This week, we are answering your questions all about Nova’s meditations, printing art, and publishing a book.
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Show Notes:
From Pauliene: I need to know everything about Nova’s guided meditations!
She listens to meditations on her Yoto Mini Players
She doesn’t plan them out
She just has a knack for it
From Marilyn: When you purchase your art on Etsy, where do you get your art printed?
At home with the IP 8720 Printer or Emma’s Printer Canon TS9521C
CVS
Walmart
Favorite paper to print on is the Luster paper
From Michelle: How do you make friends as an adult?
Join a book club
Be more intentional
Talk to other moms at your kid’s school
Volunteer
Take some classes
From Amanda Brink: Would Emma consider talking about self publishing a book?
Read On Writing By Stephen King
Get a designer to help you lay out your book and your cover. Emma worked with Kelsey Baldwin for her book’s interior and Mara Dockery for her cover.
Upload your book to Amazon and Ingram Spark
Market your book
Voicemail from Kate: Whatever came of the puppets you guys were going to have made of yourself?
They are in a box and need to be completed but we will be bringing them out soon.
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Episode 220 Transcript:
Emma: You’re listening to the Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen. This week we are answering all your questions about Nova’s meditations, printing art, and publishing a book. All sorts of listener questions.
Elsie: I love that Nova’s Meditations is like a question that we get to talk about that’s so funny. Yeah, I’m excited for this. This is like a fun, easygoing episode, and I love listener questions, so I love doing one of these every once in a while
Emma: I do too and I still read all of our podcast emails. If you’re emailing us at podcast@beautifulness.com, we read them. And we’ve gotten, like, people who’ve written books, children’s books, we order copies of them. A lot of people have been sharing recipes with us lately, ever since our episode about how our business has changed. People have been sending us, like, family recipes that they’re like, here’s a way I want to say thank you for all the content you’re making for me. I’m sending you my family recipe for gazpacho. They all sound so delicious. And everyone’s like, you can post them on your site if you like. It’s so sweet. Like, people are just being really sweet. So anyway, you’re all wonderful and we’re reading everything that you’re sending. And these are just a sampling of questions we’ve got. So yeah, this is fun.
Nova: Hello, this is Nova again. I just wanted to remind you that I’m still selling Girl Scout cookies. So if you want some Girl Scout cookies, you better pop on there and get them because I’m not selling them forever. Again, I hope you enjoy them. Thank you.
Elsie: Okay. So from Pauline. I need to know everything about Nova’s guided meditations. Does she prepare them or make them up on the spot? Where does she get the inspiration? Does she listen to or go to guided meditations herself? Her soft voice just fits it perfectly, and it’s so heartwarming to listen to. That is so sweet.
Emma: I wanted to know this too. I was glad that we put it on the list because I was like, I want to know a little more.
Elsie: That’s funny, you don’t even know.
Emma: Not really
Elsie: Okay. So, they have these little kids audiobook players called Yoto Mini Players. So we’ll link these in the show notes. I just tried to buy one the other day and they were sold out everywhere, so hopefully they’ll be back in stock by the time we have this episode up. So, what they are is a screenless, little square, small little square, audio player device.
Emma: They look cute in the room.
Elsie: Yeah, they’re cute. They have different colored little rubber covers you can put on them, and then they have cards that you can put into them. They have everything from, there are things like meditations, so she has listened, I think that’s where she got her meditation voice from. When I first started buying the cards, I think I got like, fairy meditations, mermaid meditations. It’s children’s themed little meditations, and there’s also like bedtime stories, there’s ones that have songs, and then they get pretty advanced. We have the Beverly Cleary books series and they have all the Ramona books, all the Henry books.
Emma: I feel like you said there was like, they had shakespeare.
Elsie: They had Shakespeare. She was like, I love King Leo. And I was like, oh my God. And she described to me the plot. She knew everything about it. And I was like, this child knows more about Shakespeare than I do.
Emma: She was like, Romeo and Juliet, that’s a bad one, mom. They just die.
Elsie: She said they just fall in love and die.
