Free eBook: Narrowboat Families

It's finally here! The brand new ebook, Narrowboat Families. So what does everybody think of it so far? The following writers and media peeps have had a sneak preview.

"I love the way that you describe life on the waterways in such a perfectly poetic way - my favourite kind of Narrowboat Wife writing! I think this ebook gives a wonderful insight into boating life, perfect for any family (or individual) who is curious about what it's really like. The addition of interviews with other boaters gives an even broader understanding of life aboard."

Alice Griffin, author, columnist, travel writer. www.alicegriffin.co.uk

Tales from a Travelling Mum: Navigating Europe with a Babe-in-Arms

"May I say what a fascinating ebook! I read it through 'cause it was so interesting. I am not slightly boaty at all but you almost had me convinced to get on the cut!"

Star Khechara, author of  The Holistic Beauty Book: Over 100 Natural Recipes for Gorgeous Healthy Skin

"Peggy's book is a great insight into life as a narrowboater with a no holds barred honest approach with not just the good bits but including two year olds on gangplanks, noisy geese, toilet troubles and all!"

Hulya Erdal Chef/Writer/PR www.madebythechef.com

"What a beautiful tale of your everyday life.  None of the fantasy, just all of the nitty gritty but still romantically beautiful...  I read it all in one sitting and my cup of tea went cold!"

Nickie O'Hara   www.iamtypecast.com

Wikio Top 10 Parent Blogs

Cison/PeerIndex Top 10 Most Influential Parent Bloggers on Twitter

Tots100 Top Parent Blogger

To receive the brand new ebook by Narrowboat Wife, sign up to the monthly Narrowboat Wife newsletter.  Each newsletter includes a round-up of the best of this month's blog posts, waterways news, other random thoughts from me, and a download link to the free ebook.

Already got it?
What did you think? Leave me a comment below. What would you like to see in a bigger, better, extended version of this book? More interviews? More articles? More pictures? What questions were left unanswered?

Boat-Wife

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Narrow Margins - Marie Browne

"Rover has gone bust," Marie's husband told her. As the car manufacturer completely funded their rather nice lifestyle Marie and Geoff suddenly had to sell up and downsize considerably.
"I have a cunning plan," said Marie. "Let's live on a houseboat."
Marie, Geoff, the kids and their dog decide to buy an ex hotel boat in need of some serious TLC and set off for Cambridge with absolutely no boating experience and limited enthusiasm.

Marie begins her adventure by moaning a lot, very conscious of the comfortable lifestyle she has so suddenly lost. I’m grateful for the voice of reason, her friend Helen who tells her to get a grip and realise what an amazing opportunity she has.

“The sun is shining, you have no work to worry about, you’re off on a weird experience, you have money, you’re warm and safe and fed, you have no responsibilities and you only answer to yourself, yep, I can  see why you are so fed up, it must be terrible to be you – oh poor you!”

I enjoyed the hilarity of the couple learning to steer a boat by taking an inland waterways helmsman’s course with ‘Dave’. Marie sees the funny side of learning to navigate canals and rivers on what she describes as a ‘floating coffin’. I have great respect for any family that attempts to refurbish a boat while living aboard (Zoe at her blog Give an Earthly is having a go at that right now!) The Doctor and I are rarely brave enough to attempt DIY. Marie’s boat is called ‘Happy Go Lucky’ and at the beginning of the story Marie is anything but that. But I loved the way that as the story progresses the couple become more relaxed and dishevelled, the waterways begin to change them, and they find out that sometimes less is more.

Although there are several travelogues about narrowboating out there, there are not so many memoirs about family life on board. I wanted to find out about other mothers who had experiences that are similar to mine. How is Marie’s life different to mine? What is it like living on board with older kids? How different is it having a mooring? What’s it like throwing a load of refurbishment work into the mix? I think this memoir is pretty unique. 

