The 3 Lessons I Learned from Martha Stewart

Join Michelle Mize, founder of Sun Cookery, as she unpacks three surprising lessons learned from her ultimate hosting inspiration, Martha Stewart. 

Moving beyond the pursuit of perfection, Michelle shares how Martha's influence shaped her approach to generous hospitality - from crafting pecan garlands with her grandfather to understanding the power of "always bringing cookies." Discover how to channel your own hosting inspiration while staying true to yourself, and learn why even Martha's occasionally flawed recipes can lead to inspiring every kind of host. 

This heartwarming episode reminds us that hosting is about connection, not perfection, especially during the hectic holiday season. Plus, get a sneak peek at next week's special guest who will share what it's like having a birthday on December 25th.

Transcript

Hey y'all. Welcome to our third episode of Suppers and Soirees. I'm Michelle Mize, your host and founder of Sun Cookery, where we believe in hosting for connection, not perfection. Welcome y'all. I am excited again to be here because today we are going to talk about all the Marthas in our life. So if you're listening to this podcast, You most likely have a Martha and if you don't know what Martha I'm talking about right now,  let me just tell you who mine is.

Mine is Martha Stewart, right? We are talking about those Martha's in our life. Those inspirational, um, gurus or experts.  Home designers, whoever it is, chefs, musicians, I don't know who your Martha is, but we all have that person or place that inspires us. And I want to talk about my Martha and how she has inspired my life. 

I want to share with you the three lessons I've taken away from my hosting inspiration, Martha Stewart, and help you kind of tackle that with your, um, What do you call that? Your muse. You're hosting Muse, right? So that's what we're talking about today. That's why we're here. So gear up, get your notepad out or get out your notes on your phone or whatever.

And I hope you'll jot down my three lessons that I've learned and then maybe apply that to the person that inspires you so that you can make sure you're hosting for connection, not perfection. And that can happen when we have someone that inspires us. We can get so wrapped up in Let's just be honest,  the Pinterest feed or the stack of magazines or that cookbook that we want to tackle and then we've completely gotten off track from why we're doing this and you're not bringing a piece of yourself forward.

So seriously, get your notes out. Here we go. All right. The three lessons I've learned from Martha Stewart.  Is this okay? Yeah, that was perfect. And I like how you like,  here we go. This is it. Okay. All right.  The first lesson I learned from Martha Stewart is living with intention, okay? So, I don't, I don't know how deep y'all are into Martha Stewart, but I am.

So I'm here to tell you her company is Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, her magazine with Martha Stewart Living. Okay. So she believed in living with intention. That's what I took away from all that. I know that it all, I mean, everything she's ever done or presented to the, to the universe is perfection.

Uh, beauty. No detail was ever missed.  And that can be incredibly overwhelming. But what I really think she was trying to tell us was to live with intention, meaning, uh,  Admire the beautiful things that are in your community, in your space, right? Learning to mix different elements, that everything doesn't have to be matchy matchy, everything doesn't have to be perfect.

She taught us how to mix and match all Colors and textures and elements and that was that's a part of living with intention, right? That's a part of bringing forward what the things that you like She also taught us in living with intention that anything handcrafted Or homemade is what really comes from the heart.

So that that handcrafted um, how about just a handcrafted note card? Right. A handwritten note. What I mean is anything that you do with your own hands, with your own mind, with your own ideas that's handcrafted. There's beauty in that because it's You use, you're putting yourself into it and same goes with cooking.

If you're, if you lean into the cooking area of things, when you're hosting, you know, cook homemade is so, so amazing. It's it's, I love when people make homemade things because I really learn a lot about them. I learned what they like. I learned their style. skill set. Um, I learned that maybe they're a risk taker that maybe it was a completely flawed dish, but I love that they went for it.

Like, these are the things, these are the stories that get told. by people when you're hosting them and you're learning about them, you're learning about them through their handcrafted miss, right? Their homemade miss. And I think that is the best lesson that I took away from all these years of following Martha Stewart's style and her books and her  every piece of content she's ever put out there.

That is my takeaway. It's actually not about perfection, which is, I feel like she gets slammed for that all the time. Guess what? She is perfect. Okay, let's just say it, but I don't feel the stress to be like her. She just inspires me to, to acknowledge beautiful things and, and really put my heart and soul into it.

So that is my first lesson from Martha Stewart that I learned and I hope you'll think about that with your hosting guru. Right? Think about what is their real message to you in their style? What is it about their style or their presence or how they, how they execute on their things that are inspiring to you and really pull that away at a higher level and then start applying that, putting your own spirit into that. 