Emma: Best review ever.
Elsie: And she thought that Shakespeare was a children’s author because she had a Yoto card for it, which is amazing. But the thing I love about it is they will usually put, like, the whole original text. So they have, like, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and those are, like, very old books. And they’re pretty long. They’re maybe four or five hour long audiobooks. And the kids have listened to the whole thing. So they’re getting something out of it that’s so different from what you can get from reading books at their age and Marigold doesn’t even read yet. She’s working on it. I feel like it’s helped their vocabulary. It’s how they go to sleep at night. It’s entertainment. So we’ve taken them on airplanes with headphones. There’s just all kinds of benefits to it. I’m an enthusiast for them. And I just got, they have blank cards you can get to make your own cards from any audio book, so I’m working on that. And yeah, I think it’s just a wonderful thing. So anyway, she had listened to guided meditations from the Yoto Mini. And then honestly, I think she just naturally has a knack for it. They’re not planned ahead. I have suggested topics before, like, so usually what happens is we’ll sit down and we’ll do like a month at one time. So we’ll do like two jokes and like one meditation and like one other thing, whatever she has in her mind. We’ll just do them all, record them, send them to our podcast editor, and then just see what happens. But yeah, with the meditations, she just likes doing them and the way she does it, I definitely didn’t coach her at all. So I’m glad that you guys think it’s cute. I think it’s adorable. I feel like when I’m 80 years old, I’m gonna go back and listen to them. Like, they’re a true treasure.
Emma: If I’m not like doing dishes or folding laundry or something, I do close my eyes when she tells me to oh my gosh Yeah, it’s very relaxing. It’s nice. If she made a long one and they could just play it while I got a massage It’d be the greatest thing ever.
Elsie: That’s so cute.
Emma: Yeah, her little voice is perfect for it. It’s just so cute and yeah, you can tell she like I don’t know I guess picked it up from Yoto, but It has things that are like soothing, like she’s putting like sensory things in there about like ocean waves or holding a puppy or just different things that I’m like, this is good. She’s good at this.
Elsie: Oh my gosh. Well, she’s so incredibly proud to be a part of the podcast and it’s wonderful. So I’m very thankful.
Emma: Oh, I love them. It’s how I relax. Okay. This next question is from Marilyn. When you purchase your art on Etsy, where do you get the art printed? I Okay. So obviously you can buy stuff off Etsy that’s already printed and framed, but she’s talking about when you get a digital print or you’re just getting the file. So you’re going to print it yourself to hang it up in your home.
Elsie: So for me, 90 percent of the time I print at home. The printer that I use is called the IP 8720 and we’ll link it in the show notes. The thing I like about it is you can print regular, like I printed the show notes that we’re using right now, like regular, what do you want to call it? Like office paper, but then also it can print 13 by 19 photo paper. So I use it for both. I don’t have any other printer and it’s just like the perfect printer for me. That is what I use. And then if I was doing a large amount, like 20, I would probably order them, but I honestly don’t have one place I’m loyal to. I just order, I don’t know, like whatever place I see.
Emma: Yeah, I’ve used some of the fancier ones online. Minted. I think I’ve used them a lot, but I’ve also printed stuff at my local CVS. It turned out pretty good. But I am also a home printer person.
Elsie: Yeah, I think I have on my phone the app for Walmart. And like any of those places are like, once it’s in a frame, I honestly don’t think the quality is usually drastically different, but I love my home printer. I think it’s like the perfect quality.
Emma: It’s so convenient. Some people, it wouldn’t be worth it to them to have a home printer. But for me, I use mine so often and I also just love being able to print like four by six of like Oscar doing whatever we did that weekend or whatever. I just fill up my annual album with it and I love it. My printer only goes to eight by 10 though. So when I want to do a larger print, I do have to use CVS, Minted, whatever.
Elsie: Well, you should get the one I have.
Emma: I should. I think I just like the spot mine’s in and like mine’s wide.
Elsie: Mine’s kind of big.
Emma: Yeah, so I, I don’t know. I’m just used to it, I guess.
