I really dislike arranging playdates for my kids. It’s not that I don’t want them playing with their friends, it’s that playdates are so limiting!

A part of it is how often, or rather, how rarely I manage to get other parents to agree to playdates. My kids are available to play with friends so much more often than any of their friends are. Drives me nuts!

But the other problem is that so often the other parents tell me no because their child has a playdate with someone else. That drives me nuts because I’m just as happy to have group of kids come and play with mine as I am to have just one of their friends over.

Kind of like when I was a kid.

We’d go over to one friend’s house to see if they could play. Then we’d go together to get more friends. There’d be a nice group of kids playing together, not just two.

These days the only time I see a group of kids invited to play together is for birthday parties. I’d love to see them get together at other times too.

I’m hoping this gets better as the kids get older. I don’t see much sign of it in the neighbor kids, though, so it’s hard to say. I’ve always figured I would rather be the mom with a crowd of kids playing at her house than the mom unsure what her kids are up to. Not that I will mind at all when my kids go over to other friends’ houses.

What are your experiences? Do your kids get to play with a lot of other kids or is this something your family struggles with too?

Can you really make a living at home doing medical transcription? Sure! This was my own first work at home job. I did it for 3 years.

I have a pretty good section here on medical transcription already, so I will just sum up what it’s about.

Qualifications/Training Needed?

Medical transcription isn’t something you can just apply for and get a job, even if you know a little bit about medical terminology. It used to be that you could train yourself at home, but now you really need to get some training from a good quality course.

You can do this through local community colleges, vocational schools or online programs. The advantage to online programs is that best schools have good reputations with the employers, so that you can get a job more easily after graduation.

The top 3 are often considered to be Andrews School of Medical Transcription, M-Tec and CareerStep.

While programs may offer a certificate of completion, this is something different from being a certified medical transcriptionist. It’s not even recommended that you test for a CMT until you have worked as a medical transcriptionist for a few years.

Job Duties

A medical transcriptionist types up the doctor’s dictation as accurately as possible. Most reports have a format you will follow. Sometimes you will be required to transcribe verbatim, making no corrections whatsoever. Other times you may be allowed to make minor grammatical corrections or expand abbreviations.

Equipment Needed

You will need a computer, headset and transcription foot pedal. It’s not impossible to need a transcription machine, but for the most part transcription is done online.

Where to Search for Jobs

Medical Transcription jobs at Home with the Kids
MTJobs.com
Craigslist (beware of many, many scams!)
Hire My Mom
Home Job Stop

Related Scams

The main medical transcription scam I see relates to companies claiming to hire you without experience. All you have to do is buy their software and they will train you. You’ll get paid once the quality of your work is sufficient.

As a rule, the software may or may not be good, and the quality of your work will never be enough to get you paid. They just want your money for the software.

Pick a day with a nice amount of wind – not too much and not too little, find a place without too many trees or power lines, and take the family out flying kites.

Even if you don’t have kites already, basic ones are very affordable. They don’t get expensive until you start looking at the better ones that may take more skill to fly. But once you have them, they’re an easy form of entertainment.

If you aren’t sure where in your area kite flying will work well, just look around. In San Diego, for example, certain beaches are very, very popular for flying kites. But all you really need is an open area and a good breeze.

Wedding planning is something my husband and I actually considered as a home business after planning our own wedding. We had a blast doing it! Then I turned up pregnant and the idea pretty much just went by the wayside. I like what I do now, so it hardly matters anymore.

Skills Required

A wedding planner must be organized. That’s probably putting it mildly. You’re in charge of planning what many consider to be the biggest day of their lives. You don’t want to mess it up.

You’ll also need to know wedding etiquette extremely well. You’ll need to have good contacts with a lot of vendors. It helps if you can get couples deals they couldn’t get otherwise, and that means having negotiation skills.

You will need to be able to work with a wide range of budgets.

Above all else, you have to be great with people under all circumstances. People get stressed about their weddings. You have to help them cope. You will have to deal with differing ideas as to what each person involved in planning the wedding with you wants. You will have to deal with the unexpected.

Common Expenses

You may have expenses associated with learning the job of a wedding planner. In some areas you can find classes to take from experienced wedding planners to help get you started. You can also buy books to help you get your business going.

You will need to advertise. As always, I recommend having your own domain name and website hosting, rather than relying on simpler online ads. That can mean hiring someone to set it up for you or learning how to do it yourself. Blogging your business could work for a wedding planner. It would be rather like my earlier suggestion of blogging your hobby, but on a much more professional level.

You will need to keep track of your clients, your vendor contacts, any deals you have made with vendors and wedding trends. If you have Excel or another spreadsheet on your computer already, you may be able to set something up on it. Organizer software may work as well.

You will need to have a professional image in person as well. That means maintaining an appropriate wardrobe.

You will want a cell phone and possibly a dedicated business line in your home. If your cell phone can act as a PDA, so much the better. You’ll need business cards.

Possible Income Streams

Consider being something other than a generic wedding planner. You could specialize in weddings for a particular budget. You could specialize in green/environmentally friendly weddings. You could specialize in pet friendly weddings, and so on.

Working a niche market can greatly improve the results you get from your business. People will appreciate your skills in their area of interest.

Your income, of course, comes from your clients. Most wedding planners earn 10-15% of the overall cost of the wedding.

Related Scams

You might think that your biggest concern would be getting paid by the bride and groom, but people do try to scam wedding planners as well. Take a look at this post I found on the Perfect Memories blog.

It also helps to be aware of places where little charges can sneak in on the cost of the wedding, so you can protect the bride and groom from them. Bridezilla has a good list.

Recommended Reading

How to Start a Home-Based Event Planning Business
Amazing Wedding Planning

What can I say? It’s quite an adjustment having a baby around here again. It’s just so easy to forget just how much work a newborn is.

Good thing Selene is so darn cute. And sweet. And hungry.

Is she ever hungry! My biggest adjustment right now is probably just how much time I’m spending each day feeding her. It’s tiring but really in a good way. Although if you ask me that around 4 a.m. I might disagree. But that’s just the sleepy speaking.

Between her and my son, there’s very little time for working. Things can actually be better when my oldest daughter gets home if she and my son want to play. They might just ignore me for 1-2 hours! And if I’m really lucky the baby will sleep that whole time.

If I’m not careful, so will I.

Now that I’m more recovered, though, I’m not sleeping quite so much during the day and I’m actually occasionally getting some work done. But it can still be a struggle to get so much as a single blog post done, never mind the two I would like to get done, so I can post on more than one of my sites.

There’s all the extra laundry, of course. We’re cloth diapering this time around, so there’s a decided difference. Plus the older two have rediscovered the delights of digging in the dirt and adding in water to make it mud. Great pictures to laugh at later, but I have to be a bit picky now about the clothes they play outside in. I’m trying to limit the number of outfits stained.

Having 3 kids is getting to be fun again. I’m no longer so exhausted that I feel too worn out to appreciate what I have. Selene is getting awfully cute with those smiles.