Girls Night with Stephanie May Wilson

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!I’m so excited about today’s episode. Today we’re talking about how to work from home and actually get work done! I’m excited about this episode because working from home has become more and more popular in the past few years, especially since the aftermath of the pandemic. Some of us work from home full-time and others of us have more of a hybrid schedule and are at home one or two days out of the week.I have personally come to love working from home, but I know it still comes with its challenges which is what we’re diving into today!Our guest for today’s episode is my new friend, Elizabeth McCravy! Elizabeth is a wife, mom, podcaster, and website designer! She designs and sells the most beautiful Showit website templates which we’ll be sure to link to in the show notes along with a discount code. And similar to me she works from her home near Nashville!In this episode she teaches us her tried and true tips for making our workdays at home productive and efficient, while also leaving time for brain breaks and rest. I especially loved the exercise she shared about how to plan our to-dos and work schedule for the week, which you’ll be hearing more about soon! 

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!I’m so excited about today’s episode. Today we’re talking about what to look for in a best friend and how to stay close to your best friends once you’ve found them. And there’s no better person for me to talk about this with than my very best friend in the whole world, Michelle Windhausen. I cannot believe this, but Michelle and I have been friends for over 25 years! We’ve been through so much together, middle school, high school, college, figuring out what we want to do with our lives, meeting and marrying our husbands, and now we have five beautiful daughters between the two of us — including two sets of identical twins. (Which… we’re going to tell that full story in this episode. It’s WILD.) In this episode, we’re chatting about what it is about our friendship that’s made it last so long, how to maintain a friendship, what qualities we should be looking for in a best friend, whether or not it’s possible to have more than one best friend, and that’s just the beginning. I loved this conversation and I love Michelle – I can’t wait for you to hear from her again!

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!I’m so excited about today’s episode because my very dear friend, and Girls Night Favorite, Mariko Clark, is back on the show! (I call her Marri, but we’ll talk about that in the episode!) Today we’re talking about how to make a new city feel like home! Marri has made a few big moves in the past handful of years, so she knows all about the process and what goes into making a decision like this! And she knows how hard of a transition it can be. So today we’re talking about how to make a new city feel like home. We’re talking about everything from finding your closest grocery store, to how to stop feeling like the awkward middle schooler all over again, to how to make true, lasting friendships in your new city.Marri is an absolute treasure. I’m so happy you get to hear from her today. 

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!I’m so excited about today’s episode. Today we’re talking about renovations and real estate and how to get started renovating your house without totally destroying it in the process!I’m excited about this episode because over the past several years I’ve fallen in love with all things interior design! While I’m not perfect at it, I’ve gotten way better, and I absolutely love thinking through a space and making it feel functional and homey. I’ve also watched a crazy amount of HGTV! So it only seems fitting that I invited someone from my favorite TV Network to walk us through this! Our guest for today’s episode is Mina Starsiak Hawk. Mina is a mom, a wife, a podcaster, and the owner of Two Chicks and a Hammer. While she has been renovating homes in Indy since 2008, it wasn't until 2014 when she was approached to do it for TV! Now rolling into season 8 of HGTVs Good Bones while running her brick and mortar store, Two Chicks District Co, she keeps plenty busy! In this episode, Mina shares really practical tips on where to get started when renovating our houses – what to DIY and what to leave to a professional! She also tells about her real estate journey and where to begin if we want to get into that ourselves! Plus, she’s just so fun. I cannot WAIT for you to meet her. 

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!I’m so excited about today’s episode. Today we’re talking about how to know when it’s time to quit your job and how to find a better one. I’m excited about this episode because while I know some of us have jobs we love, that’s just not the case for all of us. And if you have a job that you don’t necessarily love (or that you totally hate), what do you do? Should you leave? Or should you stick it out a little bit longer? How do you decide? And even if you’re sure you do want to leave, there’s always the fear that you won’t be able to find something better. So how do we figure this out? How do we know when it’s time to leave our job? And what do we need to do to find something better?Today’s guest is going to help us answer these questions! Our guest for today’s episode is Ashley Stahl. Ashley is a ​​career expert, podcast host, international bestselling author, and she has SO much wisdom to offer on this topic.I cannot wait for you to hear from her!

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!Friends, welcome to Season 17 of The Girls Night Podcast! I’m super excited to be back! We have some really amazing guests lined up and I cannot wait to introduce you to them! But today’s guest really doesn’t need an introduction, because y’all already know him! Today, my sweet and amazing husband, Carl Wilson, is joining me back on the show! I’m really excited about today’s conversation! Today we’re talking about how to plan holiday celebrations with your spouse and talk through expectations!You’re going to hear the story of our first Valentine’s Day together and the story of our first wedding anniversary – and how we learned very quickly that talking through your expectations is a must for a healthy and happy marriage!Here are few more things we talk about in the episode:How to plan for special occasions like Valentine’s Day or Birthdays and get on the same page about gifts and what you’re going to do to celebrateHow to split up time between families during holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas and think about what traditions you want to create togetherWe also talk about our new course The Marriage Starter Kit and why it might be helpful for you as you navigate your first few years of marriageIf you’ve ever felt disappointed after a holiday because things didn’t play out the way you hoped they would, this conversation is for you! 

