I have always loved to be the hostess. Whether its for a quiet night in, game night or a nice dinner party I prefer to have people over to my house. It’s not that my house is set up great to entertain (it’s not), but I just truly enjoy having people over. Am I good at it? Not necessarily, but it’s fun. That all changed when I was pregnant and especially when I had my son. For some reason I lost the desire to host things at my house. It was the dinner party that really got pushed aside. When my son was born I couldn’t even make dinner for myself let alone others. The good news is that after over a year I finally have that desire to host again. How great is that!? I’m back to being the hostess!

It kind of came out of no where. The Captain and I decided to have people over for New Years Eve. Even though we ordered in food, I brought out my china and crystal and we had a nice dinner. I lit candles and cleaned the house and it was fun! Then the next week I suggested we invite 2 couples from my Captain Awesome’s work over for dinner. This time I cooked! We did appetizers, entre (Rachel Ray’s Lazy Baked Greek Chicken)  and dessert and I loved it! The little guy was put to bed and I was able to start my night. I loved the feeling that I COULD do this.

Later that weekend I cooked dinner for the inlaws (meatballs and sauce), and again, I proved to myself that I can take care of my son, but still make things for others. I am sure for some it’s easy, but for me it all sounded so overwhelming for a while.

In the past I hosted wine tasting parties in the back yard, 80’s themed parties and murder mystery parties. It was so fun! I want to get back to doing that. Who doesn’t love a good theme party!?

My house will never be the cleanest,I will never be the best cook, and maybe someday I will have the perfect home to entertain, but I think what makes a great hostess is someone who looks forward to having the job. Most of all I like people to be comfortable. Sit back, relax and enjoy. This hostess is back….now what should I do for my next dinner party?

Have you ever experienced a Brazilian wax? Well I have and if you take any advice I give take this….Don’t do it! Whoever started this trend was a horrible human being. Why do women subject themselves to this? Because it’s sexy? Maybe…but no matter how sexy your man may tell you it is, I promise you it’s not worth the pain.

How about the poor women who wore corsets back in the day? They pulled those things so tight they could barely breath…why did they do this?? So their waist would appear smaller! Fast forward to modern day and us women wear body shapers. I admit that I like to wear them under dresses and stuff. They really do slim you down. But why don’t men have to wear anything to hold themselves in? Maybe their bodies could benefit from a “shaper” of some sort.

Do you know that it takes me 3 hours to get my hair highlighted and cut? (yes I am admitting that I “help” my hair a bit by highlighting). That is a really long time! And why? To feel prettier? Yes! That is the only reason. The good news I do it for me, and for no one else. But I still look at it as a pain in the butt.

High heels are another painful invention. Do my legs look ten times better when I wear them? Sure! But why do my feet have to suffer? Why is it OK to squeeze our feet into pointy toed shoes? Why do we rock 10 inch heels (ok I’m exaggerating)?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t wear them. Sometimes I see women walking all tall and confident in them and think…”wow…I wish I could wear those shoes”. But then I have to wonder if they are feeling excruciating pain with every step like I feel when I wear them. Maybe they are just better actresses than I am!

What do you think? Why have women always been the ones to sacrifice their time, and money and feel the pain to be beautiful. Do you think men appreciate all we do??

When I started this blog, my main goal was to share about my life as a wife. I was newly married, and I really strived at being a good housewife. Why was it so important? Well, it’s because it was what I wanted to be…I work for the money, but I really feel/felt that my calling was to be a wife and mother first and foremost, and at that time I was really able to focus on the “wife” part, so that’s what I did. Over time the blog kind of transformed along with the different paths my life decided to take. Now, I am finally a mother, and loving every second of it…but with all my energy now going into taking care of our child, I feel that my duties with work and around the home have really lacked. I think it’s time to create a new balance in my life to mirror all my new roles….mother, wife, maid, cook, sales person….well you see where I am going.