Narrow Margins is available on Amazon right now. Why not grab a copy for yourself of this funny story about a family’s triumph over adversity?

Mumpreneur - Fun, Friendly and Achievable?

Click here for free eCourses

What do you think of when you hear the word “Mumpreneur”?
I’ve been doing the Become a Mumpreneur course for a few months and I’m loving it. It’s delivered in bite size chunks to my email inbox in a way that allows me to progress at my own pace without feeling overwhelmed. I already have sixteen ideas on how to create multiple income streams which will allow me to work flexibly from home.
I’ve always thought that having too many ideas buzzing around in your head indicates a lack of focus, but receiving structured tasks and challenges by email is like having your own personal business mentor to keep you on track. I now believe that all of the crazy ideas in my mind can be turned into incomes.
I am mother to a three year old and a one year old, and I am also a part time secretary, and yet somehow I do manage to fit little bits of entrepreneurship into my week.
I’ve read some recommended reading, and jotted down lots of ideas in to my Mumpreneur notebook. I sold second hand books outside my narrowboat and increased my blog traffic by joining in linkys. I set up a Facebook page for the blog and set up some affiliate marketing programs. I pitched a couple of freelance articles. I joined ebuzzing.com and Opinium the survey site. I also absorbed a huge amount of information about online marketing from attending the Cybermummy parent blogging conference in June. I was initially worried that the event was going to be full of career driven mega-mums, confident and possibly even power dressing. However, I actually had a lot of fun and found that even the most influential, charismatic, high profile bloggers were people, just like me, and not intimidating after all.
I’ve always shied away from any kind of marketing and business studies mistakenly thinking that it would be boring and that I would be no good at it. I had a belief that I don’t have a “business head” and the word “entrepreneur” makes me think of high flying Richard Branson types – certainly not me! But the word “Mumpreneur” sounds fun, friendly and achievable. It suggests that being a mum comes first and the ‘preneur comes a close second. That does sound like something I’d like to be. Becoming a businesswoman is a journey, but I was absolutely astounded to find out that it can also be fun.

This article was first published as a guest post on the Become a Mumpreneur website.

Find out for yourself how fun, friendly and achievable becoming a mumpreneur is and sign up for their free Mum to Mumpreneur in a Month e course.

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This post contains affiliate links.

Stuck on You



Sticky the Fairy

 When I got back to the boat there was a parcel with my name on it on the front deck.

Royal Mail don’t deliver to people of no fixed abode so how on earth did this get here? I thought.
“I hope you like it,” said a little voice. I looked up and saw a tiny pink fairy fluttering beside the front door.
“I’m Sticky,” she said. “I mean my name is Sticky. It’s nearly Back To School time. I visit all the good mummy bloggers and give them sticky labels and other personalised products.”
“Really?” I said suspiciously. “My children aren’t at school.”
“You’d be surprised how many things get lost at nursery,” said the fairy. “If your children’s things are labelled you have a much better chance of them being returned, or identifying them in the lost property box!”
I sat down on the side-bench in the well-deck and began to open the parcel: A pink backpack with my daughter’s name on it!
“It seems quite strong and sturdy,” I said.
“Child proof!” grinned Sticky.

