Sick

Salam 3alaikum ya banaat,

I got sick :-( As soon as we got back from travelling I came down with something flu-like.

You know how it goes... stuffy head, sore throat, caughing, trouble breathing, achy tiredness...

Anyway, my husband made soup for me mashaAllah and I made some tea. This is my feel better tea and I thought I would give you the recipe.

FEEL BETTER TEA

1 teaspoon anise seeds
1 teaspoon black seeds
1 thick slice of lemon (you want to get a piece with some rind on it because there are a lot of good oils in there)
1 chunk of cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon honey
steaming water

put everything in a cup, stir, drink

Anise seeds are a great natural expectorant.
Black seeds are an immune booster (and also part of the sunnah!)
Lemon has a lot of vitamin C and other oils which are anti-microbial.
Cinnamon is anti-inflammatory so it is good for your swollen sinuses and throat.
Honey is also anti-microbial (and part of the sunnah!) and soothes a sore throat.

The best part is everything tastes really yummy too. Don't feel shy to eat the seeds if they are floating around. They are actually really good for you. When I am feeling particularly yucky I will just get a big spoon of lemon, top with anise seed, black seed, and cinnamon powder, then squeeze a lemon on top. Take it like medicine and chew all the seeds really well. Anise seed will taste kind of like licorice and the black seed... well it tastes like black seed. I can't describe it but it tastes good :-P

Housework

Salam 3alaikum ladies,

Alhamdulillah I'm back home now! As you can imagine in had quite a bit of housework waiting for me. Packing always seems to leave the house in a huge mess...

It got me thinking that I am really not good at housework. I never had chores as a kid. We were never really home long enough to do regular cleaning. I learned how to clean, but not in any regular or scheduled sort of way.

Our cleaning always consisted of  "Oh crap, your uncle is going to be here in two days. Throw everything in the cloests/drawers/cabinets and do some dusting!!"

Anyway, for now alhamdulillah I am able to be a housewife. (Since I was young I always knew I wanted to be home for family so I am so grateful that I am able to do this.) But now I am faced with having to do regular cleaning and cooking and things that my life with my family didn't prepare me for.

My interest seems to come and go... some days I am so excited about cleaning and I will clean the whole house top to bottom and I feel so good and the house looks so nice! Maybe I will even be able to keep it up for a while. Then I will go for days and can barely get myself to wash the pan I used to make dinner, let alone all of the cups and plates and spoons.

I need to get myself more regulated because I sort of swing to the extremes. MashaAllah my husband is so patient with it and he never complains, but I feel like I can do better. This is my job after all, and it is something I should take pride in.

Any tips??? I'm feeling desperate about getting into a good schedule, but unsure how I should do that.

Delay

Salam 3alaikum ya banaat,

I'm probably going to have a brief hiatus for maybe a week inshaAllah.

We have one computer, one car, and no TV so internet time is low right now. Also inshaAllah we will travel for a few days this week. I'm hoping to be back by this weekend inshaAllah!

Have a great weeeeeeeek!!

First Things First

When I was a kid, my parents expected us kids to clean our plates during meal time and I ended up creating a process to help myself do that.

The first thing I eat from a plate of food is the thing I want the least. I eat all of it. Then I go in order down until I get to the thing I like the best and I always finish my meal with a bite of the thing I like the most. If there are two things I like the most, then I alternate between those two until it's all gone.

I still keep this practice up to this day, though I don't always realize I'm doing it. It has even spread to the way I eat candies and desserts...

I really started noticing it once I got married because my husband and I generally eat from a shared plate of food. However, he eats the stuff that he likes first, and it is usually the same as the stuff that I like, so he ends up eating all the good stuff before I get there lol.

I don't think this is something I do obsessively, but I do find it comforting and it is the habit that I almost always fall into.

Do you have any odd habits that surfaced after marriage?

Truly Practicing - Any Advice?

Salam 3alaikum ya banaat,

This is a little off the topic of marriage but it is something that I'm dealing with now.

I have and have had a very strong belief in Islam that, alhamdulillah, has never faltered since the day I converted to Islam.

However the last few months I am having difficulty keeping up with all of the things that I use to do to actually practice my religion. MashaAllah I use to pray my sunnah prayers and fast regularly and constantly be reading and learning about Islam but lately my motivation seems to be getting less and it is really scaring me because I don't want to become the kind of person who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

I feel like my iman (belief) is strong, I feel so convicted that Islam is the right way, but practice has become... harder.

It started when I moved back in with my parents a few months ago (who are not muslim).  Alhamdulillah it is a little better since I got married, but I still feel that I am not up to my own standards.

I think it is a test, and maybe everyone goes through this at some point, but it scares me and I want to do better inshaAllah.

Do you have any advice? What are good steps to help correct this problem? Anyone else having/had this problem?

So Cheap *Updated*

I realllly hate spending money on stuff.

I see women online showing these "shopping haul"'s where they spend ridiculous amounts of money on cosmetics and stuff and I just can't believe it... to me it seems like a huge waste. I'm sure they have their reasons for spending so much, or maybe they just do it because they can.


I read this paragraph a few more times and realized I sounded super judge-y and condescending which is wrong and also not the way I was actually feeling about the subject. So here is my sincere apology for that bit of foolishness.