Elsie: Yeah, it’s probably the ugliest thing in my office, but I still love it so much I don’t care. Okay, one more thing.
Emma: Mine’s pretty cute, so I’m attached to it.
Elsie: Yeah, no, it is cute. Do you know what your model number is or we can put in the show notes?
Emma: I don’t remember, but I’ll put it in the show notes. We’ve talked about them a ton in the past because they’re both Canon printers and we worked with Canon for many years. We don’t anymore, and we’re still this enthusiastic about our home printers. It’s genuine.
Elsie: It’s genuine for sure. Okay, so my favorite kind of paper is the luster paper. So if you are like a photo person, it’s the best one. So it’s not matte but it kind of, it’s not glossy. It’s like what it would be if you got a matte photo at a like Photoshop, like it, it kind of is matte.
Emma: It has a little sheen to it, but like it’s cause it’s not perfectly matte.
Elsie: But I feel like the matte photo papers are like more of a papery texture, which I don’t like.
Emma: Yep. Same. And they’re okay. If I have matte photo paper around, I’ll use it for something. But yeah, I like the luster best.
Elsie: It’s amazing though. I have like, I feel like I’ve used it my whole life. You know what I mean? For like a decade. Since scrapbooking days I’ve probably had three throughout these whole like, almost 20 years. Three Cannons that are almost the same.
Emma: Yeah, the one I have now, I’ve had, I know for sure, more than five years, and it still works great, and I love it. I think a lot of people get nervous about like, how often do you have to buy ink? And I’m like, I don’t really know, like, I’ve never really kept track of that. I’ve never felt like my ink budget was crazy though, and I do print a lot of photos.
Elsie: So I use my printer every day, but I don’t print that many photos, but I would say I buy a new pack of ink where it just gives you all the colors, like probably twice a year, like every six months.
Emma: Yeah, I probably do three or four times a year, but I do print a lot of photos. And it’s really, I think it’s like 60 or something for all the colors, like the whole pack. It’s really not that I need to order a new one right now. For me, it’s just so convenient to be able to do it at home and not have to go pick something up or Yeah. I don’t know. I just really like it
Elsie: yeah. Okay, so before we move on, one more thing that I want to say about Etsy is like, they have the best affordable art prints in the universe for under 10 dollars. You can get thousands, like for any possible style or niche or like vibe or whatever you’re going for in your home. You can find art for an affordable price and then print it yourself and you can print it huge. You can print it small. I just think it’s a wonderful thing and I love supporting Etsy artists.
Emma: Yeah. And there’s even all sorts of different, like I have a few things in my house that are like an old vintage thing that somebody found in their attic or something. I don’t know. And then they’ve uploaded the file. They’ve cleaned it up a little bit or whatever. And you can even print things like that, which is really fun too. So there’s just a whole variety of things on there. Really, there’s a lot of things. So I will say that’s probably the one drawback is you kind of have to shop a little bit. Like, it’s not like there’s only 10 choices or something. I like it. But yeah, I think it’s good if you have maybe weird tastes or specific tastes, and most people do. So. We love Etsy.
Elsie: Okay. From Michelle. How do you make friends as an adult? I know it’s an area where a lot of us struggle, but you guys seem to know what you’re doing.
Emma: I like that people think we have friends.
Elsie: Yeah. Well, we do. We have friends.
Emma: We do. I know, but it’s funny.
Elsie: So, okay. My friend Kate gave me the best advice right before I moved. She said no matter where you live in this world, join a book club and a book club is, like, the key to your universe if you’re an unchurched adult woman. And I think that’s the best advice. I think I would even do, like, a second book club cause I love our book club. But I think I want, like, a fiction book club as well. I do think that it is more effort and work to make friends as an adult. Like, I’ve made a couple new friends this year and it’s like, we’re like trying, you can tell. We’re putting in, we’re like inviting each other.
Emma: Your schedule’s just different too, like, especially people with kids, but also if even just heavy career, like, it’s just different than when you’re in your twenties and you’re kind of like out every weekend and you just run into people. It’s just different. It’s different. Yeah. It kind of has to be more intentional.