As you may or may not know I work from home, so for a while that made me a “Work At Home Wife” . Now, not only am I home taking care of our child, I also need to keep up my work load.. so I guess that now makes me a “Work At Home Mom”. I think this is a little different than a SAHM because it adds just one more dynamic to the mix. I know in the long run that I am so very lucky to be able to work from home, but that meant immediately after having my child I was taking work phone calls from the hospital. It also means that I do my work while my son is feeding on my breast, being burped or taking a nap. Basically, any moment that has him quiet. It is a great set up for me and my family, and I know I am lucky to be able to do it. But with our son being my top priority…sometimes work becomes a little more difficult. I am lucky my boss (my dad) has been picking up my slack!

The Captain laughs at me when I try to take on a task rather then having someone else help. Tasks like grocery shopping or bringing in the dry cleaning. My answer to why I don’t want someone to watch the baby while doing these things is “I have to figure it out”. I do! It’s going to be my job to do these things…I want it to be my job, so I have to learn to do it myself WITH the baby. Isn’t that what SAHM’s do? My mom was a SAHM of 3 kids and was able to do everything involving the house. I want to be able to do that too. If that means a bit of a learning curve so be it…I’m up for the challenge.

Things like grocery shopping and cooking are more of a challenge now. I still haven’t figured out how to bring the infant seat into the store and still be able to do a large shopping trip…anyone suggest how that works? If you put the seat into the cart where does the food go? If I bring in the stroller how do I push the cart? For now I am using Pea Pod, the Stop and Shop Grocery delivery service. They are offering free shipping for the next 60 days so that should give me some time to figure it all out. For now, it’s great shopping online and having the groceries delivered to my door. Cooking? Another challenge. I try to do things when the baby is sleeping but sometimes that is hard to do, and it seems that feeding time always comes right when I want to cook. See I like my food hot and served right after cooking. I’m not big on cooking earlier in the day and reheating…just not my thing. I seem to be cooking a few times a week…again, I’m still learning.

The cleaning? A smaller challenge but one none the less. The Captain was nice enough to allow us to get a cleaning lady come this past weekend to do a major clean. See, since my mom left after helping with the baby when he was born I hadn’t been able to do a major clean, and then the holidays came and the house just became a mess. Now, I think I will be able to keep up with the clean since I am starting out with a clean house. Let’s hope that works! If not I do my best…a spic and span house has never been my forte..

So as you can see I am learning. I am learning to balance all the aspects of my life, or at least trying to. The one major thing is that everything else is secondary to taking care of my son. That will always come first. The rest can wait if it needs to.

Let’s give some examples.

Example one:

It’s your friends birthday and you are out celebrating. You start feeling tired and find that another one of your friends is willing to give you a ride home. You tell your husband you’d like to go, and he says he wants to stay. You see he is having a good time, and feel like he shouldn’t have to leave because you want to….so you say….It’s fine if you stay…and he does.

Example Two:

Your Grandfather just died and you just returned from his funeral. You are very sad, but it’s your friends birthday so you decide to go out and celebrate with them. You realize you just aren’t having fun, and want to go home. You tell your husband you are ready to go and he says he wants to stay…you huff a bit…and when he asks if you care if he stays you say….No really it’s FINE…stay.

Do you see the difference? I am not sure why it’s a hard concept for men. Maybe it’s because women are more selfless beings and men are more selfish, but there has to be something in their heads that tells them when it’s really not FINE. My husband isn’t the best at getting the concept. My girlfriend next door jokes that she is going to have a code to help him out next time we are in a situation where it’s really not fine vs. when it really is.

Men may ask…but why don’t you just say that it’s not fine? Well I will give you a bit of a secret guys. Sometimes women just are tired of being the bitch. Sometimes we just wish you’d come to the decision yourselves. That what you want to do at that moment is just not fine, and we just want you to not think about yourselves for a second and to think about us.

My husband tells me I play Jedi mind games with him, and I honestly don’t think I am that hard to figure out. Maybe the “what goes around comes around” technique is appropriate…next time he is sick in bed…instead of offering him tea and such I will tell him…Hey, I think I’m going to go out with my friends…I just don’t feel like sitting in just because you are.  Do you think that will go over well?

I started this post with the idea that I wanted to tell women to just tell their husbands how they feel and not play those games. But it seems it didn’t turn out that way. I guess it just goes back to my previous wifey 101 post with the theme “I want you to WANT to do the dishes”. In this case we just WANT you to want to make the right choices…and that right choice is doing what we want/need you to do. A happy wife is a happy husband:)

It’s Wifey Wednesday over at To Love Honor and Vacuum. I was excited to participate in this weeks discussion since I follow this blog regularly.

