Category: My Story

Unless I’m feeling especially energetic, this is going to be my last post before Christmas. So I thought I’d make it a bit seasonal and join in Mum’s The Boss’s Christmas Baking Blog Carnival.

At first glance, this recipe doesn’t look very Christmassy, although throwing in a handful of raisins makes it even better and I think a teaspoon of mixed spice would work too.  The Christmas bit comes from the story behind it, let me explain.

Last year my then-85-year-old gran told the family that there was nothing she wanted for Christmas, but if we really insisted, she’d like some biscuits (cookies) please. She enjoys having friends round for coffee and likes to offer them a nice biscuit.

Now I really admire her for getting to the point in her life where all she wants is her friends, family and a plate of biscuits to share. I’d love to be like that when I’m 85. But it didn’t feel right to wrap up a packet of digestives as a Christmas present. Even if they were chocolate ones.

My gran is diabetic so I looked through my books for a recipe that was halfway to being healthy, as a diabetic biscuit wasn’t going to be much of a treat. I found this recipe in the Netmums ‘Feeding Kids’ book (which is excellent, by the way). I made a double batch, used star-shaped cutters and froze them so Gran could take out a plateful a few hours before her friends arrived.

It’s hard the believe that biscuits that are just oats, sugar, butter and a bit of flour can taste so good, but they are gorgeous – really crisp and light. So easy you could make them with children and they freeze well, too. So without further ado, let me introduce…

Easy Oaty Biscuits

100g butter

50g caster sugar

100g rolled oats

50g plain flour

Cream butter and sugar together, add oats and work into a dough. Knead until smooth, roll out on a floured surface and cut into shapes with biscuit cutters. Bake in preheated oven (170 deg C/325 deg F/gas 3) for 20 mins. Leave on tray for 5 minutes, then cool on a rack.

Right, I’m off to make a fresh batch for this year. Merry Christmas!

It's now six months since my last day at work and time I started to think about earning again. I'm grateful I haven't got the abrupt jump into to work I would have if I was returning to employment, but getting started in self employment has its own challenges.  For the moment, I'm just getting some rough plans together and leaving the harder work until the first few months of 2010.

Not surprisingly, the last few months have been more 'baby' than 'business'. I'm making sure that amid all the chaos of being mum to a 19 month and (almost) 4 month old, I stop to appreciate where I am. One of the joys is seeing the world through the eyes of a toddler – the noise that gravel makes when you stomp on it, watching the last few roses of autumn clinging on in the cold, dropping letters into a big red postbox. And the joys of being a parent to a toddler – finding a tin of tuna on your doormat and your phone in your washing machine! Baby boy is just starting to grasp at things with his little hands. He's smiling at everyone and is fascinated by everything going on around him, including his big sister trying to balance teddy bears on his head.

Getting back to my business, I'm planning a 'multiple streams of income' approach. I've already arranged to do some admin for a book keeper friend as one of the income streams.  If you like the sound of this approach, it's worth putting the word out among family and friends that you'd be happy to do some admin work on a freelance basis. You never know who might need someone to do a mail shot, compile a mailing list, tidy up some spreadsheets, write a  manual, do some invoicing and so on. I'm not talking about becoming a fully-fledged virtual assistant – although that's an option of course – just bringing in an income while you get other streams of income up and running (and that usually takes longer than you think).This approach takes some careful planning and focus because it's easy to get distracted if you have several jobs on the go at once.  But for me, it's worth the risk to not have all my business eggs in one basket.

One of the other business eggs in my basket is exploring web-based businesses. I've been learning a lot about blogging, social media and driving traffic to a website over the last six months. With my background in coaching and training, I feel sure I can develop an income stream from it although I'm still working out the best route to take. I'll let you know how I get on. If you have any experience of going self-employed after your maternity leave ended or using a multiple streams of income approach, drop me a comment :0)

This post is inspired by Josie’s Writing Workshop over at her Sleep Is For The Weak blog.

The best piece of advice I have ever been given came to me  in the middle of Wales in 1993. By a guy whose name I can’t even remember.

I was coming to the end of my university course and it hadn’t been the fabulous experience I’d expected. Brought up in the 80s on a diet of Johnny Ball and Tomorrows World (when it was good) I was fascinated by how things worked, so I’d chosen to do a physics degree. But the reality was very different – apart from one afternoon a week in the lab, the rest of the course was just maths, really hard maths.  Half way through the course my confidence was at a low and I dropped out. I was talked back by a tutor and ended up taking physics with a medical physics option, which was an improvement because it was using science to make ill people better. All that maths had a practical use at last.

By 1993 I was coming to the end of my course and, even though life was better with medical physics, I wasn’t going to get the grades I needed to actually be a medical physicist. The recession was just about at its worst so there were next-to-no jobs out there.  At that time I felt I’d have been better off if I’d left school at 18 and got a job – at least I’d have some useful skills.

We went on a residential course somewhere in mid-Wales a few months before we took our final exams. The physics department had invited an ex-student back to give us a presentation on life beyond the University of Wales. He’d got a physics degree, but like me he hadn’t been the natural born scientist he’d hoped to be.  He’d done some more studying and become a Master of Wine. Despite doing something completely different from his degree, he said that his physics had come in useful. Especially when he had to learn about the technicalities of producing wine.

“Nothing is ever wasted”, he said.

Just four words, but it gave me hope that the tough previous three years hadn’t been for nothing. Those words have come back to me whenever I’ve come to a crossroads and wondered if the path I’ve taken to get there was a waste of time and effort.

Like the time I realised, even thought I’d spent a year getting qualified as a teacher, I didn’t actually like being a teacher.  A couple of years later I got a job training teachers in IT,  using what I knew in a way I didn’t expect. And it led me into a whole new career in training.

Then there was the day I realised I couldn’t go back to my full-time training job when my maternity leave ended. Was that the end of my career? I kicked myself for not seeing it coming and making better plans. But over the next few months I realised that six years as a freelance trainer was actually pretty good preparation for life as a self-employed mum.

As the man said, nothing is ever wasted.

So if you happen to know Master of Wine who is in his early forties and has a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Wales, please let me know. I’d like to say thank you.

My baby is due this week, so I won’t be posting as much as usual for a short while (hopefully just a few weeks). Apparently the secret is to learn to breastfeed and type at the same time…

I’m hoping Mr L will help out and do a bit of writing from a Dad’s point of view, but he’s likely to be pretty busy with the little ones too!

I’ll be back as soon as I can…