There are packets of sticky labels in fun shapes with both of my daughters’ names on them; cupcakes, fairies, unicorns, mermaids and butterflies. There’s also the cutest pack of clothing labels that read, ‘Melmoth Girls’.
“I remember my mum having to painstakingly sew our name labels into our school uniforms each year,” I mused.
“Not anymore,” said Sticky. “These just iron on!”
“How cool is that?” I replied, smiling. “These are all much more cute and funky than I remember name labels being when I was a kid.”
“Well it’s not just about the labels,” said Sticky. “There’s drink bottles, learning books, canvases, height charts, backpacks, lunchboxes, library bags, personalised clothing and more.”
“Where?” I asked, looking around the front deck for more.
“On the website!” laughed the fairy, her voice fading as she fluttered up towards the sky.
“Is there anything for mums?” I asked cheekily. The fairy rolled her eyes and then waved her magic wand. A small packet of business cards appeared at my feet. I picked them up and opened the packet. They’re so much better than my old business cards. They’re blue translucent ovals of plastic with a squiggly flower drawn onto each one. A few days later I gave some to my friend who works in publishing.
“In case you’re ever telling someone about my blog,” I said. “It has my blog address and everything on it.”
“These are cool,” she smiled. “Where did you get them from?”
“Well, because of that blogging conference, Cybermummy, you know? I got to review some products from a company called Stuck on You. I just loved the little Bloggers Survival Kit bag that they gave us; and a cool little notebook full of tick boxes that says ‘Things To Blog About’ on the cover. I even used that bag as my handbag for a bit.
Am I weird?”
“You’re weird if you believe there is really a little fairy called Sticky,” said my friend.

Disclosure: I received some free samples from Stuck On You. I was not told what to write. I was not bewitched by a fairy. I genuinely love their products. Carrie Felton is a mumpreneur who first began at home creating labels for her son, and now has a global business.

http://www.stuckonyou.biz/ - Labels for every Tom, Dick or Harriet

Back to School Super Special - they deliver within 7 - 10 days!

Become a Mumpreneur – Affiliate Link

MiFi Changed My Life!

Huawei E585

Three MiFi Mobile Broadband Review

Did you know that half (48 per cent) of mums go online late at night to catch up on things they don’t have the time to do during the day? A third of these time starved‘Midnight Mums’ (33 per cent) get less than six hours sleep a night*. Three Mobile suggest that mums can save 135 hours a year by having access to the internet while out and about. So, does it help?

Denise Van Outen (celebrity mum of one) said,

“Becoming smartphone savvy has been a great eye opener and I’ve enjoyed making dead time, such as standing in shopping queues and waiting for friends, more productive”.

I have recently left my job to become a mumpreneur and most of my business is done working on line. I do spend a lot of time waiting for a browser that cannotdisplay the webpage. When the mobile dongle signal strength is weak I click on‘Help and Support’.

“How to improve your signal strength.

Think about the positioning of your dongle. E.g. upstairs will be better than a basement flat. Some rooms get a stronger signal than others depending on thickness of walls.”

These suggestions are only helpful if you have walls, stairs, and perhaps a house. The software creators might want to add to that,

“Your mobile signal strength is directly related to the levels of outstanding rural beauty, peace and quiet from which you are trying to reach the outside world.”

(Distance from nearest town) + (Beauty of rural scenery) + (distance from launderette) divided by (a large number) = possible mobile internet signal strength.

(See previous post: Communications Are Down)

When Three allowed me to borrow a MiFi for two weeks I was so excited that it could be the answer to all of my problems! Prices for a MiFi pay plan start at £9.91 per month.
(Three also offers all-you-can-eat data on both The One Plan and Pay As You Go packages, allowing mums to blog, social network and shop without worrying about the cost.)

Deep canal cutting

Deep Canal Cutting

The day that I received it we were moored in a deep canal cutting where the mobile phone signal is weak. If it worked there, it should work anywhere. Once the kids were in bed we quickly and easily set up the MiFi and turned on our laptops. I tried the MiFi in various locations, like hanging it near the front door inside a child’s umbrella. I started fiddling with my blog and my husband started live streaming a channel 4 TV programme on his lap top. We were impressed. Everything worked perfectly.

We moved the boat to the next village where the signal was better. I also took the laptop and MiFi away for a weekend in Exeter, and I used it during the week to work on my blog on the commuter train. My iPhone connects to the signal automatically whenever the MiFi is turned on.