You know what, before I move on to my second lesson that I learned from Martha, let me share with you how I executed on something that I saw in a Martha Stewart living magazine a long time ago  and how I executed on it, how it inspired me.

She had done a whole issue on different types of holiday wreaths and I mean made out of just different things, you know, that you wouldn't think about. And one of them, it was either a garland or a wreath. I think it was a garland actually. Um, it was a garland that was made out of fresh pecans.

And I had, I remember how beautiful that looked like it was just twisted and beautiful and gorgeous and this gorgeous hue of browns from a real, from real natural pecans. Well, guess what? That it must've been soon after that magazine came out that I was at my grandma and grandpa's in North Carolina for a holiday gathering.

I'm pretty sure it was either Thanksgiving I'm pretty sure it was Thanksgiving, but my grandparents had a massive pecan tree in their backyard and all the pecans would be on the ground And my papa would tell me to go out and pick them up and we'd collect them and he'd crack them when we'd have pecans But I remembered that garland in the Martha Stewart magazine and I had my dad.

I had my grandpa We were I said i'm gonna collect all these pecans. I want to make this garland Well, you know how men are they were like so excited to get out of the house and not have to do anything in the kitchen they were like We were down in my grandpa's shop and we were drilling holes. I don't even know what the machine was, but my papa was drilling the holes into the walnuts long ways.

I had the floral wire and I made this pecan garland. Now, I don't know if it looked a darn thing like the Martha Stewart magazine issue that I saw, but But it inspired me, and that was the natural element that was sitting outside my grandparents backyard, so why not take advantage of it? So, there's just an example of how, um, I got inspired and just, you make it happen.

Who cares what the final product is? It was, actually, all the moments of connection was hanging out with my papa and my, my dad. And then obviously adorning the table at Thanksgiving time, um, and decorating with that, um, made me happy. I think my family was annoyed, to be honest. They, uh, they definitely made fun of me back in the day about being, uh, They knew Martha was my inspiration and sometimes I don't know if I was fully appreciated for all the effort I put in, but let me tell you, I thought the tabletop looked amazing and I made it together with my dad and my grandpa.

It was, it was a beautiful memory. So, so think about that too when you're, um, you know, when you're maybe hesitant to do something on your own, just take that inspiration and do it, just do it.  Okay. So, um, On that same line, that kind of actually leads into my second lesson that I learned from Martha. It's, it's really you do you.

So listen, I don't know if y'all recently saw the Martha Stewart Netflix documentary.  It was amazing. It was incredible. I thought they did such an amazing job of really talking about, from, from her youth, from her young adulthood, from, you know, from the time she was born, just her family, her perspective, her upbringing, all the influences, and how she.

She had a very clear vision for what her, her business was going to look like, but really it was her vision for what she wanted to bring to the world. And the one thing that has never changed in the, you know, three decades, three decades or more that I've been following her and being inspired by her is that she has never veered from the human being that she is.

She does Martha and love it or hate it or jealous of it or however, whatever your issues might be positive or not so positive. I admire anyone who just does them, who rises above  all the noise. And says, No, this is how we're going to do it.  And that I think is a major lesson to take into consideration when you're being generous with your home and your time and your hosting is you do you.

Okay, don't don't don't veer off the path or try to make this look this way or try to cook this amazing dish that you've never done before and but you want to impress someone. So like, hey, just you do you. And, um,  know, live brightly. That's one of our taglines in my company. Some cookery is we believe in living bright and living bright is when you let your light shine and let that come out and and host with a piece of you in it.

So, you know, I think there's a lot of irony in all the lessons I've learned from Martha that  I hope we're surprising or at least helpful for y'all, right? To like turn what may look like this perfectionistic machine and look at what the real message is. Um, from how Martha Stewart lives and all the beauty and amazing ideas she has brought to us and continues to bring to us and her team of creatives is I just bar not like amazing.

So, um,  That, that leads, I guess I'll just wrap up here with the third lesson I learned from Martha. Okay, you're gonna love this one. So I got to see her, she just launched her hundredth cookbook, or her hundredth book actually, her hundredth book, which is incredible, and it's her hundred favorite recipes, and I got to go to an event in Charleston, South Carolina, and I got my book, and we were in this beautiful theater, the Galliard Theater, and And she, uh, she was interviewed by a longtime friend who's also a badass in the business world.

But, um, It was great. It was like two friends chatting and I loved it. But there was something that she said ever so just gently in the conversation and the conversation was around when she was trying to take the company public and she was in, you know, they would have all these meetings and she had a very specific vision of how she was going to bring it to life.

