Have your cake and eat it.

I have been reading alot of articles recently about 'porfolio careers' for women. It seems that I am not the only one with more than one interest that I would like to be a career. 'Portfolio careers' could be the way forward as women need working life to be more flexible but still are often highly qualified, so by managing their own careers they can stick their fingers into more than one pie. One woman I read about was on the board of directors for two companies then a freelance photographer, to realise her creative side. Other women were combining sucessful freelance careers in the creative industries, from event management, tv production, journalism or photography to a couple of days as a counsellor or even a lawyer.

My main concern is knowing your own limits. I expect there are many jobs we would all like to try but to gain such flexibility as a portfolio career you would need real expertise in all the jobs you chose. You would also need fantastic organisational skills and be able to work with restrictions of a 9-5 office. I really do think this is the way forward as we all have many skills. So I am looking forward to really being able to have my cake and eat it! I'm just not sure which job titles to put in my portfolio!

Lots of pretty things

Today was like Christmas for me! Firstly Country Living landed on the doormat, a few days late, full of gorgeous pictures as always. I always feel inspired just looking through this magazine, but it has some great articles about real people doing really interesting jobs. They have also added a new section 'Earn a Country Living' which has some excellent tips and advice for all of us rural entrepruners.

Next we headed off to the library so the girls could sign up for the reading challenge, this has become an annual event in our house, but sadly the boys have outgrown this wonderful scheme. Whilst there my son checked the reserved section for the latest Skullduggery Pleasant book he has been waiting an age for, when he discovered some books that I had reserved. I am near obsessed with fabrics and fabric crafts and agreed with Kirsty Allsopp in her last series that fabrics are like a drug. Anyway I have been interested in some craft books by Tone Finnagen but wanted to check they were worth buying so ordered them from the library and I now will be investing, they are fantastic! So I am now in crafters heaven with these great books and my new mag.

I dream of making things to sell, but I am limited for space at home which often hinders my dreams. Also time available for such a pursuit is limited due to the demands of five children and of course all the washing and mess these lovely little people create! There is a craft revival as we hark back to the make do and mend ideas of wartime Britain, but also because we want more individual pieces for ourselves, family and home that the mass produced high street doesn't offer. There are many types of craft, from jewelery making to embroidery or card making to dressmaking. I would love to make clothes again for myself and my children, maybe even my husband too! Infact Heather Ross's new book 'Weekend Sewing' is great place to start with simple instructions and gorgeous clothes for all the family. I have even managed to purchase an Amy Butler pattern for a tunic and cut the fabric, then I was sidetracked by something the children were doing and I promise to finish this project this summer. Amy Butler has also written 2 great books, one for items for the home and yourself and one for little ones. I have both these books gathering dust with all best intentions of making nearly everything in them.

Now that I have two more books to browse it leads me to focus more on my skills and which things I love to and would not get fed up with. I love to hand sew and embroider and have many ideas for little pictures using both these skills and I feel I would never tire of this. I also like making little toy animals and dolls from fabric so Tone Finnagens books are truly inspiring. Maybe I have just struck on my ideal career. But where to sell my wares? Thankfully the internet has lead to a great marketplace for craft workers but are some of the bigger sites worth the commission fees? Ideally I would like to have a 'shop' on www.notonthehighstreet.com but I would probably start with www.misi.co.uk or www.folksy.co.uk . As for www.etsy.com I feel this is too huge to make any money unless you can get noticed quickly. Obviously you could create your own website but need it to be good to be noticed. Other outlets are in the real world. There are many craft fairs around the country, some very big with expensive stand fees, but if you are going to sell £3000 worth of stock in the weekend then the £150+ stand fee is value for money. Another option is to ask local independant boutique home stores or farm shops if they would be interested in stockimg your products. It is worth looking first to see if your products would fit into their style or if they already stock something very similar. If you are satisfied that they could sell your product ask the shop assistant if they stock locally produced items and then ask if it's possible to see the manager another day to view your products.

I'm off now to dig around in my sewing cupboard for my next creation!

To teach or not to teach?

After spending the morning in my daughters year 3 class my husband pointed out that our local university seems to have vacancies, through clearing, for the PGCE/SCITT course. When I was younger I always wanted to be a teacher, apart from a brief spell of wanting to be a RAF pilot, (they had just started training women as pilots!). Even after graduation I still wanted to teach but at the time the government were not offering any form of financial assistance and with a large overdraft and a student loan I decided to move back home for a year to get some money behind me then try and get a place on a PGCE course. Of course this never happened as I liked having a salary, met my husband and had children! Since then the government has made training to teach far more appealing with tax free bursaries, student grants and loans available. However the PGCE is a very intensive, full time, nine month course with teaching practice, assessments, presentations and 4000 word assignments, but you do gain 60 points towards a Masters.

