#320: Emma's Book Querying Journey

Elsie Larson (0:05)

You're listening to the A Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen. I'm your host Elsie Larson, and I'm your host Emma Chapman. In this week's episode, Emma is telling the story of her querying journey and the path to traditionally publishing her romance novel. It's a great story and I'm very excited for you to get to hear it. We're also going to answer a listener question about holiday decorating and a hot take about potlucks.

Emma Chapman (0:28)

Oh yeah, potlucks, hot take.

Elsie Larson (0:32)

It's going to be a lukewarm take, if that, okay.

Emma Chapman (0:36)

You'll get that joke later.

Elsie Larson (0:39)

So before we jump in, Alana sent us a listener question that has to do with holiday decorating. It says, I was wondering how you approach holiday decorating in your home's Halloween and Christmas. Do you decorate with the same items in the same way each year, or do you redesign your holiday decor each year to be fresh and new?

If you're adding new decor items every year, do you consider your collections complete, and are you reusing existing pieces?

Okay. So I guess I can go first. Yeah. So I use the same items every year. I have a pretty big collection, and at this moment, I would definitely call it complete on both collections. But I do add at least one special item every year, because it's fun for me, and I enjoy it, and I like it. But I will say that now that I have all the holiday decor that I need, I do tend to focus a little bit more on like, I'll get cute stuff that we can use for holiday baking, or things that are like a craft that we can do, like things that you use. So it's not necessarily another thing for the basement. So that's my tip for that.

I've been collecting Halloween and Christmas decor for about 10 years. So, and I think that's about as long as you need to be going hard at home goods and all of that, you know. I will always add another special piece, like if it speaks to me, but I feel like through the years, you just have to become more picky and more selective and just not go crazy anymore. Like now, when I see like all the new stuff at Target, I am like, that's full, it's fun to look at, it's interesting to walk through it, and I know that I don't really need anything and I don't need to have a full cart ever again.

Emma Chapman (2:26)

Yeah.

Elsie Larson (2:27)

Oh yeah.

Emma Chapman (2:29)

Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. I have a lot of stuff already and it's all in this big, big closet that kind of has our water heater too, and we call it the holiday closet. And it has other things in there too.

Elsie Larson (2:40)

It's like a small bedroom size. It's like a really cool space and she made it all just for holidays and it's kind of like lined with shelves.

Emma Chapman (2:49)

Yeah, I bought, we have a ton of skeletons that I use for decorating for Halloween and I bought these wall hooks that you normally hang guitars on.

Elsie Larson (2:56)

Yeah.

Emma Chapman (2:57)

And I put those all around the room so I could hang the skeletons so they wouldn't just be like in a big pile.

And it just made the room really funny too. So when you walk in, it's like, whoa. It's like 12 skeletons on the wall. But yeah, I do have like collections that I'm still adding to. So like I do a Halloween tree. Yeah, it's basically a black Christmas tree. And part of why I like doing a Halloween tree, one, I just like the glow of a Christmas tree. So I like getting to do it for longer. So it's a Halloween tree. But I also, we do a lot of handmade ornaments as like crafts with the kids. Like we'll do salt dough or just painted ones with pictures, just whatever. Like you can put anything on a tree. Did you know that? So I love making handmade ornaments. So that's sort of a collection that we're always adding to. And to be honest, sometimes they break or, you know, it's one of those collections that I'm trying to like save all the really special ones. But there are times like something breaks or just doesn't last or whatever. And that's okay too. And I have a pretty big collection of Christmas ornaments. I feel like we have too many Christmas ornaments, honestly. We used two trees for Christmas. And I still feel like as the boys continue to grow, I'm not gonna have space for all these ornaments, but I'm just gonna figure it out. But my Halloween tree is still like a little bit bare, so I have a lot of room there to do more fun stuff and to collect ornaments. They don't make as many Halloween ornaments, but I'm on the lookout. I'm always on the lookout. And then another collection that we do that I don't consider done, but also I have a lot of it already, is we do a spooky village. And we do that for Halloween. So we buy wooden bird houses that you can buy online or at big craft stores or whatever. And I let the kids decorate them kind of spooky. And every year we do one, so the collection grows and grows. And I just think that's really fun. And I also can see the boys like artistic skills and motor skills kind of develop, because their first ones are very simple and then they continue on and it's just really fun. And there may come a time when we don't do them and the collection is complete and that's great.