Elsie: Yeah, I think that it definitely has to be more intentional
Emma: Which can be awkward when it’s new because you’re like trying.
Elsie: It’s discouraging when you feel like you’re in a place where you haven’t made a new friends in a while or you really want to or you’re not sure where to start like I think that’s really understandable. Yeah, I would try the book club. There’s other types of clubs, I feel like I’ve made a lot of friends from, like, the school moms, because we have kind of like a mutual place. Our kids are in Girl Scouts. We made a lot of friends from our pool. So Emma convinced me to join this community, it’s like a private community, what would you call it?
Emma: A neighborhood pool.
Elsie: A neighborhood pool. Yeah. Though you have to have a membership. And so it’s like the same people a lot of the time, and I made lots of friends from that too. So I think that just like putting yourself out there into situations where you’re around lots of people your own age who are in your phase of life is really good. It’s really brave. You’re doing a good job. If you have anxiety and you’re like, I have it too, just like keep trying.
Emma: Yeah. And I mean, when you’re at a place like a community pool or something, if you see someone reading a book that you’ve read, maybe say hi and say, I read that book too. I loved it and just check the vibe. Maybe they’ll want to talk, maybe they won’t. And I also think another place, if you don’t have kids or if you do, whatever is volunteering. If you want to volunteer at a local food bank or different things like that, that’s a place where you can meet other positive people. Like, a church is a place to do it, but if you’re not a church person, then I think volunteering is really cool in your community. You can also learn a lot about your community. I will help with stuff at our daycare, so that is kind of like a mom or parent thing, and then I meet some of the other people at daycare, which is fun.
Elsie: What about classes? I think classes sounds like a good idea, like if you wanted to take a painting class or a pottery class. Or just like any kind of class, a cooking class.
Emma: I feel like our mom’s made some friends from, like, teaching painting classes around town. And then she just keeps up with them. Just people with similar interests.
Elsie: My favorite way to make friends is online. But I also like making friends in person. I think it’s good to have both for sure.
Emma: For sure. Yeah. I’m a big fan of, like, non traditional hangs. Like, I don’t really want to, personally, I mean, I’m pregnant right now, but generally, I don’t really want to go to a bar every weekend. So, a lot of my friends, like, you have to be a person who, like, wants to go on a walk with a coffee. That’s more my speed of, like, I can’t do that every day. I’ve got to work, but like some things like that or a lunch or things that are a little more like not so much the evening because my season of life is a lot more putting kids to bed and yeah, feeling pretty tired myself. I’m on the old schedule. This question is from Amanda. Would Emma consider talking about self publishing a book? I’d love to hear more about the details of this. Yeah, for sure. Can you remember everything I’ve said about it so far? So some of this could be repeating.
Elsie: Maybe just tell the whole process for people who haven’t. I think it’s a very interesting subject and I’m curious, like, also, like, having been through the process, what you would do differently, if you recommend it, if you would do it again.
Emma: Yeah, yeah, so obviously step one is writing a book which you would want to do whether you’re gonna self publish or not. There’s so much advice about there and I feel like so many times we’ve mentioned On Writing by Stephen King so if you want some advice about writing a book, try that. And there’s lots of other great advice out there. I don’t even really feel like I’m the person to give advice about writing a book. I’ve only written two and I feel very much in the early phases of my writing journey for my life. Plus, I’m not always the biggest advice person to be honest about art because I a little bit subscribed to our mom’s school of thinking with it where it’s like, you’ve got to come by it in your own way and there’s no wrong way to do it. And I think you should just do it and that’s pretty much the advice. It’s like just write if you want to be a writer.
Elsie: I mean, I think that completion is the most important part of a first novel because how many people in the world start one or how many people think about starting one? But it’s so scary. I’m in that process right now. It’s so scary to have this idea in your head that you think this could be a really good novel but if you don’t actually finish it, then you don’t have to face it if it’s not good.
