Learning to be a Wife

First photograph as a wife! 

As in most situations in my life, I like to do things out of order.  Give me a to-do list, I'll get it done in some scatterbrained sequence.  Unloading a dishwasher, I will remove some on top, then bottom, then forks, back to bottom, etc.

Blogging appears to reflect the above.

This post should have been first.


My real reason for a blog is because my husband and I made the decision even before our engagement that we wanted  our marriage and future family to reflect God's design for these things, even if that means "going against the grain" and looking weird.

One of the biggest decisions this affected was my job.  I went to school for Elementary Education and graduated this past spring.  Right before student teaching began he proposed and that's when the decision making began!  Our wedding date was set for July 20 of that same year.

We started considering what would be best for our marriage.  The question evolved: would our marriage be better or worse if I committed to full time teaching?  For us, the answer was worse.

At this, we discussed other options for what I would do with my time.  Some of the options included tutoring, teaching assistant positions, even apprenticing at a florist to learn how to make flower arrangements (I kind of really like flowers).  After talking with a family who invested in us a lot during our engagement, we knew the best decision was for me to work for that family as a training opportunity to learn how to be a wife and mother.

If we go to school since we are 4 to be well equipped for whatever profession we choose, I realized how important it is to train to be a wife and mother even more.  I want to be a great wife and mother above being great in a career.

This is what we felt was best for our family given our situations, personalities, and where God has us.  Nothing wrong with a great career, but I did not have the capacity for both at the time of our wedding.

This where the blog came from!  I know absolutely nothing about being a wife.  This serves as a way to document what I am learning, gain wisdom from people who are ahead of me, and hopefully, help women who are in a similar spot as me.

Learning to Go Kroger-ing

Yes, that is the exact pleasantly relaxed smile I express when deciding which bagels are the best value. 

The original title for this post was, "Learning to Grocery Shop", but because of my amateur status in buying groceries, I figured there would be plenty of posts in the future as I learn this art.

Since my husband and I are on a strict budget (or attempting it), cutting on groceries is HUGE.  Luckily, the family I work for is an amazing model for how to be modest and smart with food shopping without eating rice and beans every night.  Still... this is a struggle for me.

I am not sure I understand how people save monumental amounts with coupons because most of them are either for things I don't buy or are for name brands in which the generic is still cheaper. Though my determination for figuring out this money saving trick has not yet faltered!

My other issue is the amount of time it takes me to grocery shop.  I am often the annoying customer asking employees where very obviously placed food items are located because I cannot find them.  This is followed up by me jogging through the store with my big, loaded-down cart apologizing to everyone because I need to get home soon.  I also like to examine the price per ounce for everything... it is kind of embarrassing how long it takes me to make it around the store (alright, about 3 times around the store).

 One win in grocery shopping I experienced this past week occurred at Kroger with their "Buy 10, Save 5" sale.  In my first shopping rendezvous, I carefully planned which items from this sale were a good deal and how many of each to get.  I felt successful, but once arriving home realized how big of a deal this was!  Pasta seriously was $0.47 for a box and the Kroger brand is normally $1.00.  At this, I jumped back in my car the next day and bought 10 boxes of varieties of pasta and saved us a lot of money on pasta for probably the next 6 months or longer.  I picked up a couple other things I forgot, but saved 61%!

For us, we want to have the flexibility to be generous and a blessing to people.  At the same time, I very much value eating well and taking care of our bodies.  By learning how to save money on groceries while not sacrificing our health, I hope to allow our family to give more freely.

This is definitely an adventure and a whole new territory for me.  And please, by all means, if you have any insight into this, tell me what you know :)

More to come!

Learning to Host

I have been completely intimidated by the idea of having people over for dinner.

For me it was a struggle to not feel like my worth was found in how well I can cook.  I am learning how to balance being hospitable and a blessing, without my motivation being to impress in hopes people will like me.

I started out the week with an extravagant meal idea... that I had never even near cooked before.  Maybe at some point its great to try new recipes with friends, but when I don't even know the basics--probably not.

Here is the link to what I actually made:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/baked-ziti-ii/detail.aspx

 Our menu was:
-Salad with cranberries and sun flower seeds
-Baked Ziti
-Garlic Bread
-Left over top layer of our wedding cake :)

Everyone loves Italian food, plus if we did not have help eating our wedding cake, I would have taken the entire thing down.

It turned out amazing and since I had made it before, I knew I would be successful with the added bonus of it tasting good.

While it turned out great, I did have a hiccup in the midst of making the Baked Ziti.  I was all into mixing my ingredients before really reading the instructions.  After I had plopped the whole thing in the pan, I read "lightly grease the pan". Lovely.  Since I am a rule follower, I proceeded to dump the whole thing back into the bowl, wash the pan, dry the pan, spray the pan, and transfer the whole thing back into my nicely greased pan.

In the end, we had lots of fun eating, drinking, and playing games with our almost new neighbors.

I learned the whole reason we did this in the first place was to connect with friends.  Being a blessing by serving our friends good food is definitely important, but our first priority was to deepen a friendship.  Maybe that is a key to being hospitable...