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!At the moment we’re in between seasons here on the show. But while we’re waiting for our next official season to begin, we thought this would be a great time to pull some of our favorite episodes out of the Girls Night archive. This is the perfect time to catch up on episodes you might have missed, or listen again to old favorites. Our guests for today’s episode are three of my closest friends, Emily Tuttle, Suzy Hachey, and Heather Reed. Y’all, these women are amazing, they’re my people — some of my my best friends, my most trusted advisers, women who have been in my corner for years, and I’m so excited for you to get to meet them. This conversation was so much fun because it happened while we were all together having a big weekend-long girls night at my house in Nashville, something that rarely gets to happen.The four of us live in all different corners of the country and don’t get to see each other very often. (It’s the worst right? I hate being away from my people.) Yet, the amazing thing is that even though we’ve lived apart for so much of our 6-year friendship, we’re closer than ever, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about today! We’re talking about how to find and form friendships with people who are really your people — and how to maintain and even deepen those friendships no matter how far away you live from each other. I cannot wait to share this episode with you!

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!At the moment we’re in between seasons here on the show. But while we’re waiting for our next official season to begin, we thought this would be a great time to pull some of our favorite episodes out of the Girls Night archive. This is the perfect time to catch up on episodes you might have missed, or listen again to old favorites. Today we’re talking about how to travel solo. I love this topic because traveling is absolutely one of my favorite things to do and has played an irreplaceable role in my story! I’ve had the privilege of visiting places all around the world and every time I come back feeling more inspired and more full of life and just more like myself.But while I love traveling, I know firsthand how hard it can be to actually make a trip happen. Sometimes it’s finances that get in the way, sometimes it’s work, and a lot of times, we find that we don’t have anyone to go with! That’s why I’m so excited to have my dear friend Gennean Woodall back on Girls Night to talk us through this. Gennean is a travel planner and content creator, and she has traveled to places all around the world… all by herself.Like most of us, she had some major reservations about traveling solo. (Is it safe? Will I be lonely? Can I actually do this?!) But she’s figured out a formula that really works and now, traveling solo is her favorite way to go.She also has grown so much as a person through these solo trips. I honestly can’t wait to take one myself! Friend, if you’ve been dreaming of taking a trip and are ready to actually make it happen — this episode is for you.Gennean equips and empowers us to do the things we’ve been dreaming about for so long, and I’m so excited to share this conversation with you. 

At the moment we’re in between seasons here on the show. But while we’re waiting for our next official season to begin, we thought this would be a great time to pull some of our favorite episodes out of the Girls Night archive. This is the perfect time to catch up on episodes you might have missed, or listen again to old favorites. Our guest for today’s episode is my friend, Brianna Glenn. We’ve had Bri on the show before, but I knew I needed to have her back because she’s been one of y’alls favorites. I love that. She’s one of my favorites too. For those of you who don’t know her already, Bri is the mastermind behind Milk and Honey Travels, a boutique travel agency helping you go on the trip of your dreams. She helps people figure out what kinds of travel experiences they want to have, and then she actually makes them happen!I love this because that’s exactly what Bri is going to do for us today. So many of us want to go traveling with friends — whether that’s an epic adventure overseas or a quick cabin weekend, but if you’ve ever tried to plan a girls trip, you’ve probably discovered that they’re not all that easy. Everyone has different schedules, budgets, travel preferences, and that’s just the beginning. Not only are the logistics tricky, but it’s a vulnerable thing to ask friends to travel with you. What if they say no? And because of all of this, it’s really tempting to put girls trips in the “Would be nice” column in our lives, and never actually make them a reality.But they can be a reality, and today Bri is going to teach us how. 

Hey friends! Welcome to Girls’ Night!I’m so excited about today’s episode. Backing up a little bit…Before Carl and I had kids, one of the most common things people would say to us is, “Travel now before you have kids, because once you have them, you won’t be able to!” The first time I heard that, I sort of brushed it off. Travel was (and IS!) such a huge, important part of my life, surely that wasn’t true. Right? But eventually, I’d heard that same phrase enough times from enough different people that I started to get scared.Did I have to turn in my Passport the day I became a mom? It felt like the answer was yes! And what would becoming a mom mean for the other dreams I had for my life? Would I have to give those up too?Friends — I wrestled with this question for YEARS. No joke, YEARS. In so many ways, I felt like I had to choose between being myself and being a mom. It was NOT an easy decision to make.Finally, I learned that this isn’t actually true — you CAN still be yourself and pursue your dreams and YES, even travel, after you have kids. And the way I found this out was through the example of other women who were going before me. That’s why I’m so excited to share this episode with you.Our guest for today’s episode is my new friend, Lindsey Roman. Lindsey is an educator, speaker, photographer, wife and a mom of two, with one more on the way! And she actually had a LOT of the same fears about motherhood that I did.We talk about all of that in this episode. And we also talk about how we both got through those fears. As we recorded this episode, Lindsey was actually in Spain with her family, and we spend a ton of time talking about how to travel with your family and what that’s looked like for her. This was such a fun conversation, but it’s also one that would have brought me SO MUCH peace and encouragement if I’d been able to hear it a few years ago, and so if any of y’all are wrestling with the same things I was, I hope it does exactly that for you.