Mobile Mommy

It’s the little things that make a work at home mom excited.  Yesterday there seemed to be plenty of buzz about Google’s introduction of themes for Gmail. But I didn’t seem to have them.  Then I heard something about a staggered rollout and so was thrilled when I saw I could use them this morning. It shouldn’t matter but I do so love to make things prettier! I love the notepad them and the mountain theme the best!

What little thing has happened to you lately to make you happy? A new piece of office equipment? A great comment on a blog post? Something else? Love to hear from you!

Wow, things have been a little hectic lately! Last night I went out to a concert and between it running a little late and the 45 minute drive home, it was after 1am before I got to sleep - then there was a 2:30 am wakeup call from my littlest angel and then the alarm at 6:30 to get the oldest ready for school.

Yep, that made for a tired mama this morning, and yet still there was work to be done.  Still is work to be done for that matter, lol, and it’s 9pm!! But I’m not going to get much more done, I think I’ll work a lot better tomorrow if I actually get a decent sleep tonight.

Things have been good though - I talked on the phone yesterday with a new client and was excited today to see them mention me on their awesome Sparkplugging blog - Freelance Parent. Make sure you check out their post if you are freelance writer, they have some possible opportunities in the works and I know they love to work with other work at home moms!

I also had a call from a potential client later in the day. In the typical nature of my work at home schedule, she called during the 10 minutes I was out picking my son up from the bus stop! I called back promptly and we’ve played some voicemail tag. If it’s meant to be we’ll manage to connect eventually!

The potential client mentioned Skype in her message to me yesterday - something I’d been meaning to check out but hadn’t quite gotten to. Lately though I’ve been making occasional long distance calls, especially to the US, so I finally went and signed up yesterday. If you are on Skype and you want to chat sometime look me up - I’m laurie.mapp there!

The new logo for my business site is coming along - feel free to check out the current version (some changes still to be made) and let me know what you think. The new one is on my blog and the old one is still up at my site. Sometime next week everything should be finished and both sites will have the new green and grey color scheme and new logo in place.

Ok, time to do a last few things and then bed for me - take care!

I call myself a work at home mom, and I mean, I am.  But I do not spend all my time AT HOME!! Life is too busy to always be tied to my house! So I have a few tools that make it easier for me to be out and about and still stay in touch with my clients and work.

Right now my best tool when I’m out is my Samsung Instinct semi-smartphone (lol!) It’s not a full smartphone but it lets me check my email, keep in touch with Twitter and make notes for later if I don’t have my notebook with me. This is essential for me, as I’m often out during “normal” business hours and I feel it’s important to be reachable.

Another handy tool is my laptop. I just have a standard laptop right now, but still it means that if I’m away overnight or for several hours I can take my work with me. We only had a desktop until about a year ago, then when I was starting to plan for opening up my virtual assistance practice my DH bought me a laptop. Wow, it opened up a whole new world! I never realized how helpful a laptop would be, even just at home! And the option to take it with me is fabulous.

A tool I want, but don’t currently have, is a netbook. Like a laptop but smaller, lighter and fairly inexpensive ($350 to $500 should get you a reasonable one) For me a full keyboard and a somewhat decent sized screen (9″ to 12″) means I can do a lot more than I can with a smartphone, but it is still easy to carry in my purse when I’m at say, soccer practice. I read a great post today over at Mark Evan’sTech blog about whether netbooks or smartphones are the wave of the future - but as I said there - I definitely think both have their place! Personally I’m hoping to get an MSI Wind or maybe the Acer Aspire One.

Acer Aspire in Pink

Hmmm, anyone want to send me one for review?!

I’ll be doing a future post on great tools for working IN your home office, so stay tuned!

I started my virtual assistant business this past summer, and slowly but surely I’m gaining a clientele and having “fun” managing my workload and my children. I thought I’d share on a semi-regular basis what my actual working days are like, as it’s something I like seeing on other work at home blogs - it’s a better indicator of what it’s really like to be a work at home mom than almost anything! Of course VA work is often different from one day to the next so some days I’m really busy and other days I actually have time to do laundry.

Today is Friday which is a busy day of the week for me.  My oldest child is in grade one and we have an agreement that he takes the schoolbus Mon-Thurs but on Fridays I drive him.  So my day always seems a little shorter on Fridays! So we dropped him off at 8:30 and will pick him up at 3pm.

Before drop off I had time to check my email, email a potential client with some information, review my to-do list for the day and of course feed everyone breakfast and get them dressed and moving.

After dropoff we made a quick Starbucks run (a great Friday treat!) and the baby fell asleep and had a nice little nap. Then the baby and Xan (middle boy!) needed a snack and a little playtime with mom. After that I did a little client work, checked email again and popped briefly into Twitter. Twitter referred me to a couple of blog posts, (the first is about advertising on legal blogs, the second about awards for work at home mom blogs!) and I shared with my tweeple that my baby took his first steps yesterday!

I got a phone call from Ruth of Maplewood VA about VAnetworking (I’m a VAcommentator - got to love the VAnetworking team - they are great!!) Oh and I’ve been exchanging emails with my blog designer as she’s re-designing my logo and changing up the color scheme on my business blog (thanks to some suggestions from my Twitter pals!)

Oh and of course I’ve changed some diapers, put the 4 year old into his Halloween costume to show dad (who was away on Halloween), had a snack myself and written this blog post!  Busy day already and it’s not even lunchtime. Although that is soon so it’s pretty much time to shut down and make lunch so we can eat!

But hey, I did say a day in the life of so I’ll quickly share what’s on the agenda for the rest of the day:

• Lunch
• playtime with kiddos
• a client project
• couple of quickbooks entries
• pick up oldest from school
• family shopping trip (checking in on my email a couple of time from my phone!)
• supper, playtime, kids bathtime
• another hour or two of work after kids are in bed
• BEDTIME for me!!

It’s a glamorous life isn’t it? And it could get even crazier next week if my new potential client works out - she needs a lot of work done!! It’s so worth it to me though, I love this life working for myself and being around for my kids. There are plenty of bad days - but I’ll save that post for another day, lol!

I’m so excited! I was just reading (and voting) over at WAHM 2.0 at Sparkplugging about the best WAHM blogs.  Kelly mentioned that she and her virtual assistant (yay for a VA mention!!) had trouble finding enough blogs to make a top 100 list of blogs that are about being a WAHM.  Made me think - I’m a mom, I work at home and my mom blog has never had a real focus.  It’s been so random and I’ve definitely been thinking lately that if I’m going to keep this blog up properly I need a real focus.  So now I will definitely be writing posts with a general theme in mind about what it is really like to be a work at home mom.

And now this work at home mom must go play with her kiddos for a little while before bathtime. It’s been a long day!

Which of my mommy peeps are planning to go to BlogHer next summer?  I really want to go but have to decide about the finances and talk to hubby to see if we’ll make it a family trip (which will be much pricier but he’s always wanted to go to Chicago!)

I’ve seen tons of chat about it on Twitter already, which is not surprising! I saw that @QueenofSpain is planning to attend and that her hubby usually goes too! Cutiebootycakes is planning to go and so is @firemom! @acowboyswife is planning to attend and mentions she’ll be getting a sponsor, now isn’t that a fab idea! Anyone want to sponsor me?!!