All over the internet and TV we hear about Stay at home moms. These wonderful women work hard to keep their family together by raising the children and keeping the house together. I most definitely salute them. But what is not spoken about as often is women who work out of the home and still do the same jobs as a stay at home mom minus the children. I am one of these women….a Work At Home Wife!

There are both positive and negatives of working from home. Although the positives overly outweigh the negatives. The negatives (although few) still exist. Let’s start with the positives. I love working from home. I don’t have to commute, I work on my own schedule, and I can get some household chores done during the day while I work. I am able to stop at the store to pick up items for dinner during the day, and that is a blessing since the grocery stores in Long Island are horrendous on the weekends. The other weekend I had to run to Target on a Saturday and was horrified about the crowds. There is no way I’d be able to keep my sanity if I had to shop these store on Saturdays all the time. I can definitely admit that it makes it easier for me to get what I like to call my “wifely duties” done earlier in the evening. Without a commute, when I am finished with work I can clean/straighten up and start dinner so it’s hot when my husband gets home.

The downside to working from home is in itself working from home…Although I supported myself long before I was married, and have been rather successful at my job, some forget that I actually have to do work. You can’t lie in sales, and if I don’t make the sales I don’t make the money. People sometimes take for granted that I am home. Some will ask favors of me during the day that they would never ask someone who worked outside of the home. They figure…hey…she’s home she can do it. To be honest, sometimes I can…I just hope they realize that if I decline it’s because I actually have work to do! As much as I love being able to do the household chores, I also hate it. There really isn’t much of an excuse for me not to…If both my husband and I were working outside of the home then I would be inclined to ask him to share some of the burden. But how can I? Throwing a load of wash in during the day doesn’t take much time…and should I wait for him to cook dinner while I sit on the couch? Probably not. So I don’t have much of an excuse.

All in all I feel that working from home has allowed me to be a better wife. I also know that in the future when we have children that it will be a blessing that I am able to contribute financially to our family, as well as be in the home for our children. (Even though secretly I want my job title to be STAY AT HOME MOM) So a work at home wife I will continue to be….and for that I am thankful.

Adult Responsibilities

So I jumped into the “grown up” world with both feet, and begun to take care of myself. This meant that I had to get furniture, and pay bills among many other things. I had to set up appointments to get cable, phone service and wait for deliveries. I had to make sure we had heat and electricity. I took care of all my banking and made sure I always had money in the bank. I had a system and it worked for many years.

Now, as a married woman of less than 1 year I find myself handing many of those jobs over to my husband. Now I don’t even have the patience to deal with customer service reps. If they call I just tell them to call back and talk to my husband. This isn’t the old me??? What happened to the independent woman I was/am??? Is it bad that I am happy that I don’t have to deal with many of those things anymore?

My Grandma’s Predicament

I always thought it was sweet when my grandma and grandpa would help each other with things. Even the small things like opening jars, or grabbing glasses out of the cupboards that my grandma couldn’t reach. After years and years of marriage they had a system, and it worked for them. I never really realized what my grandpa did for my grandma, and vice versa, until my grandpa died 3 years ago. My grandma was left struggling with many of the everyday tasks that he “just took care of”. I felt bad for her, and looked at my relationship and realized how already dependent I am on my husband. I have had him around in some capacity for 8 years now, and it sometimes scares me to realize how dependent on him I am already.

For instance, the cable company called yesterday with a deal for us. I listened to the man speak, and after some time I asked him if he could call back in 20 minutes when my husband came home so that it could be explained to him. I found myself not even wanting to deal with that aspect of the household. Why should I? He always does? I couldn’t be bothered with it. Opening jars? Well that’s just a given. I have this jar opening contraption that I used to use….now….I just decide that I will just wait till my husband comes home to open it. What’s the rush? Getting the mail….I never get it! My husband lived at home for many years and never got to “get the mail”. Now, he gets so excited to be able to get the mail that I just let him do it every day. So it just appears on my counter when he gets home. One time, when he was away for a bit, I just never went out to get the mail. Why should I? It just always shows up so I don’t have to remember?