Considering all this it is only nine months disruption and the money whilst training is good. There are days when I still think that I would love to be teacher, although I am torn between Primary and Secondary, as I like the appeal of the variety in Primary but like the idea of specialisation in Secondary. I also have spent several years helping in Primary classrooms so would be of more benefit when applying.

Obviously the benefits of the job are great, long summer hols, pension, job security but I am still not 100% convinced this is a good choice for me as I have five children who all do various after school clubs, although they are limited to 2 activities each, and child 5 is not school age so doesn't do anything as yet! The logistics for me to be a teacher and a mother of five children are very complicated. Then that guilt gene kicks in as my youngest child would have to go to nursey on the days my husband has lectures and I have always been at home for the other children so would she hate me for not being there for her in her early years?

As regards to todays question - To teach or not to teach? - I think I will wait to decide until September when the next rounds of applications begin, as there weren't really places available, the clearing website got it wrong!

For more information on training to teach visit

www.teach.gov.uk

Student finance
www.studentfinancedirect.co.uk

You can apply for a maintenance grant, maintenance loan, fees loan, parents learning allowance, childcare grant, adult dependant grant (if you have an adult who is financially dependant on you), child tax credits aswell as receiving a tax free bursary. You are also eligible to apply for housing benefit or Local Housing Allowance and Council Tax benefit.

Beware of the big bad wolf!

Something I worry about is that there are still people using the internet to try to con people out of money. I have always been warned about pyramid selling and websites offering easy money. Unfortunately these wolves are now preying on unsuspecting mums in the playground with promises of free cars and holidays and enough money to pay your mortgage every month forever! In these tight times I guess these wolves may seem like the fairy god mother, especially as the number of dads increases at the school gates as the job losses rise. But beware these things are never as good as they seem, money is never free. So I continue to avoid contacting websites that offer all the answers to my money making conundrum for the one off charge of £50!

So for now I will continue considering what I am good at and what I would like to do! Too many choices as I would love to do many things but for today I would just like some sleep as my two year old has a cold and did not sleep well last night. Instead I have to be the swimming helper for Year 1 as some lucky people have escaped on holiday already! Meanwhile I will think of ways to keep the wolf from the door without letting him in.

Kick off your shoes and go barefoot!

I have just been checking any interesting new posts on netmums in the Working for Yourself forums, always looking for inspiration. One question posed was regarding the profitability of working 20-30 hours a week as a direct sales manager and if it was easy to recruit team members and the viability of selling products as direct sales that are also available in the shops.

A couple of years ago I tried my hand as a Barefoot Books Stallholder. I loved the books and other products and thought this would be a good job option as it fits around family life. The mistake I made was that I didn't drive! I had lots of ideas of where to sell the books, other than at coffee mornings in peoples homes but I couldn't get anywhere with my heavy box of books. So this was short lived. I passed my driving test last year and in the past few days have revisited the idea of selling Barefoot Books, after an email announcing their new website. I still adore the books but they seem to have changed the package for stallholders, which made it a little more complicated to understand. I would also like to break into the schools market and I am not sure if Barefoot are set up for this. So as one idea leads to another I popped onto Usbourne books site and felt the potential for sales was a lot bigger and they are set up for you to sell in schools, which would provide you with a larger sales and customer base. However their commission seems less than Barefoot and also I feel there maybe alot of sales people in my area but I have no way of checking this. Whereas Barefoot did offer a facility to find a Stallholder in your area on their old website, a facility I am yet to find on the new website.

So is the market saturated with mummy's selling books or can we make a decent living from such a job? One bonus is all the lovely free books you get that can be used as stock or added to your own home library. I feel with some effort, good marketing skills and time you could make some money from either of these direct sales companies.

For more information take a look at the websites, Usbourne have a special offer of a £5 joining fee this month. I am independant and do not sell for either of these companies so am not looking to recruit you!

www.usbournebooksathome.co.uk

www.barefootbooks.co.uk

Is coming first place really the prize?

It was sports day today for four of my children and as the day progresses the competition mounts and the focus on coming first becomes important. This is a great life lesson that sometimes you have to be driven to win but at what expense? Should being the winner be the ultimate goal?

Obviously we will all have different answers to this question as we all have very different goals and are all different people. But I wonder if I lack the desire to be number one and that is why I can always think of a new idea to start a great business but that is where it stays, an idea. Somedays I would love a fantastic career as a pyschologist and then others I want to stay at home and make cushions. Yet tomorrow I could find myself searching for a part time Masters in Literature at a uni nearby so I can still be here for my children and not disrupt their lives too much. But by Sunday I could well be checking out competition on www.notonthehighstreet.com if I was to make jewelery!

Sometimes I think we have too much choice, yet I am grateful that I view the sky as the limit and can believe I could do any of these things. If I am going to try to be the winner I need to decide which event to focus my attention!