, and he was a dog my husband adopted before we got married. So we’ve had him a long time. He’s nine years old, I guess because we’ve been married over eight years, something like that. So anyway, and he’s kind of a mix, when people ask what kind of dog he is, like his breed, I actually don’t really know, but he looks kind of like an American dingo. That’s like what he looks like.

Elsie: If you Google it that’s what he looks like.

Emma: Yes. Sometimes they call them Carolina dogs. Anyway, that’s Steve. He’s wonderful. He’s very sweet but he’s a very anxious dog. We always know when a storm is coming because he starts shaking and he’ll hide under my desk. He’s just a really anxious, anxious pup. Ever since we brought Oscar home, he has had a really hard time with it. It’s not that he doesn’t like Oscar or he acts weird around him. He doesn’t. He’s just been a lot more anxious and he especially is having a really hard time eating like he won’t really eat his food. He was a little bit of a picky eater before, but it’s gotten a lot worse since Oscar came home. The best thing we’ve figured out so far is we put these like freeze dried liver treats, they are like chicken liver or beef liver. I’m not actually sure but they’re freeze dried. We crumble those up and put that in his dog food and that helps.

Elsie: Sounds delicious

Emma: Most of the time that works but it’s still not a hundred percent. And yeah, he’s gotten kind of thin. We’ve tried a bunch of things. We can’t really get him to eat. And I don’t know if he’s understimulated because he’s not getting as much as much attention. I don’t know if he’s overstimulated because Oscar cries and I know Steve is a very anxious dog so maybe the noise is just kind of too much for him. I’m not 100 percent. So anyway, we’ve tried a bunch of things and we’ll try some more and he’s OK. We obviously can also go to our vet and work on some solutions there too but it’s just been kind of hard, like being a mom, motherhood has been amazing and I love it so much but that’s probably been the one thing that I’m like. I don’t know how to fix this. And if anyone does have a solution, the best way that you can let me know is by leaving a comment in the show notes of this blog post because it’ll just be faster for me to read them all. So if you’ve ever had this happen, if your dog stopped eating when you brought a baby home and you have a solution for me, please leave it in the comments.

Elsie: I bet there’s someone who has a good answer for you and I hope you can find something because that’s really sad. But yeah, Colin and I used to talk about this all the time how much our relationships with our dogs changed when we became parents. It’s a really common tricky thing for so many people so you’re not alone. 

Emma: It’s hard because I used to take Steve on walks every other day or most days and I found really quickly that I cannot take him and the stroller. It just doesn’t work. It’s too much.

Elsie: Ok, so my problem is really petty compared to him. I’m just going to admit that off the top. Mine is my Olive Garden floors. When I say olive garden floors, do you get a visualization in your mind? Do you already know what I’m saying?

Emma: Yeah, I do. But you better go into it for anyone who hasn’t had the wonderful chance to go to an olive garden. 

Elsie: If you haven’t already seen my flaws, they are beige travertine, I think is what it’s called so they’re just giant, I would say, probably like twenty-four by twenty-four inch beige tiles with kind of like a little bit of marbling. They are not the worst and I don’t like them and they’re a problem in my life. They’re kind of like the perfect situation, like problem in a house because have you ever had something in your house where you’re like, I don’t like it, I don’t love it. I would like something else and everyone it maybe including your spouse is like, but it’s nice, but it’s expensive. That’s kind of my situation with my floors and we have been brainstorming on it for more than a year now because we passed our one year mark last month of living in this home. We’ve lived here a while and we’ve been thinking the whole time about what kind of floors and it’s become a little bit of like now we’re letting people weigh in. Jeremy let Ting weigh in and say what he thought and he took my side, which is like, you know what I mean, kind of divides the playing field a little bit. It’s just been kind of a struggle, mainly because Jeremy loves that the house, ok, so we both love that our house is built around the pool and its kind of U-shaped. The kitchen kind of wraps her on one side and the guest room wraps around the other side. Then in the back the pools in the center. It’s the kind of house where when you walk through the front door you can see into the backyard, which is really cool. We love that. We love how open it is. We love that a lot of the year when it’s in the spring and the fall, you can leave the doors open with just the screen door all day long and you hear that nice like fountain pool noise. So there’s so many things about it that we love but it’s always going to be olive garden floors to me. They’re really hard to photograph and I will admit, like, I know it’s petty but that’s like a big part of my consideration is just that I don’t like specifically how they look in photos. I also think they’re really cold and they have heaters. They’re heated tile but you have to turn that on. It takes a long time to come on. There’s a lot of different like knobs everywhere. So my hope and Ting on my side too, is that maybe we’ll do wood floors because then we don’t have to redo the heating system. That’s what I want to look at and we can still do tile floors in the kitchen and breakfast nook area. Maybe even the entryway, I don’t know. In the living areas. I would really love wood. For Jeremy, the thing that bumps him out is just this, I think he had this vision that it was like we were going to have all the doors open and there were going to be kids running in and out, in and out and it’s didn’t matter how wet the floors got, you know, and you do kind of lose that. So anyway, that’s my problem, and I won’t lie like we haven’t really settled yet on what we’re doing so it’s either wood or it’s tile. Let’s say that and I think that glazed brick is so pretty. I’m thinking about using that on the floor in our powder room that we’re about to do. So I could maybe like feel that out but I feel like seeing it everywhere would just be too much small tile. It’s one of the trickiest design conundrums I’ve ever come up against. I mean, I thought about it for a full freaking year and I never thought of an idea that was different in this whole time. What would you do?

Emma: Wood.

Elsie: One more point for my team. I do think that that’s probably where it’s going because it’s sort of was Jeremy’s hill to die on and he softened up about it more recently. He really just wanted me to leave it tile and he even said it doesn’t have to be this tile but it has to be a tile. But then if we put in another tile, then you know, we have to get another tile heater system and I don’t know. I think maybe that’s not going to happen but I’m trying to think of something to give him as a trade-off maybe. If you have a creative solution either for a dog who stopped eating or a woman who doesn’t like her 90s olive garden tiles, leave them in our show notes today. We’re here to chat. We’re listening. This was a fun episode and very random.

Emma: Very random.

Elsie: Yeah, I kind of love it though. Ok, well, we’ll link to everything we talked about including Ramit’s book, all of Emma’s skincare. We’ll probably do like a college for that. So you can see it too and I’ll show you a picture of my tile.

Emma: Yes, they need to see it so they can weigh in and have their own opinion.

Elsie: Yeah. I was sensitive about it at first when we first moved in because I knew we couldn’t change it for a while but I will say I’m not sensitive about it at all anymore. I’ve said my piece, I’ve said what I want to do and even if we end up doing a different tile, we’re not going to keep this one so say whatever you want. I don’t care.

Emma: Do your worst internet.

Elsie: Do your worst. Oh no, don’t invite that. Ok?

Emma: Thanks so much for listening and thank you for your support. It means a lot when you share our show, we see it and tag us. We love to know what you think. So until next time.