And you might imagine, The bulk of those rooms were filled with men and men are not our traditional host. So I'm sure they were, there's a lot of eye rolling. I can only imagine what all those meetings were like, but here's my takeaway from that. What she said was, Oh, at the end of every meeting, we came in with cookies.

Always bring Cookies is what Martha said and she said it like it was no big deal, but I was envisioning this room of executives and finance guys and stacks of paper and spreadsheets and how are we going to make money and she Rolls up with her cookies to wrap up the meeting and you know what that says to me Listen, this may not be your jam, fellas.

You may not believe in this, but you need to taste a little bit of what I can bring to the table and that's going to change your mind. And by the way, it's also telling you thank you for your time. And that's what I took away from that, was that always bring cookies, right? It kind of ties into like, Always bring a little gift for your host.

I've talked about this in my previous podcast, but it's just that, it's that gesture of appreciation, even in the throes of whatever multi million dollar conversations about taking a company public. She knew that just the sheer gratitude of showing up with some, a plate of, of course, Martha Stewart cookies  was her way of saying thank you.

Thank you for listening to me. Thanks for giving me your attention. Thanks for hearing me out. And so my third and final lesson to share with all of y'all that I learned from that little cookie. You know, quote from Martha is always bring cookies. You know, always say thank you. Always be grateful. Um, and, and as a host as well, not just as a guest, but as a host, show your appreciation to your, your guests for coming and sharing and being a part of your evening or your, Your outing or your gathering and um, I just love that.

So there you go y'all live with intention stay the course always do you and always bring cookies So those are the three lessons I learned from Martha Stewart that I wanted to share with y'all today  Okay, I need a pause.  Okay, how do we want to set the next chapter? Now, in this, in this podcast, we're normally talking about hosting, so we talk about food and drinks and setup, and this episode is no different.

So, first, let's talk about Martha's Food and Drinks. Okay. Now, this will be a little bit controversial. Okay. Okay, y'all, in our podcasts, um, we like to tackle food and drink at, at one point, and so We're going to tackle this one today because, well, we're talking about Martha and I just told you she has a hundred books and God knows how many, I don't know how many magazines she's published over the years, um, in terms of quantity.

But let me tell you something.  I have tackled a ton of her food and drink recipes. So  I'm going to share something today.  Here I'm just highlighting Martha and how much I love her. But at the same time, I want to call out the fact. that, um, some of Martha Stewart's food and drink recipes could be, I would say maybe flawed a little.

And I'm only saying that as someone who went to culinary school folks. Okay. Um, but what I really want to say is that while there might be flawed recipes or ratios that are off, or maybe, um, uh, an, uh, an execution on how to cook something that's not going to quite turn out that I could see it when I was reading a recipe, I will tell you this. 

You can use cookbooks and recipes for inspiration. And so, that's pretty much how I tackle any recipe that I see from Martha Stewart, is I tackle the, the framework of it, I look at her vision for it, what are the flavors she's using, um, is there, um, a little tip or a tidbit on how I, this recipe coming together might be a little easier.

So, um,  you know, just remember that when you're using your, your muse or your, your chef or that cookbook that you just got as a gift, like make sure that you're comfortable using that recipe. Make sure that you've actually, here's, here's a great hosting tip. Make sure you don't ever make a new recipe for the first time when you're hosting, unless you caveat that to all of your guests and say, I'm trying out a new recipe.

Get ready, everyone. You can be my taste testers. Now that could be a fun gathering right there. Blindfold everyone and say, what do you think? Or make them give you a scorecard. I don't know, that sounds kind of funny. That would be a lot of fun. But my point being is that, um, even In all of Martha's Perfection and her entire team of experts over the years, I found many flawed recipes that I would have to tweak or, um, touch up or actually sometimes I had to chuck some, you Uh, some entire recipes altogether.

But, but the point here is that, um, she in, she inspired me, uh, her, her content and her ideas and her creativity and her, oh my gosh, the resources. Um, she, in all of her magazines, when they give a recipe, if there's a hard to find ingredient, she is incredible about showing, sharing the resource with you. And so many of those resources are small business owners and little nooks and crannies all over the country.

And so. Again, just the adventure of tackling a flawed recipe, in fact, taught me a lot. It taught me a lot about different ingredients or a different part of the country or just small farmers or small food producers that, um, took me in a different path. So, um, that is, you know, that's what I wanted to share with y'all on the kind of our food and drink section of our podcast.

