Happy Holidays from Still the Place!
Courtney, Daphne, and Laura are back with a spirited chat about their holiday plans! Laura is rising to the occasion with her bakes, including trying out an applesauce gingerbread pumpkin loaf! Daphne reveals she likes quiet time to reflect, and Courtney's annual tradition involves eating steak while watching the classic Christmas movie Die Hard! The trio also chats about the joy of doing this podcast and their New Year's plans and resolutions!
Still the Place with Laura Layton, Courtney Thorn Smith and.
Daphne's Amiga and iHeartRadio podcast. Hey everyone, we're here for a mini episode. It's a holiday episode.
Yeah, welcome back and happy holidays to everyone. I just want to say I was hoping that we were going to be able to do this episode in person, but because all of our schedules are so busy and everything, we weren't able to get together and do it in person.
We're doing it on zoo. But I just want to say that.
I've got a little holiday deliciousness to enjoy that I was able to enjoy.
I did Okay.
So I took this recipe that I normally make into a bunt pan that's really beautiful, you know, aunt pan. You can get them in all different like shapes and designs or whatever, but it's kind of like really hard to make sure that it comes out of the pan correctly and everything.
So I tried it today just as.
A loaf, like a loaf of bread, like like a like an apple sauce gingerbready pumpkin.
Yeah, so it's really don't.
You were in person?
That I know? So good?
Maybe we'll be able to get together before the holiday season is entirely over and we can share a little sweet something together.
Oh that so fun.
Lift a glass, celebrate, Barnie.
Do you bake?
I know you've said that you cook, but do you bake and stuff during the holla?
I don't bake because I can't have gluten. It gives me migraines. So I t some Isn't that the craziest?
I bake gluten free?
Do you well? I love some tips. Then that's great.
I will give you something good.
Hopefully you might feel comfortable trying a bite of something that I make for you.
Sometimes super comfortable. Yeah, I don't know or anything.
I just have real it's with different flower, right, is it like an almond flower or something spells or something.
It's just there's a lot of things that can be gluten free, so you can replace it in lots of different ways.
I would love some tips and tricks. Oh that's so fun. I love that.
You know.
I don't bake. I never have. My sister does.
Back in the day, probably during I think it was during Melrose Place. Actually she lived with me for a while out here and had a baking business. So my entire closet pantry in the entryway was filled with doileys and pink boxes and gold trays, you know, vats of I don't know what. But anyway, we're very different that way. I love to go places that A.
Well we went through.
I usually have a whole lot of family around at Christmas. I mean, first of all, we have four kids, and now two of them have spouses. So when we're all together, we're you know, we're not only six, we're eight plus my parents plus my you know. Like so sometimes we have just just a casual fourteen, you know, for all the days and all the meals and whatever. And there was I think there was a I think one of the COVID Christmases where we didn't have our giant a Christmas party that we often have, and we were just the fourteen of us or eleven or however many that were that year. We were just cooking and eating and baking and eating and cooking and eating and bacon and eating. And we called it the cake a Day Christmas because I was baking a cake a day, Like I was trying new cakes and like try this one, which you know, and it was the cakea day Christmas.
Remember the sour dough during the pandemic, everyone.
Was doing a coward dough.
You probably did that.
Now, you know, my daughter is just a master at sourdoaught bread and she bakes a couple times a week and she's she's got that master. So she was.
That's amazing. I mean, that was one thing.
The meals, because when did you ever get three meals a day together except when your kids or baby baby babies. So I remember we went through a period having these huge baked potatoes every day. We'd sit down onto these huge baked potatoes. Start up baked potatoes, then you added cheese, then you added bacon, then you had storgry by then. But it's like a baked potato bar every day at lunch. And it was fun to have that thing to look forward to because the days were so weird.
Right, that's great, Yeah, yeah, it was really fun.
Yeah, we looked forward to cocktails at five and then begin well it's four thirty. Well it's a Tuesday.
Who cares?
You know, I was.
I remember all those memes and instagrams like about that. You know how everyone picked up on the cocktail thing and just this now we all had to like, oh, well, what's a dry January anyway, who cares?
Yeah, And isn't it nice that this year?
It also makes you appreciate when you don't have those restrictions right now that we're back to regular holidays. So what are your holiday traditions that you really look forward to.
I'm not from a big family. It's a little bigger. It's getting bigger because my husband has three kids and one just got married and you know, they have partners, and my brother got married and they're going to be having a baby. Sit so it's growing. But I didn't grow up with a big family, and so I kind of can do a group and a crowd for a period of time.
But I have to have my room to sneak.
