It's not just about "them"

Remember to take care of yourself too!

By nature, women are nurturers and care-takers. If someone within a 50 mile radius has a problem, a woman will try to help them! WAHMs are no exception. They spend their days caught up in a whirlwind of taking care of their families, housework and working their businesses.

However, a WAHM can easily become to busy to take care of herself! Yes, you work from home, and you may be able to conduct your business wearing sweat pants and bunny slippers, but that doesn’t mean you should. Remember that every time you go out in public you are surrounded by potential business clients. You should look professional and well-groomed – you never know who you are going to run into!

Even if you stay locked-up in the house all day, it is important that you feel pretty. When you look in the mirror and see a well-groomed, professional woman looking back at you, you will feel more confident and more competent in all areas of your life, including your business!

When you wake up in the morning, don’t just throw on your old sweats. You don’t have to wear a business suit either, but try to aim for something in the middle of those two choices. A simple shirt under a cardigan sweater and some nice jeans or slacks will do the trick. If you simply do not have the time to wash and blow-dry your hair, put your hair in some Velcro rollers while you get breakfast ready. They will add body and style to your hair. Take five minutes to put on some mascara and lip gloss; and don’t forget to add a spritz of perfume.

If the last time you bought yourself a new outfit has been so long the clothes you are wearing are coming back in style for the second time around, that is a clue you need to update your wardrobe!

When you accomplish a goal, celebrate by getting a manicure or pedicure. Keep your hairstyle fresh by getting a trim every few months. You may be a WAHM but you are still a woman!

You deserve to feel special!

Create Your Own Money

Creating your own income opportunities, you can do it!

Have you been looking for a way to earn money from home? Why not take the skills you currently have and build a business around them? You will be able to create your own work schedule and can choose to work with local businesses or with people you meet online.

People that are proficient in web design can easily find work. Many people want to start an online business but don’t know the first thing about building a website – just visit any work at home message board and you will see many posts asking for help!

Are you creative? If so, you can find work as a graphic designer. Many people need help designing logos and advertising for their businesses. If you enjoy writing, you can find work as a copywriter – the person who writes the information you read on websites. Do you enjoy social media, find a way to market your skill.

If you would rather work offline, there are still plenty of opportunities for you. Just market your services creatively – let businesses know how you can help them. For instance, if you were a teacher, now you can be an “Educational Consultant” and coordinate lesson plans for local daycares or homeschooling parents! If you were the manager at a restaurant, you can turn that into a “Catering Consultant” and help caterers and restaurants come up with new recipes or help brides plan their wedding menus.

Moms are expert organizers – offer up your skills as a “professional organizer” and get paid to clean out closets, attics and garages. Are you an expert at throwing birthday parties? Many busy parents would hire you to take care of planning their children’s parties.

Are you good at sewing, knitting or scrapbooking or some other craft? Hold classes to teach others. If you do not have room at your home, ask your local hobby shop if you can hold classes there or in our area you can use the Panera "room" for free.

As you can see, there are many ways to turn your skills into ways to work from home. Once you decide on something to do, get out there and let everyone know you are available for hire! If you do not ask for work, you won’t find any!

Tuesday Toot

I almost forgot about Tuesday Toot



Wow, it's Tuesday Toot time. I took last week off as I really didn't have anything to Toot about, and then I almost forgot this week.

Personal Toot: We had a fabulous birthday party for my 4 yr old on Sunday at their gymnastics center. The kids has a blast!

Starting to get caught back up on work!

The dishes can wait? Stay Focused

If you are like me and get easily distracted, staying focused on your business can be harder than doing the actual work of your business! It is very easy to procrastinate, especially when you are a WAHM. There are always ‘so many other things to do’ and so many social networks to visit.

Here is a secret that you may not have heard yet: The dishes can wait! The laundry can wait! So feel free to make those phone calls or answer those emails. The laundry and dishes will still be there, waiting for you! However, if you wait too long to call a client back, they may move on to someone who gets back to them faster than you do.

