Cape Cod Gift Ideas Part II

For those of you following us on Twitter, we now have posted twenty great Cape Cod gift ideas to help you with your holiday shopping. Over the next ten days, we will post ten more. You can learn about them on Twitter every day at noon, or we will post them here in ten days.

Idea # 11 - A sand snowflake ornament from your favorite Cape Cod Beach.
Idea #12 - A carved house number sign from the Chatham Sign Shop.
Idea #13 - A glass plate (or bowl) from Sydenstrickers.
Idea #14 - Gourmet oil and vinegar from Gustare - one of our favorites is the Cinnamon Pear Balsamic.
Idea # 15 - A Captain's House Inn robe.
Idea # 16 - A gift certifcate to Buca's - one of our favorite year round restaurants.
Idea #17 - A Cape Cod photograph from Jon Vaughan - the Peaked Hills is one of our favorites.
Idea # 18 - A subscription to Cape Cod Life Magazine.
Idea #19 - A "Dogs of Cape Cod" 2010 calendar.
Idea #20 - A Cape Cod doormat.

Civil Disputes: Arguing Innkeeper Style

Despite the fact that I love my husband, there are times I want to wring his neck. I’m sure he would say the same about me. After all, we live together and work together – we’re bound to have our differences. But, as I tell my interns, who also live and work together, it’s important to keep the fists from flying at work and to leave personal issues at home. Easier said than done. There are occasions when an argument erupts at the inn, but we have learned over the years a few rules of combat so as not to alarm our guests:

1. No yelling. Granted, “am I the only one around here who knows how to change a bloody (our English interns taught us this supposedly “bad” word) light bulb?!” holds a lot more caché when screeched across the room at full volume, but learning how to whisper-yell is key to keeping brawls under wraps. (As a side note, James is not the only one who knows how to change a bloody light bulb, but he is the best and fastest at doing the hard to reach ones, so frequently gets requests to do so. Sometimes, my timing is off.)

2. Obscene hand gestures must be disguised. Now, I can’t reveal our secret signal in case you happen to stay at the inn and notice us using it. But remember that Friends episode when they strike their fists together instead of “flipping the bird?” Something like that would suffice.

3. Fight it out in private. Designate a fighting zone at the inn, preferably a padded sound proof room far away from guests. And steer clear of the kitchen. Too many knives.

4. Agree to disagree. Generally James and I see eye to eye and work exceptionally well together. I’m assuming that’s the case for the majority of husband-wife innkeeping teams or they probably wouldn’t have attempted to go into business together. But no matter how in synch two people are, you can’t possibly agree on everything.

5. Choose your battles. I’m quite certain James had no interest whatsoever in replacing the creepy portraits that used to hang in the sitting area. But he humored me and the sitting area is now a better place because of it. Likewise, I feign concern every time he uses the phrase “fiscally responsible.”

6. Accept defeat. Two years ago, I desperately wanted to give the foyer a facelift, but my decorating argument didn’t hold much water against putting the money toward roofing work that needed to get done. As much as I hated to live another year with those creepy portraits and wallpaper which was not my personal taste, the image of a leaky ceiling in the middle of the summer was enough to shut me up. For a year anyway.

The bottom line is, arguing is to be expected and in many ways, is a good practice. We all need to clear the air and vent every now and then. But when work and home mesh into one, as is often the case for innkeepers, it’s important to lay down some ground rules…unless you want to scare away your guests! If you're considering buying and running an inn (or any business for that matter) with your spouse, here are a few articles on the subject:

How To Work (If You Must) With Your Spouse

Work & Life: Working With Your Spouse

Working With A Spouse In A Small Business Partnership

The Benefits of Working with Your Spouse

Avoiding Packing on the Pounds as an Innkeeper

Although I’m not a big partaker in the new years resolution tradition, I do always find myself counting calories and hitting the gym more frequently around this time of year. For me, it’s not the holiday parties and temptations that do it, but the sudden slower pace at the inn and therefore less physical activity. Being an innkeeper is like celebrating the holidays year round. The kitchen always smells like chocolate chip cookies or bacon and there is a constant stream of coffee cakes, cookies, tea sandwiches, egg casseroles, blueberry pancakes and French toast leaving the kitchen on beautifully decorated plates and leftovers going to waste if the staff doesn’t eat it. So, for all aspiring innkeepers who fear the relentless lure of baked goods resulting in reliving the “freshman 15”, and in light of the new year resolution season, here is a brief list of tricks that have helped me over the years and that I still try to fall back on when I see a big plate of royal toffee chocolate bars…my arch nemesis.

1. Try to think of the food at the inn as work. Metaphorically speaking, a jeweler can’t bring home all the diamonds in the store, right? So don’t eat all the cookies at the inn.

2. It is important to taste the food that gets served for quality control. But don’t use this as an excuse to eat an entire stack of flapjacks. Take one bite and judge. And remember – the next bite is going to taste exactly the same as the first.

3. Recreate dishes with low fat ingredients. For example, Kevin makes a mean breakfast burrito which is great for a treat when you’re on vacation, but for the innkeeper who sees it pop up in the rotation every couple weeks, it’s best to trick your taste buds. For this particular dish, I take a low carb burrito and stuff it with egg beaters mixed with low fat cheese, diced jalapeños, peppers, onions, and center cut bacon, then wrap it and top with spicy salsa.

4. If you’re an innkeeper like myself who is lucky enough to have a fitness center on site, use it. Hate is a strong word, but I am using it to describe my feelings about going to the gym. Still, I hate when my jeans start feeling snug even more, so I bite the bullet and go….sometimes.

5. Eat breakfast before you start serving your guests. You may not be starving first thing in the morning, but you certainly will be after an hour or two of breakfast service and at that point, leftover sausage links and Belgium waffles will somehow sneak into your mouth.

What Nobody Ever Tells You About Innkeeping

Before we knew it, the winter was behind us and we found ourselves in the throws of a busy summer. We were into a routine – James cooked the breakfasts and I served them each morning. We waited until all the guests had eaten and the dishes were done until we had our own breakfast. Then we stripped and stocked the rooms for the housekeeper, booked reservations, answered emails, paid the bills, dealt with maintenance, worked in the gardens, checked guests in, and baked cookies…all before lunch. We expected all of this. But here are a few things no one ever told us:

- Sheets on hotel beds don’t just come out of the dryer looking crisp and wrinkle free. Someone has to iron those. That someone turned out to be me. Every day, I’d tackle a pile of sheets – at first I pressed the entire set – have you ever tried to iron a fitted sheet? I quickly wised up and realized that ironing the pillow cases and the first quarter or so of the flat sheet was sufficient. We went through a lot of starch.

- People actually walk into your personal living space without knocking. We immediate invested in a “Private” sign. It didn’t help.

- It is almost impossible to eat a meal without interruption. We would sit down to eat dinner and inevitably the phone or doorbell would ring or a smoke detector would go off or a pipe would burst or something.

- There’s no crying in innkeeping. I’ve always been a bit of an oversensitive type – you know, tearing up during hallmark commercials, rescuing stray animals, that kind of thing. That all changed quickly when I became an innkeeper. I’ve allowed a guest to make me cry exactly once and it was a pitiful and humiliating experience I don’t care to repeat. Innkeepers have to have a backbone, or get one fast.

- Speaking of backbones, housekeepers are the backbone of any bed and breakfast, motel, hotel, resort, etc. There is absolutely no way to run a successful hospitality operation without relying on a housekeeping staff. When we bought the Carriage House, we banked on doing a lot of the cleaning ourselves. Wrong. Our housekeeper became our best friend and money very well spent.

- You can’t please everyone. Believe me, I’ve tried!