Away to and shut the door. I have to or I will go nuts. And I don't want to be pressured into doing group things. Need I really like alone time and Christmas time. The holidays are the only time I can like let go and stop doing things because I know everyone else is doing that too, so I don't feel like I'm missing out or I'm getting, you know, behind on things.
I like to.
Write, read, listen to music, do nothing, stare out. We're going to be out in the snow with my sister up in the mountains. So I just like to be reflective, and I think it's important that people know that they can do that or whatever feels right to you. This is a time for reflection and slowing down and letting the sort of day to day go. And if it's a group, wonderful. If it's not, it's okay. And if you're working through Christmas, I've done that too, so but still to find what's right for you.
I don't like the external pressure.
Yeah, it's really important, I think.
Yeah, I love that, laur And we do.
I mean, you know, we have kind of a giant family and extend family giants. So we have a huge crowd of people usually for the holidays, and kind of a revolving door of people coming and going in different travel plans. And especially now that some of our kids are having families of their own, we're having to shift around. Like sometimes Christmas morning doesn't look the way it did, you know, back when everybody was little and lived at home.
You know, now sometimes we have to celebrate it on a different day and it.
Doesn't really have to look the same as it did when when they were kids. You know, it's sort of morphed into what traditions are important and what.
You know isn't as important.
And of course we're having grand kids now we have a grand baby, so this is kind of our first big Christmas with a grand baby around. Who's you know, walking and appreciating it and starting to you know, be able to say Santa and stuff like that. So those traditions come back again when, you know, when we have grand babies around and everything. But some of the things that we have maintained through the years, regardless of what age people are or how many people are actually here this year, is we love to enjoy music together and we just you know, a couple of us play the piano, and we have people who play a guitar, and we have trumpet players in our family, and we have you know, lots of people sing and so like just having fun like sing alongs and just enjoying music.
That's such a big part of our holidays.
And besides baking, we actually and eating, we just love the music part of it and finding any excuse to just spend that kind of time together. But I hear what you're saying, daff and I think that that day after Christmas is always such like everybody gets a book, and that time where everybody finds a separate place in the house to go have a nap with their book is like some of the best parts of Christmas to look forward to.
It's just that quiet time alone and just.
Yeah, it's important because the time goes faster than you think. And then if you work a lot and you have a busy day and then you have this time off and you're just going, going, going, you know, that's like that's not good. We all have to like disconnect at times, and yeah, decompressed.
So yeah, it's nice in la which is always so busy, you know, in the entertainment istry. Everybody has two weeks off at Christmas to New Year's so that the streets are quiet, the town is quiet. It's such a lovely time if you stay home to decompress. It's really magical here at Christmas because it's the town. Everybody goes to the Four Seasons in Maui and then you know, right.
No one's on the road.
I'm not going to the Four Seasons in Maui.
Now, but at the time maybe maybe I'm dating myself. But that's what used to happen in the industry, and now it's gotten so nice and quiet.
So you'll be here and you are you having fails.
I love to be here.
I'm I'm really similar to you, Daphnel, Like I really love my quiet time.
Like my favorite thing is New Year's Eve home alone.
I like to have that time when everybody's busy and crazy that I'm home and I'm quiet and I'm cuddled in a couple of years ago, we had a big rainstorm and one of my girlfriends was staying with me and she was going out to dinner with a big group of people and I've been invited, and she's dressed. It's eight o'clock a night. She's going out because I'm sure you don't want to come, And I was.
Like, oh, absolutely sure.
I was so happy to be home on my couch with my dogs. She's heading it and they had a lovely time. But I was like, I love that time to myself to really just sort of welcome in the new year from this place of quiet and peace. And my son and I have a tradition for Christmas, which is not at all the traditions I grew up with, but we make a big steak and mashed potatoes and watch die Hard.
Well, I just.
Love that's our Christmas movie. It's so much fun. Diehard Christmas movie, Christmas and it's so much fun. Although last year we tried to watch die Hard too, and it's way smarter than I ever have been or ever will be. And he goes, this is the same movie as die Hard just at an airport, and I was like, oh, wait a minute, like I never pulled that threat.
I never that threat.
And I was like, well, maybe Diehard three will be better like this, just wait and see.
But it was.
Almost verbatim the same movie, same beats, and then they got more creative with three and four. I think they've been five Diehards. Anyway, Yeah, that's a super fun tradition. Then this year, one of my dear friends and moved away is coming back, so it's going to be a lot of girls dinners times with friends. So it's going to be that family, right like my family of women, my family of girlfriends, which is going to be so much fun. I'm so looking forward to it. And I love what you said, Daft because it's so true. I remember one time I had to do I was doing a TV movie, and they said that. They said, I want you to send like a holiday greeting to people, and everyone's saying, have fun with your families, have fun with the tree, all this stuff, And I said, but many of us have different kinds of holidays. Like it's really important to say you can celebrate in so many ways or not celebrate in so many ways, because it can be a time too. You're sitting home watching these Christmas movies and all that looks like this big thing that I never had, right, Like I never had the twenty people around the tree. I never had that, and I used to feel bad about it. Now I don't. I really look at what do I want this season.
