My life as a Stay at Home Mom-preneur
I have a lot of hairbow holder contests going on on several blogs. www.BloggyGiveaways.com right now is hosting one through Sat, and www.TheKiddieClique.com/main is also hosting its own. Come by and win a free hairbow holder for your little girl!
trisha
Its hard to go from this one, to the other one, to my site, to my email….so please update your links to my other blog, its my fultime one! Ill still blog business things there, just check my category for Bambina Ballerina or you can read about my personal life on category iTrisha.
Thankyou for everything and this isnt the end..its just a transfer!
What is it…at 3 years old a switch goes off and the whine machine turns on? Does it turn OFF?? It starts at about 530 every morning..where is daddy, i want to play, i want milk, i want to watch a movie…i want, i want, i want, i want.
Dear Charlotte,
let me tell you what I want. I love you dearly, and you are the most awesomeist (is that a word) little girl in the world, but when you whine, demand, and hang on me or your father, I want to pack up my bags and move to Tahiti for a few months, leaving you with your grandparents till they beg me to come back and take you home. I want to eat my meals hot for a change, and without getting up 9 times for more milk, napkins, to clean up the spill, or to pull you off your father so he can eat. I want to go to the store without you needing a piece of candy/fruit/goldfish to make it through the visit, and I really want to take a bath without you busting in and letting the cold air envelope me. And while I am at it, I want to lose the 5 pds I still cant get rid of and drive the Audi TT I gave up when I decided to have a child.
Amen.
LOL!
You can never have too many how to make hairbows posts! Here are a few more that I found. I had some ok luck w/ these, but its still not perfect yet.
Use thread for the middle and then add your ribbon knot and Voila! Remember, practice makes perfect.
While I am in the sharing crafts mood…here is a really cool blog that shares a way to make fabric flowers. Its brilliant!
(that handsome guy there, thats my DH)
I don’t know about yall, but going out and having a new born are NOT synonymous. I clearly remember sitting at Babies R Us testing out nursing/rocking chairs thinking it was a vacation..it really was the only place in town I could go to breastfeed in privacy that wasnt my car, so we took a lot of “outings” there.
My first year with charlotte was hard because at the time, my husband and I were military members (he as active duty and me as a spouse of an active duty member) and he had to go to Afghanistan when our daughter was 9 months old. I cannot tell you the long hours I spent at night on the computer looking for companionship and an adult to talk to, just to escape between feedings, diapers, baths, and throw up. I experienced my daughter eating “real food”, her first words, and her walking on her own all by myself.
One of the ways I was able to pass the time isthat I kept a blog that talked about things we did from taking the trash out, to spit up times, to what clothing she was wearing and kept it online for my husband to log on and follow our every day actions. He said he read it every time he got computer access and it made him feel at home. So I would say our best and most creative outings were simply to take a variety of pictures every day to impress daddy and make him excited about watching his little girl go from 9 months to over a year old from afar.
We took pictures daily outside with flowers, on blankets, at the park, in a christmas dress, at the stores, at the mall, hair up, hair down..wherever we went, we documented it. The funniest part is, now she is a picture hog and begs me to take shots of her. I really engrained it in her early on…so I have spent her whole life documenting almost DAILY her actions by photograph.
To sum up, my favorite time out with my little girl didn’t really matter when she was a newborn, because every moment was, and continuous to be, very precious.
-Trisha
This post is part of the Parent Bloggers Network Blog Blast! asking you to tell us what baby-friendly outings worked for you during your rookie year as a mom? This Blog Blast! is a part of The Rookie Mom’s Handbook review brought to you by Rookie Moms.
Is this the only way sex sites/pharmaceuticals/buy a house or car/loans/weight loss drugs can get the word out?
Its not like I am going to be cruising someones blog and see some insane spam and go…WOW, thats THE product I always wanted.
Tips for spammers: Pretend to be interested in what you are spamming under..I may actually approve a REAL comment on here.
and
Second…do you really really think Im going to approve your spam coming through? Your gonna get carpel tunnel trying over and over again.
In an effort to provide support for these entrepreneurial moms, Whirlpool brand will kick-off the fourth annual Mother of Invention Grant Program – just in time for the 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day. From now until July 31, moms are encouraged to submit their business, service or product ideas at www.whirlpool.com/moms.
The Whirlpool brand Mother of Invention Grant Program provides seed money and expert guidance to moms to turn their invention, business or service ideas into full-fledged businesses. Contest winners receive:
¡ A $20,000 grant for the grand prize winner
¡ $24,000 in grant money for the four runners-up
¡ Home appliance prizes
¡ Invitation to business boot camp where winners will receive guidance from Whirlpool and industry experts
And since eco-friendly innovations continue to be a hot topic, we are greening the program this year by adding a new category focused on moms who create an environmentally friendly product/service or use natural/recycled materials to create their invention.
More information and entry forms can be found at www.whirlpool.com/moms beginning May 11. Entries are accepted through July 31, 2008.
In commemeration of my 7 years with my husband (actually, more like 14 years, just married 7), I wanted to share a picture from this past weekend. We set the timer and ran back, so its not amazing, but here is us…7 years today!
PS if you notice I look PG, thats becuase of the shirt, I am NOT PG. Damn these big poofy shirts.
