Blogs on More

Don’t so many of us fantasize about developing an amazing product and becoming a successful entrepreneur? Toronto-based Christy Cook has done just that, having created award-winning “Teach My” kits for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. (Disclosure: I know Cook through a parenting article I wrote for another publication, and because my child has one of her kits and loves it, literally, to bits.)

Yesterday I interviewed her via email for this blog, and thought I’d share her thoughts on midlife mompreneurship:

More.ca: How does being 40+ positively contribute to the experience of being a mompreneur or entrepreneur?

Cook: I have more confidence and a much thicker skin than when I was in my 30s. Almost every day, as a business owner trying to sell my products, I experience some form of rejection. Over 40, I feel I am better prepared to handle the ups and downs of running a business.

More.ca: What are the challenges related to “not being 30 anymore,” so to speak?

Cook: Tiredness! I think I would have had more energy, if I was doing all of this under 40. I started my business at age 40, so I don’t know what it is like to balance a family and business in my 30s. All I know is I feel tired a lot of the time!

More.ca: What piece of advice would you give other women at midlife?

Cook: It is a great time to reinvent yourself! My favourite quote at the moment is “Fortune favours the brave” by Publius Terence. At 40, we have the confidence to run a business and still a good 20 years ahead to put the time in to build it. By 40, we are more comfortable in our own skin to make quick business decisions and trust our own judgment, so go for it! In my 40s, I am glad I get to be the boss. I can make my own decisions and I can take an afternoon off when I really need one!

Questions for Cook? Post them here and I’ll ensure she sees them.

-Helen

In a waiting room recently, a mom and her teen daughter were sitting beside me, with the mom chirpily pushing instructions on her daughter.

“Shut up!” the daughter said to her.

I probably couldn’t have been more surprised if the daughter had said it to me instead. Shut up? Really?

Now, I’m not trying to make a case for how woefully uncouth or degenerate the youth of today are compared to “when we were kids,” because I’m of the opinion every generation says that about young’uns. I just want to know what you think is the correct response as a parent.

Because this mom totally took it in stride, and kept rattling out instructions and questions like nothing happened.

What would you do?

-Helen

This week we folks here at More.ca have a veritable pile of leaves being turned over, so to speak. Jenn Gruden is back blogging in this spot (catch her latest post on getting caught in the the sandwich generation), and she’s launched a writing project for 2011 called the 99 cent novel project.

Do check it out, here. I’m really cheering her on. As I familiarize myself with the content she’s written for this site, I never fail to find something interesting and well-crafted. I’ll link to a bunch of her articles further on.

Another leaf-turner over here is our web producer Simone C. She’s off to be a web editor for another site and this is her last week. Simone does a lot of the “heavy-lifting” as we sometimes call it, which allows me to do stuff like write this blog. If a new story catches your eye on our homepage today, chances are that Simone formatted and posted it. Simone has been a fun, warm and hard-working colleague — I’ll miss her.

And so, another leaf. Which is Grace M. T. joining us as web producer. I got to know Grace when she was interning for Styleathome.com, and I’m looking forward to getting to know her better. Welcome, Grace!

And now, some vintage Jenn Gruden content:
7 career killers to avoid
10 cheap ways to be happy
6 great 40th birthday party ideas

Enjoy!
-Helen

Hi from maternity leave, everyone!

That was a longer blog hiatus than I’d intended. First things first: 6 days after I turned 40, and four weeks before his due date, Liam Alexander Gruden made his appearance. I will say that having a newborn at 40 is just a tad more physically difficult than it was at 35, or maybe it’s because I have to chase my five year old in between naps. A week after he was born, Liam ended up back in hospital – in the NICU – for four days due to a really dangerous case of jaundice. That was not fun.

And then two weeks after that, my father had what at first we thought was a brain aneurysm, but appears to have been a head injury resulting in bleeding in the brain instead. He likely slipped on the ice.

He’s making a good recovery, having moved to a rehab hospital. But it has been quite a ride, dragging the diaper bag and the baby to meetings with social workers and brushing up on Acquired Brain Injury therapy. (The name of which amuses me to no end: What kind of a brain injury do you not acquire?)

I’ve written articles on caregiving and interviewed caregiving experts, but just as reading parenting books doesn’t prepare you for the reality and emotional scope of parenting, so research doesn’t prepare you for the day a parent really needs you to show up and be the grown up, for them. I am very lucky in that it looks like this time it will have been temporary. But I feel older somehow.

Unless it’s the sleep deprivation!

So that’s where I’ve been and I’ll be blogging more regularly from now on. I have an exciting project to share with you all, and I have a bunch of links to share.

Meanwhile, tell me when you first realized you were the real grown up — or among the real grownups — in your family!