Computer Says "No"

However, one day at home I could not get on line at all. I

called 3 Customer Support and quickly spoke to a lovely man who was based in a town just outside Mumbai. I am techno-phobic and had no idea what my computer error messages meant, but the technical support guy remotely connected to my computer and talked me through resetting the MiFi. It turned out that my poor lap top was very confused; trying to talk to my 3 dongle and connect to the MiFi all at the same time. He set the system so that it now looks for the MiFi first, and he kept apologising for the time it was taking him. I found the customer service to be excellent. The phone call did take 55 minutes, but I don’t think that is Three’s fault. I do find it amazing that someone on the other side of the world can be helping a techno-phobic Boat-Wife somewhere on the Grand Union Canal; pretty futuristic don’t you think? When I started living on a boat, in the year 2000 I had some kind of archaic dial-up thing that used Blue-Tooth to talk to my mobile. Things have really changed since then!

So now, I am really looking forward to saving 135 hours a year. If you divide it by seven that’s 19 working days I could spend on my new mumpreneur business: The Freelance Narrowboatwife. Or I could spend it narrowboating with my family...

To learn more about the #MumsOnThree campaign, visit the Three blog or the On theGo Facebook tab.

* Research was carried out by OnePoll in March 2011 for Three. The research was carried out amongst 3,000 mums with children under 16 years old in the UK.

I was loaned the the 3 E585 MiFiMobile Wi-Fi free of charge for two weeks so that I could review it.

This post contains an affiliate link to Become a Mumpreneur.

What would you do with 135 hours?

Internet Hero Saves My Technophobic Ass



Costa del Sol Image Credit: Kevin Poh

Review: Alternate Creations Web Design

Have you ever had one of those weeks where a 7 am phone call triggers a family crisis? You spend every minute on the phone and email trying to sort out something urgent and personal, whilst also juggling childcare and your working life, and through the chaos of it all an innocent little email pops up in your inbox requesting payment to renew your web hosting? You know that kind of week, where you’re about to move to a new boat, relocate to The Countryside and find a new nursery for the children? This is the kind of week I was having when I remembered that I definitely do not want to renew my web hosting agreement. The service was terrible; the design software included was counter-intuitive and frustrating. I urgently needed to relocate my hypnotherapy business website, and rebuild it before launching a new hypnotherapy practice in Hertfordshire. I told the hosting service that I was leaving and they said that I had 24 hours to get my technophobic ass out of their cyberspace.

It was time to ask for expert help from an old friend from art college. That’s right, I needed super-hero cyber-help from The Web Designer, at Alternate Creations. His speedy response was second to none.

So What did The Web Designer do?

Because my current website was expiring in the next 24 hours he immediately downloaded and saved all of the pages, text and pictures, zipped ‘em up small and sent them to me. Just like that.

He recommended a different web hosting service, introduced us online and got my domain name shifted over there.

He used Wordpress to create a simple template for me to build my new site on. But I’m just a simple Blogger girl so when the going got tough he gave me lots of technical support and advice via email, Facebook and Skype.

When I’d uploaded all of my text and pictures I’ll admit it looked a little messy. The Web Designer nipped in there and titled all the pages, tidied up the layout of the index page, made the top navigation links smaller so that they fit into one row and changed the page navigation order so it all made sense.

He did all of this from his office based on the Costa del Sol in Spain, so we didn’t even meet in Real Life!

So now I have my new on line professional work-space. I can sit back, put my feet up on the virtual desk and relax in my pixilated swivel chair, just waiting for the clients to come strolling in out of cyberspace.

The site that he helped me to create is www.hypnoticloop.co.uk ; simple and user friendly.

The Web Designer offers a variety of services at http://www.alternate-creations.com/ (Not just design.)

Pop over, take a peek. He’s very friendly. You may be surprised at what super-hero-cyber-help can do for you, at a budget to suit your pocket.

Disclosure: Alternate Creations provided their services to me free of charge. They did not ask me to write a review.

If you liked this article or think that your friends might like some super-cyber-help please share the link on Facebook and Twitter by clicking the buttons below the integrity badge.

Boat-Wife

xx