Those are just a few examples, but as time goes on our roles as husband and wife seem more defined. Is this just part of marriage? Once you get married, is it ok to let go of some of the control? Am I less of an “Independent Woman” now that I am more inclined to let my husband take care of things? What are your experiences with this?

IF YOU HAD ALL THE MONEY YOU NEEDED, AND YOU COULD ONLY PICK ONE, WHICH PAID STAFF/PERSON WOULD YOU HIRE?

A few examples would be a personal chef to cook your meals, a maid to clean your house, a driver to take you where you need to go. I am very curious to hear what you would choose and why.

A Driver

Personally, as of right now, at this point in my life, I would choose a driver. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but for those of you who know me personally I have many an issue with transportation. I hate the train, I hate not being able to leave a place when I want to, but I also hate being the sober driver when we are out. Not to mention the fact that my family lives in PA and it would be wonderful to hit the belt parkway in the comforts of the backseat of a town car! (A little side note..the belt parkway is a hellish road that is constantly backed up with traffic!)

I am pretty positive that once I have children that my priorities would change. Days of worrying about transportation to and from the bars will be a thing of the past. At that time I am sure that I would choose a maid. That would be my second choice. With kids running around and the activities that come with being a mom, I would be left to believe that a spic and span house would not be a number one priority.

So ladies please share! I’m curious to know what you all would choose!

I believe the tradition started out back when I graduated college and my husband still had one more year. Since then it has morphed and changed to what it is today. Back in the day, Thursday nights were a big college night out. Being that I was no longer an undergrad, I felt it wasn’t my place to be going out to the same old places, not to mention the fact that the 3 am bedtime does not fit well when I had work the next day. Therefore, I was left on my own on Thursday nights. It turned out to be wonderful. I’d watch my favorite shows, and relax. It was wonderful “me” time.

Over the years it continued. When my husband was in law school he would normally be studying Thursday nights (among others) and for those 3 years I still had my time. When we moved into our town house my husband started Krav Maga classes. This still kept him busy on Thursday nights, and at this point  Martooni Thursdays came to be! I never really thought about it, but now that I look back I can see that it was a great opportunity to have a date night with myself.

Me Time – The Birth of the Martooni

The name “Martooni” came from my dad who invented the little word for martini. It is a little joke in my family because it seems that when any of us indulge in martinis the night gets a little more exciting. Martooni Thursdays don’t always have to be with martinis. Wine is a wonderful substitute, or anything else that helps with much needed relaxation.

Me Time – The Martooni Tradition Interrupted

Now here is where the dilemma begins. Before our wedding my husband stopped taking his classes due to the utter violence it forced him to face week after week. I could not have my groom standing at the alter with a black eye. And after the wedding he never returned. This alas left me with his company on Thursday nights, not to mention his constant nagging about how “awful” he thinks my shows are. Also, he has felt the need to invite his friends over so that I cannot concentrate due to their loud conversations. When this happens I am left to be thankful for my DVR. Now, I love my husband, and I love to hang out with him as much as possible, but I personally feel that being a wife does not make it ok to lose my sacred night of television and adult beverages.

Me Time – The Martooni Tradition Reborn

Now is the time that  I must mention the small ray of hope I have to regain my 7 year tradition. And that ray can be explained in one word….POKER! Yes, someone must have smiled down on me and taken pity on me. My husband has recently been playing poker with his friends on Thursday nights. Personally, I think my husband should be grateful to have such an understanding wife, who allows him to attend his weekly poker game. Who am I to stand in his way??? I’ll tell you who…a woman who whether right, wrong or indifferent gets overly excited for Thursday night TV.

Now let me leave you with this little piece of information. I have found the perfect and easy Apple martini. I don’t have the patience to make one from scratch so I buy Mancini’s pre made apple martinis.

It is the perfect amount of alcohol and gives you that martini kick. I have tried others and have been left disappointed. So this will be my recommendation.

So to all of you ladies out there who are looking for an excuse to have a night to yourself….why not start your own Martooni Thursday?!

If it’s not your thing then please share your personal “individual date night” stories! I am always open to suggestions!