Right now I am at this crossroads with my business. I just dont know the right answer. I get a lot of business and I love it. I pride myself in getting back to people and working with them, but as I get busier and busier, its taking me longer to respond or less time to really develop relationships.
I am also turning down large orders and reoccuring wholesales, simply becuase I cant manage all this work.
So what do I do? Do i take the risk and take out a bank loan and go for it? Do I hire someone? Do i hire a manufactorer? I dont want to let go and never try..but I dont want to put my family in a position that will cost us beyond what we can afford.
HELP ME HELP ME
I am in the process of building my upscale line Fairytopia, for little girls who are Princesses at Heart and spend their lives fluttering around in wings and hairbows. Here is a sneak peek at the new line! Additionally, I am taking PREORDERS on Fairytopia, which will include Fairy, Butterfly, and Angel wings. Right now, colors of the wings are white, pink, green, and purple. If you are interested in snagging the sample designs of Fairytopia before it hits the shelves here, please use my contact box and I will let you know how these two designs, and many more, can be in your home before they are on sale! -Trisha
My tulle company sent me the wrong size tulle. It came in long rolls instead of bolts, so now I have to wait for it all to arrive again. In the mean time, Im shopping Chinese outsourcing links wondering how to get bigger, tossing up hiring other moms and opening franchises, or taking on some local moms to assist in wholesale (which is out of control in back ordering).
I have two new lines, a regular and a supreme, on its way..IF i can find time to create them all, and its all I can do to keep the hotglue/ribbon/tulle picked up off the floor!
Ill be featured on several awesome blogs coming up, so please check these sites out! www.5minutesformom.com, www.anislandlife.com, www.pinkwithsparkles.com , and www.bloggygiveaways.com this month!
Ill post the links when the reviews/contests are up! In the mean time, if you have any mompreneur stories to share, please email them to me so I can post them!
trisha
The Daily Grind has teamed up with Skimbaco to promote shoes that were featured during the Tom Cruise interview on Oprah last Friday. Skimbaco will give away a pair of the adorable shoes to one lucky Daily Grind reader, details are here.
Her story is VERY, very inspiring to all work at home mompreneurs, so stop over, read it, entire and discuss!
Inexpensive but Reliable Web Hosting Starter Packages
Web hosting doesn’t have to be expensive to be reliable.
These low cost Web hosting providers are good options for business websites with less than 10,000 visitors per month. If you get more than that, start thinking about mid-level hosting options that cost between $20 - $50.
Basics that we expect for less than $10:
This list is sorted in the order I would recommend to a small business just getting started online.
Starting Price: $7.77 per month for the first 3 months. $11.95 per month thereafter. No setup fee.
Differentiators:
Satisfy Basic Requirements? Mostly. There is unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, high email address limit, spam control, unlimited databases, and Web stats.
What’s Not Great: Only one domain/website. Not for resellers or “power users” like bloggers who may want to have multiple websites.
Starting Price: $3.95 per month, no setup fee
Differentiator: Cheapest to get started
Satisfy Basic Requirements? Yes. There is plenty of disk space, bandwidth, unlimited domains, unlimited emails, spam control, unlimited databases, and Web stats.
Starting Price: $4.95 per month for one domain. It’s $7.95 for the unlimited domain package. There’s plenty of disk space, bandwidth, and easy-to-install programs.
Differentiator: 4500 free templates
Especially Good For: Web hosting resellers, Web designers targeting brochureware projects, small business owners who want to build their own website.
Satisfy Basic Requirements? Yes. There is plenty of disk space, bandwidth, unlimited domains, unlimited emails, spam control, unlimited databases, and Web stats.
Starting Price: $4.29 per month. Month-to-month payments. No setup fee.
Differentiators: $20 Google AdWords and $25 Microsoft adCenter coupons; optional Windows server; industry-leading domain name registrar
Satisfy Basic Requirements? Almost. Relatively small diskspace (10 Gb only), high bandwidth, high email limit.
What’s Not Great: Limit of 10 databases
GoDaddy is cheap at just over 4 bucks a month, but doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as other starter hosting packages. If you already use GoDaddy for your domain name registration (and many of us do), GoDaddy’s hosting service is not a terrible choice for the price and convenience.
Their Only Price: $6.95 / month
Differentiators: 1 free domain name; free SSL (great for ecommerce stores that will be processing payments); affiliate program for referring new business.
Satisfy Basic Requirements? Yes. There is plenty of disk space, bandwidth, unlimited domains, high emails limit, spam control, high databases limit, and Web stats.
Starting Price: $9.95 per month. Month-to-month payments. Up to 30% off for pre-payment.
Differentiators: Experience (in business since 1999); $25 Google AdWords coupon; optional Windows server
What’s Not Great: 20 domain limit. This is a dated practice when everyone else is offering unlimited domains.
Satisfy Basic Requirements? Mostly. There is plenty of disk space, bandwidth, high emails limit, spam control, unlimited databases, and Web stats.
Starting Price: $9.95 per month if you pre-pay for a year. If you pay monthly, it’s $10.95/month plus a $49.95 setup fee.
Differentiators: Experience (in business since 1998)
What’s Not Great: setup fee; more expensive than others
Satisfy Basic Requirements? Mostly. There is plenty of disk space, high bandwidth limits, high emails limit, spam control, unlimited databases, and Web stats.
Dreamhost has been in business a long time for a hosting company — in business since since 1998. It’s a decent option for a low volume starter site.