Emma: Yeah, if you never finish anything, you don’t have to know if you’re good at anything. That’s true. Yeah. You kind of have to face things when you finish them, but I also think it’s how you get better. And I also think it gives you a sense of confidence. There’s just a lot that you learn from finishing projects and oftentimes putting them out in the world. If it’s not your goal to put something out in the world, that’s fine. I think creativity can exist and should exist just on our own, in free time, that nobody ever sees. I think that there’s some powerful magic there. But, I also think if you’re wanting to get good at something, and I would like to be good at writing, I think putting it out into the world is pretty important. So anyway, for me, publishing was an important step in my writing journey. So, after a certain number of rejections and just time. I was like, I think I’m just going to self publish because I don’t see why not. I don’t see any reason not to, really. And now that I know the timing of when I ended up getting pregnant, I’m really glad I did it because I think it would have delayed this goal that I have in my life even longer. I found out the day after my book came out. I kind of thought the day the book was coming out, I felt kind of sick that whole day and I was like, I should go get a pregnancy test, but I was like, I’ll do it tomorrow. Today I’m just thinking about my book. So anyway, self publishing, so there’s two places where I put my book currently and I’m talking about a print or an electronic version right now, not the audio. And those two places are IngramSpark and Amazon KDP, the KDP program. You can do just one or the other. If you were going to do only one, I would pick Amazon. But I think both are really nice because the Amazon program does put it obviously on Amazon, but kind of a few other places too. And then IngramSpark is how other book publishers can get copies of your book or libraries can get the copies or even have the electronic copy. So if that’s something that’s important to you to be in other places, then both of these are great resources and you’ll still have to, like, talk to independent bookstores about carrying your book. It’s not like they’re just gonna automatically know about it. But at least they will be able to order copies if you have done the work of getting it on to IngramSpark. So a lot of people, I think, think that you just kind of upload the word doc, and there you go. And that’s really not the case. So you’re probably going to need a designer to help you lay out the interior of your book, both for an electronic version and for a print version. And then any cover of your book, whether it’s for electronic, paperback, or a dust jacket hardcover, those are different design files. They’re different sizes and you probably will want someone professional to lay that out for you unless you have those skills. I’m personally not a graphic designer. So I hired people to lay out the interior and my book cover. And they did a beautiful job, far better than I could ever do, so that’s good. Once you have all those things done, the files, then you can upload them to both of these places, the Amazon KDP and the IngramSpark. And once they’re uploaded on there, you can track sales, you can use marketing tools that they have on those sites, and you can do your own marketing. And that’s sort of a big part of self publishing is you are the only person who’s going to do the marketing. You don’t have anyone behind you, a publisher behind you doing it.
Elsie: But I will say, even in traditional publishing, it still often feels like you’re the only person doing the marketing. You know what I mean? Like, I think that, like, successful marketing is, Often done by the author in either case.