Why did you become a WAHM in the first place? Did you need to bring in an extra $500 a month to pay off credit cards? Was it to put money away for your children’s college fund? Or was it to save for retirement? Whatever the reason, write it down and put it where you will see it on a daily basis. When you are feeling distracted, look at what you wrote down. It will be easier to work when you remember why you are working in the first place.

You may want to team up with another WAHM. Send each other your goals and keep one another accountable. Call each other at the end of the day and discuss what you accomplished; you can share your successes or lend each other a sympathetic ear over things that didn’t go as you planned.

Stay motivated by setting daily, weekly and monthly goals. If you “work backwards” you will create a road map to your success. For instance, if you are in direct sales and your financial goal is to sell $1500 in product that month. Do the math and you’ll see that you need to sell $375 of product each week. Now, how many home parties do you need to hold each week to accomplish that? How many phone calls do you need to make each day in order to schedule those parties?

When you accomplish your goals, give yourself a little treat to remind yourself that you worked hard and achieved success!

Enter the Holiday Giveaway Extravaganza

Enter the Holiday Giveaway Extravaganza, sponsored by Moms United in Business LLC, http://www.momsunitedinbusiness.com celebrating the launch of Resources for Work at Home Moms, http://resourcesforworkathomemoms.com! Come celebrate with us, and enter for your chance to win an awesome prize package, just in time for the holidays! Over $850.00 in prizes! You will NOT want to miss this! Enter at http://tinyurl.com/5b7hvm

Recession - Teach your kids to save

Economic recession is taking its toll on the country. Many Americans right now are feeling the heat of these tight times as more and more people are losing their jobs and losing their homes. High prices on basic commodities is also making it harder for American families to survive without additional income.

During these times, people are thinking of ways on how to save. This is especially true with families that support one, two or more children. Between feeding them and sending them all to school, these families will surely have to scrimp on some areas in order to survive.

But parents should not be the only ones who should be scrimping. When it comes to saving money during economic recession, your children should also play important roles. In fact, you can use these tight times to teach your children about saving for the future and saving money. This will help them deal with tighter times in the future should they experience it when they have families of their own. Below are some of the ways that you can teach your children about saving up.

1. Explain to them
You may not realize it but kids do know what is going on and when you explain the situation to them clearly with examples that they can relate to, they will be able to understand the situation. Some will even help out of their own volition without you telling them to do so.

Telling them why they should do something is more effective than telling them outright what they should do. The latter will sometimes antagonize them or will cause them to rebel because they feel that you are ordering them. Kids, as you well know, do not want to be "told" what to do.

2. Give them piggy banks.
Having coin banks may seem outdated in this digital age but it is nevertheless still effective in teaching kids how to save. Tell them that saving will allow them to have some money should they need to buy something that they really want. A portion of their "chore" money, for instance a quarter or two, is a good way to start.

3. Get what they need
Controlling what they put on their plates during dinner will help control the urge to get more than they eat. Ask them to clean their plates every time. This will teach them about saving and buying only the things that they need. This is a great training in the future so that they will not grow up with maxed out credit cards, buying things that they do not really need in the first place.

4. Being a role model
Face it. Whatever your child does is only a reflection of what you yourself are doing at home. So if you want the kids to start saving up, make sure that you are also doing your part in saving in this times of economic recession.

Although when it comes to your kids, in bad times or good, they should learn how to save.

A few toys works for us.

I guess it's never to early to start the Holiday Spirit. It seems to be that time of year again. Halloween is over and we need to start focusing on the Holidays.
While we try to keep the presents to a minimum with our 2 boys. With my older one's birthday being in November and then Christmas we end up with an overload of toys at year end. So we put some away for later, go through old, undamaged toys and donate them and of course play, play, play.
I have always been a big proponent of toys that teach something or improve some sort of motor skill - now not all our toys fit the bill - but most of them are "good" toys.
Through the last four years, we have always thought highly of all the Leapfrog toys that we have received, purchased or played with. They are great learning toys that are made with quality materials. Check them out.