What I really mean to say is that I understand why women spend on better quality products (when it is within  their means to do so) it just is something not very practical for me since I wear makeup only a few hours during the day and wash it off well each night. I don't wear foundation or anything all day like some women, and the better quality in this case can make a big difference.


But spending a bunch on colors has never been within my means and I always did very well with "off brand" products and had no complaints, so it seemed wasteful to me to spend more money on it. I need to remember that not everyone is in my same situation that buying quality or name brand products is a huge splurge or burden.

Anyway, I wanted to show you my walmart shopping haul from today :-P

Loreal Healthy Look Color: On sale for $4.00
Glycerin:                                               $2.98
NYC Liquid Eyeliner:                            $2.74
Vaseline Bath Beads:                            $1.98
NYC Pencil Sharpener:                         $0.93
NYC Retro Red Lipstick:                     $0.93
TOTAL                                             $13.56


And I feel like this was a total splurge... HAHA

My last beauty real beauty purchase was several months ago. It was a huge kit from Ulta with 36 eye shadows, 4 eye liners, 6 blushes, a bronzer, a powder, a concealer, at least 10 lip colors, and a set of travel makeup brushes for like $25. It was the first time I ever owned my own set of colors. Before I had always used my mom's!

Do you spend the big bucks on cosmetics and beauty products? What do you find are the benefits of upgrading? Any thrifty tips?

Compromise

Salam 3alaikum!

So I've heard that marriage is about compromise. I feel like this is especially true when  you come from two different cultures. Here are some ways that we have started compromising...

source

Win for America:

• cold milk really is good with sweet stuff
• peanut butter is a completely acceptable sandwich filling
• every tv show doesn't need to be a soap opera
• biscuits can go with almost any meal (and are not cookies lol)

Win for Arabia:

• kibdeh (liver) is really delicious for breakfast
• qahwa is waaaay better than black coffee
• soccer > football
• looking nice in the house is not a waste of time and effort

How do you compromise? Are there things that you refuse to compromise about? Do you feel like you are always the one who has to give in?

Fasting

Today my husband and I fasted for the first time together. I took this time to sort of freshen up on some rules and regulations of fasting when you're married.

#1 All of the normal fasting rules apply.

#2 A Wife should have her husband's permission to do voluntary fasts outside of Ramadhan as long as he is present. I decided that inshaAllah if I want to fast, I will just ask him to do it with me. If he doesn't feel like he is able to fast then inshaAllah I will wait for another day.

#3 No funny  business if you know what I mean. You can kiss and hug, but not if it will lead to more.

#4 A Wife should not spend all of her time preparing fatoor. I think this is less of an issue when doing voluntary fasting than when fasting in Ramadhan, but it is a good reminder.

Alhamdulillah it is winter so the day was quite short. We broke fast with dates and water/ milk. Then we had salad, soup, roasted veges and grilled steak and chicken for fatoor. MashaAllah my husband grilled for me :-D

Any other advice or reminders for fasting while married??

Secrets

Salam 3alaikum

So I learned during my reading that one of a jobs of a Muslim Wife is to keep her husbands secrets.

If I write about some of our interactions here, am I telling his secrets? I intend to not reveal our identities, but some things I would like to talk about I'm not sure he would approve of me talking to my friends about face-to-face so does this apply if we are anonymous as well? I don't plan on anything disrespectful or uncovering his faults or anything, but there are things that I really need other women's advice about and my mother is not Muslim and I need good female guidance from other ladies who are facing situations like mine inshaAllah.

What do you think? I would really appreciate your point of view as I can't find any advice particular to this situation...

Jazakum Allah khair!!!

Sooo Weird

It is still completely weird for me to think of myself as being "married" and referring to my "husband" and stuff, HAHA!

Did you have this problem when you first got married??

New Wife Intro

Ok so now a little background info...

I met my husband about 3 and a half years ago on campus in university. We had a class together and he was a part of a large group of us that studied together since I was one of the few in the class that didn't mind sharing my class notes with students who spoke English as a second language. I met many other muslims during university and I eventually converted to Islam about 10 months later alhamdulillah.

He went back home a few days after I converted to Islam but apparently continued to hear good things about me from people in the masjid. A few months ago he approached me about getting hitched and I said yes, yay!! I kind of had a big crush on him before (lol) and mashaAllah he was a good practicing brother.

Alhamdulillah we got married about 2 months ago and things are going well, but I realized that there were a looooooot of things that I didn't know about marriage. Like how to look pretty at home (since I pretty much gave up on "primping" when I was in high school, especially after I converted to Islam), how took cook good food (not just desserts lol), all of the purity rules involved in Islam once you get married, and a bunch of other stuff.

Oh and my husband is Arab, I'm American, so there will probably be some cultural stuff coming up here too. And also his parents don't know yet that we got married... so please make du3a for our situation. They do not approve of mix-culture marriages, but he prayed and felt that I was the one he was supposed to marry.

Please help me learn and inshaAllah I will post what I learn here!

New Wife Mission Statement

Salam 3alaikum!

I am a New Wife. I was married almost two months ago and I wanted a place where I could share with other sisters things that married ladies need to know.

I am definitely still learning but I know there are many more sisters out there who could give me good advice and sisters that I can learn with inshaAllah!

So the purpose of this blog will be a collection of advice, tips, tricks, info, etc. about being Muslim and Married.

The next post inshaAllah will have a little bit more information about me!

On and please I would like to keep this space ladies only inshaAllah!!!