Emma: Until you’re a really famous author, you’re going to need to do the marketing and even then you’re going to want to do marketing. So I think thinking that through and I do think that can be really intimidating for people. They can think, oh, well, Emma, you have a blog or you have a podcast, so it must be easy for you or I don’t have those things. So I can’t do it. And I would say it is easier if you have built a platform of some kind. Definitely. It’s not easy to build a platform, but definitely if you have that, it is the place you should be marketing. Yes. But also, if you don’t have that, it doesn’t mean that you can’t market. There’s lots of advice out there, so many blog posts and articles and programs that you can take that can help you with that. And marketing, by the way, is not just like posting about your book on Instagram a million times. That’s one way you could market your book. There’s also like whole courses and things you can take to teach you about picking the right keywords to be on Amazon or making sure that you’re in these categories where the readers who are really going to resonate with your work can find you. That’s marketing too. So don’t think that just because you’re not a famous Tic Toc person that you can’t market your work. You can. There’s just lots of different ways and you’ve got to be open to it and some of it is going to take a lot of effort, a lot of education on your part, and then like a lot of literal effort of doing things on different platforms. And then also some marketing could take money. You could set yourself a budget. Be like, I have a thousand dollars, what’s the best thing I could do with this thousand dollars to market my work or whatever it is. It’ll probably cost you money to self publish, it cost me money to self publish. So you have to get your files done, and there’s a couple different things. You have to buy an ISBN number, different things like that. It’s not a huge amount of money. I feel like for me, I want to say it was like 2, 000 dollars, all said and done when I’d done everything. And then, I’m still working on my audio version. It’s not out yet, but it’s coming and I promise I will tell you all when it is out so that all the audio book people like us can enjoy it. But I plan to use ACX Audiobook Publishing, which is Amazon’s audiobook publishing place, which means it will be available there. I often get books from Audible. I’m unclear if it will be available in other places like the Libby app for libraries. So if not, I would like to be able to put it those places, but I just haven’t done that yet. So I don’t know how that works. When I get there I’ll research it. But right now I’m just trying to make the files basically. There’s a lot of different steps and with any goal like self publishing or anything else, anytime you feel yourself getting overwhelmed or you feel your mind like ping ponging around all these different things you’re going to need to do, just like write down all the steps and think about which one you want to tackle first and just break it down really, really small. That’s always the best way to approach a big goal is just like, because if you’re thinking about writing a book, it’s like, just make an outline. You can take a week to do that, a month to do that, a year to do that. That’s up to you and your life.
Elsie: Two years.
Emma: It’d be a really good outline. But make the outline and then write chapter one and just make it small. Make each step really small and then get that one done. And before you know it, you’ll get to the end and you’ll have done all these different things.
Elsie: That’s so inspiring, Emma.
Emma: Thanks.
Elsie: So inspiring.
Emma: Yeah. And it was really fun. I would definitely self publish again. I have a feeling I probably will at some point in my life. I’ve been really happy with this and I’m really curious to see how the audio book goes. I think I’ve mentioned this, but I sold over a thousand copies in the first three months my book was out. I had no real expectations, so to me that feels, like, very successful. I don’t know how to measure that, because I don’t, like, have a bunch of other author friends.
Elsie: It’s all completely relative.
Emma: Yeah. I’ve been really happy with it, and felt like I don’t know, it’s been really fun to see and see, like, all the reviews. I’ve gotten so many more reviews than I ever expected to. So that’s really nice. Even the ones where people, it wasn’t necessarily their cup of tea, I’m like, we still took the time to read it and write me a review. I don’t know, like, just the fact that that many people are reading feels cool to me because for me, I just feel like reading has been such a happy thing in my life, such a joyful thing, that to feel like I’m contributing to this body of work, all this written stuff, and that I might contribute to somebody else’s happy moments in their life of needing a break or needing to escape or just having a book that you look forward to reading. You’re like I can’t wait to get all my chores done so I can get back to my book like just that little feeling I think is such a nice thing. I’d love to be that in other people’s lives here and there. So I don’t care if I have to self publish to get there or if someone wants to publish my work in the future, whatever. I’d also really love to write for young readers one day. I had so many books that meant so much to me as a kid. So the idea of, like, getting to do that sounds incredible. So I think there’s so many ways to get to these goals that we may have or the things we want to accomplish in life. And you don’t have to be intimidated. I will say self publishing, there’s so much information online. It’s awesome. That’s one of the ways the internet’s awesome, is there’s just people out there who their whole thing is teaching others how to self publish. So you can read their information, you can learn from it, you can see what worked for them. It’s great. So it’s really not, in my opinion, a super hard process. It does take some money. It definitely takes some time. And you probably will upload a file wrong and get frustrated and have to try again. And those things happen. Don’t let that get you down. It doesn’t matter. Keep going. Try again. You’ll get there.
Elsie: Cool. Thanks for sharing that. It’s super inspiring and it’s fun to hear about the process because I’ve never done it before and I’m sure most people haven’t.
Emma: It’s fun. Highly recommend it. Five stars. Love self-publishing. Publishing with a regular publisher, great too. Done that as well. Loved that as well. Different process.