So, Our last, when we, we start, before we wrap up completely, we always tackle set up and planning when it comes to hosting and,  you know, here's the thing,  there's your way and then there can be your Martha way of how you set up and plan for a gathering and, um, I'm here to tell you, you set up your way, okay?

You do. You don't get wrapped up. Now, if you're, listen, if you're a spreadsheet person and a checklist per checklist person, and you like documents, and you've got, I mean, I have a notebook. I have a notebook. I sometimes make lists. I sketch out my menus. There are things that I do as a host that helps inspire me.

Some people aren't like that at all. They're on the fly. They have their go-tos. Uh, this is what they do. This is how every hosted gathering is gonna be for them. It's simple. It's. It's, it's, you know, or it's take out or it's whatever. My point here on setup and planning is there's your way. Your way is the way that matters when you are the host.

Okay. And it truly just do you because if you start trying to do it some other way or way that you've seen instead of what like guides you, you're going to be, you're going to be a stress ball. Okay. And that again, we, we talk about this all the time. Get out of your own way. Don't let that kind of level of like, well, this is how I have to do it.

No. No, you, you're, you run a home, whether it's a small home or a family of 12 or whatever your home looks like. You've just got pets galore. You have your way of living and you have your way of doing things and that's how you should tackle, um, anytime you, you host people. So, um,  that is what I have to say about setup and planning this week. 

Make it your way, baby. Um, okay. So we also, wait, I'm going to pause for a minute.  You do it your way, baby. Okay, we're tying in wine about it was Sunday supper. Okay.  All right, as we wrap up, we, what we haven't tackled in this podcast this week is kind of that section where we like to talk about let's whine about it, what's holding you back, and seeing as how this is that time of year when the holidays are in full swing, right?

So right now, I can hear the voices. I don't have time for this. I don't have time for that. You know, just forget this. We got to do this. And I can feel the stress and tension in the air. I don't know about y'all, but just running out to the grocery store yesterday, I can feel that level of energy around me.

And it's just elevated. People are hustling and bustling and you can just feel the stress. And that's why I, you know, and everybody's in the funny thing is people whine about, we sit around and whine about it yet. We know this time of year, it comes every year, stop whining about it. And you know how you stop whining about it and you get over it.

is you go back to your Sunday suppers. We talk about Sunday supper at the end of every episode and Sunday supper actually during this time of year is more important than ever. And by the way, Sunday supper, I've said this as well, does not have to be some formal gathering. You cooked a stew or casserole all weekend or whatever. 

At this time of year, you know what? Your Sunday supper can simply be, uh, let's grab sandwiches, grilled cheese, and tomato soup. Y'all, let's hunker down together. Let's watch a holiday movie. That's that Sunday supper. That's that. It's so important to connect right now, take a breather, move away from the holiday chaos and the stress, um, and just chill.

Just chill. All right? And Sunday supper is going to look really different this time of the year, but I encourage you to To keep doing that, keep that tradition up or start that tradition now and um, just Keep keep on hosting y'all. Keep on hosting with heart. We're going to get through this season. I hope my three Martha Stewart lessons are very helpful for you.

I would love to get your feedback. I would love to get an email from y'all or messages. Comment on any of our podcast platforms. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Buzzsprout. And, um, if you have not joined our newsletter, you need to get there. People go to suncookery. com. Check out what SunCookery is all about.

You'll find a way to get connected with us on a regular basis. Um, because really all we want to do here is teach you how to host for connection and not perfection. All right. I love this episode. I really could not wait to talk about Martha and honestly, I could probably talk about her for hours. Um,  but, um, I hope whoever the Martha is in your life that, um, He or she or they or them are inspiring you right now in this season to do you, to live bright, to shine bright, live with intention and don't forget the cookies y'all.

I'm Michelle, your host of suppers and soirees and the founder of Sun Cookery. We'll see y'all next week. Thanks. Okay, y'all. Next week, let me tell you about next week's podcast that's dropping. I'm so excited about this because it's our first official guest. Yes, we have a guest that came on and it's so timely. I invited one of my closest friends in the universe to join me to talk about what it's like to have a birthday around the holidays.

And in this case, her birthday is actually on December 25th. We had a fun conversation about the traditions that her mother and father built, her family, her friends have all built for her over the years to make sure she still gets her day on a pretty big holiday. So I think y'all will love the conversation.

You'll love hearing someone else's voice besides mine, my friend Betsy, her sweet voice. I can't wait to share this with y'all. Y'all have a great week.  I'm Michelle Mize, your host for Suppers and Soirees and the founder of Sun Cookery.