pages offline

Hey guys
Can I edit pages offline without having to activate the maintenance mode? I have a few pages that I don’t want to display on my front page yet, the homepage should be online though. I tried saving them as “drafts” and as private and not public but they still appear on my website, even when I delete them they still appear in my main menu bar and when you click on it, it says “page not found”. Only when I completely delete from my trash then they disappear on my front page, but that’s not what I’m looking after. I want to keep them in my backend.

Thanks for the help.
Aline