Elsie: Yeah. Okay. I really, really, really don’t want to answer this voicemail question, but let’s do it.
Voicemail: Hey, Elsie. Hey, Emma. It is Kate calling from Florida. I was just binging old episodes and I came across your predictions for 2022. We are rolling into 2024. Whatever came of the puppets? Like, you guys were going to have puppets made. But literally, this was the most brilliant idea, and I don’t know that I ever saw the Elsie and Emma puppets. So, yeah, if you guys feel the need to respond to this, it would be the best, best gift. I may have missed it. If not, either way, happy 2024 to you guys. Bye.
Emma: Thank you so much for bringing this up, Kate, because I am upset too. I also want to know what happened with the puppets.
Elsie: Here’s the problem. Okay, the puppets are ,they’re in a box in my home. They’re here. They’re waiting. They’re waiting a really long time.
Emma: She’s looking at me like I’m relieved that they’re here. I’m like, no, I’m feeling no relief yet.
Elsie: Okay, let me just say I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the puppets. I think we should still hard launch our puppets. Why didn’t we do that two years ago or whatever, I don’t know, but I’ll take this as a sign that you’re still interested in the puppets. And I didn’t finish putting all the hair on one of them, and then I bought some, like, little toddler baby clothes and they were too big, and then I got frustrated and just left them in a box after we moved. So that’s what happened. And I just need to complete them. And then we should make a puppet show of a legit high quality puppet show.
Emma: Yeah. To be honest, I forget what we were going to use the puppets for, but I am still really excited.
Elsie: I think Tik Tok and Instagram.
Emma: The thing we don’t do anymore. Damn it. Well, we can still do something with them.
Elsie: We can still do one every once in a while. It’s fine.
Emma: I’m gonna use it for some book marketing. I don’t know.
Elsie: I kind of like lost my password to TikTok and I think I might just like never log in again, but Instagram, I think we’ll keep going. It’s fine. We’ll do it. We’ll do a little something. Okay. Okay. Here’s our promise to you. I just need to glue the rest of the hair onto my puppet head.
Emma: Maybe we can fix the toddler clothes. Like, maybe we can sew them.
Elsie: We just need to take them to the mall, into the baby store and find some clothes for them.
Emma: Build a bear?
Elsie: Yeah, basically, they’re really small. They’re smaller than I thought they would be. Cause I got one year old’s clothes and they were way too big.
Emma: What about American Girl dolls? Like those clothes. Maybe those would fit.
Elsie: That’s a good idea. Let’s continue the puppets journey.
Emma: Okay. We’ll brainstorm this later. You don’t need to hear this.
Elsie: All right. We’re going to go now to Nova’s segment. Hey Nova, what do you have for us this week?
Nova: A meditation.
Elsie: A meditation, my favorite! Alright, I’m closing my eyes.
Nova: Get all comfy. Do anything you need to do. Maybe you just need to get under the covers. Maybe you just need to get a drink of water. Just do whatever you need and then close your eyes and relax. Imagine yourself just at the table eating. Just finishing when suddenly you hear a scratch on the door. You open it and find a silly little dog. You don’t know what kind it is. It’s a pug. So, you take it inside, and feed it some food, and then after that, you get your mom and dad to take him into the vet’s office. But you have to be very quiet or else the dog’s gonna start getting fussy and he’s gonna try to run away. So your family is just quiet and the doctor looks him over, and he tells them what to do, and what kind of dog food to take. And so then you go very happy because you can have a dog around the house, and so you have an exciting adventure on his first day. You go to the pond and to the park. Then you and your pug slide down the slide. And then you have a magical time with your pug. And then the next day when you wake up, you find him laying right beside you, snuggling you in your bed.
Elsie: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
Nova: Now, everyone, thank you and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye!
Elsie: Thank you so much for listening. We had so much fun answering your questions. We would love to hear your suggestions for future episodes. Send us an email at podcast@abeautifulmess.com with your request. Next week, we’re coming back with an episode all about joy. Plus we’re doing a book report on the Dead Romantics.