To be for me? And it can be my son and I watching die Hard.
It can be like a New Year's Day when everybody's home with a hangover. I love taking my dogs on a walk.
In the woods.
Yeah, like waking up early and celebrating the new year with my dogs and my higher power and my inner thoughts. It's just so beautiful when I can let go of it has to look this way and I can let it be whatever I want it to be in the moment. And that's part of brwing up too. Yeah, that's part of getting older and knowing who I am.
I've also noticed that those little magic moments can happen at any time, Yes, anywhere. The blessings you feel that blessing, you feel that connection, that can happen anywhere, online, at work, in the car, It can happen anywhere. It doesn't have to be with the perfect tree and the perfectness and the perfect gift. So take the pressure off.
Well when it, you know, just the changing of the year, like when it becomes a new year, I just think that's a natural time for reflection and sort of looking back, looking forward and regrouping whatever that is, you know, for each person. I think that's just a natural time of that. And it marks time, you know, the calendar changes, and it's a marking of time.
And do you do.
Resolutions Like I don't know that I make thought about it or resolutions, but I do think I mark the time, like I note, like what is it that I want? You know what I really I like to reflect on the year behind and then think of what what it is in the year ahead or the coming years ahead. And but yeah, Courtney, are you kidding? Like I would never like leave the house on Year's is like such a good time to be quiet.
It's so much your hour nor Yeah, no way.
I've done times Square, We've done this staying up now, it's like, please stay up in line so I can watch it on TV the ball.
Yeah, and just like I can, I please just be in sweats and be cozy and just stay in and yeah that's perfect.
But yeah, I one year, I got really ambitious. We had I think another couple over it, and we made.
Fortune cookies for resolutions. We all wrote like little resolutions on these little strips of paper and then baked them into these fortune cookies. That was sort of fun.
I only did it and then did you open them? Whatever one you got was your.
Like, I mean, it wasn't like anything necessarily private, you know, but it was like just a sharing moment, like oh I put this one in and coming out of a fortune cookie.
It was just sort of a fun way to.
I just kept it and get more gifts for Doug, Get more gifts for Doug.
PI. I'm Kristin Davis, and I want to know are you a Charlotte? In nineteen ninety seven, my life was forever changed when I took on the role of Charlotte York on a new HBO show called Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte navigate relationships in New York City. The show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now I want to connect with you and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes together.
With special guests.
What will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. Are You a Charlotte is a much more than just rewatching our beloved show. It brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor, and of course some optimism. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
But yeah, resolutions this year for me?
I guess I just I'm really reflective on this past year and so grateful for this podcast and this opportunity to have you guys in my life again in this way, and so like that's my New year reflection is like being so grateful for this year and what it's brought, but in the new year also sort.
Of making a resolution to continue.
Doing that and really remembering to spend time with friends like you guys, and just being so appreciative of this podcast and this opportunity.
To dinner party court.
We know that's going to happen sometime in twenty twenty five.
No, but I feel the same way about this, And this was such a lovely surprise, like not just that we're doing it, but that it's been so much fun and how much fun I'm having with you guys. I really am so wonderfully, happily surprised by that. So my only resolution is just a deeper surrender. Like my prayer is, God, let me forget everything I think I know about myself and what my life is supposed to look like, and let me have a new experience, Like this was such a beautiful surprise and it's made me feel really open hearted and Okay, just show me, like what is the next indicator step. I'm open to new experiences, which is quite a surprise at this point in my life. But that's really where I am I feel ready and open for whatever's next.
Me too, Court. I think there are changes happening. I know that right now there's transition on a big level. There's a lot going on in our world. You just want to be able to surf all the change with grace and not too much stress, not stress, you know, just any I want to be a piece regardless of what happens, and just be able to do it and have fun. So you know, it's a lot of change. But yeah, a year ago, we weren't doing this. You never know what's around the corner.
And I think, yeah, we're all just it's unanimous. We're all so grateful for our listeners and for.
This experience together, and you know, it's it's something we are all looking forward to in the new year.
Is coming back for more still the place?
Yeah, you guys, We're wishing everyone to be safe and to be well, and we hope you come back and bring your friends.
And we'll have fun next year. We'll see everybody in January.
Yeah, happy holidays, everybody, be safe, love you, bye bye.