March 30th update: 65 comments and still going strong! Thank you for all your wonderful words of wisdom.

Whether you’re approaching 50, already there or beyond we want to know what beauty means to you now.

CoverGirl has asked us to reach out to More.ca visitors with this question, for a promotion in an issue of More. If your comment is chosen, it’ll be printed this summer.

I’ll start off. Although I’m not quite approaching 50, I will venture that beauty, for me, is having acquired skills that I didn’t have in my younger years. Beauty is knowing I can style my own hair — updo or straightened — so bad hair days are fewer. It’s knowing what to bother with (eyeliner, foundation) what to leave on the vanity (false eyelashes) and what to leave to the pros (waxing). And lastly, it’s about accepting that I can still be beautiful without looking perfect every day. That’s a skill, too.

So how about you? Whether you’re approaching 50, already there or beyond we want to know what beauty means to you now. Please feel free to leave a comment here. You don’t have to log in or leave any personal info (email addresses are never shown), but we’d love to hear from you.

-Helen

The mid-morning More meeting has crumbled my resolve. There was a smattering of talk about junky food, the kind you get at a coffee shop and a street cart. The kind of food I am avowedly avoiding. I sat down at my desk and tweeted this: “@more_ca: Just got out of a @more_ca meeting, and all I can think about is takeout food (hot dogs, donuts) despite my ‘eating-in’ challenge.”

Then I begrudgingly ate a healthy whole-grain bread and spiced-cheese sandwich that I had brought from home. Even hot mustard and a dollop of full-fat mayo didn’t do the trick. All I could think was “No really, I wish this were something from the food court.”

Up until today, I had been cruising along, but I’ve discovered all it takes is the mention of a forbidden food and one really meh brown-bag lunch to make this whole eating-in challenge lose its lustre entirely.

Anyhow, so far I haven’t eaten out and tomorrow will be two weeks, so I plan to celebrate with spicy butter chicken from my local Indian resto. I would be sorely tempted to eat out tonight instead, but luckily I already have a meal half-made in the fridge.

I’ve enjoyed this challenge (until today!) and I think I’ll do it again sometime soon. It could be interesting to do it once per season, right? What are your thoughts on the matter? Over on Twitter, I had lots of encouragement and retweets egging me on these past two weeks.

Related posts:
Do we eat out too much?
Not eating out: One week down, one to go

-Helen

P.S. If you haven’t already, “Like” our page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Because seriously, you’re missing things like editor-in-chief Linda Lewis tweeting “Why is it news that Cdns spend more time online than anyone else on Earth…check out the *@!# weather forecast and make the connection.-LL”

Last week I asked for a roundup of comments on “What’s your oldest beauty habit?” with the best comment winning a $25 gift certificate to GlowingBeauty.ca.

This mini-giveaway ended last night. I spent all night tossing and turning about who should win. Just kidding. I drank a coffee this morning and looked them all over again. And picked a winner…

Catherine!

For this comment:

“At 51 I get a lot of comments on my skin. Although I don’t do anything special, I don’t sun tan, but nor do I actively avoid sun, I do have a habit that I think has made a difference to my skin. My oldest beauty habit is my use of a cream cleanser. I have switched between the more expensive Lancôme when I can afford it, or the budget Noxzema, but never, not once, no matter how tired I was, how many glasses of wine I may have had, I have never in my life gone to bed without taking off my makeup by washing my face with a cream cleanser and facecloth. Assuming I started wearing makeup at around 16, that’s a pretty long habit!”

Many’s the time I’ve gone to sleep with my makeup on, so my hat is off to Catherine! I also liked her prestige/budget approach to beauty products.

There were some other smart, thrift-minded tips:

Miranna’s comment: “For years I have used coconut oil on my face at night, it’s chemicial free and much cheaper then the big brands, on my hands I use olive oil, hope you all enjoy having baby hands again. I am 38 and the hands hide that secret!!”

Vanessa’s: “At 50, I have for the past 20 years used a mixture of brown sugar with olive oil, once a week, like a facial scrub, it works wonders and so cheap.”

Tammy’s: “I use a wet washcloth on my face without any kind of cleanser or soap every night before I go to bed. I’m 40 years old and look years younger.”

And others that mention specific products, check them out here.

Thanks for all your wonderful tips, everyone!

-Helen

Before I jump headlong into this post, a quick reminder that I’m giving away a $25 gift certificate to GlowingBeauty.ca on my previous blog entry, “What’s your oldest beauty habit.” All you need to do is share yours in the comments section — you don’t need to login or register — and I’ll pick a winner the week of March 7th.

Back to eating out, or in my case, eating in. Last week I wrote about the book The Art of Eating In, and decided to undertake two weeks of eating in. One week later, I’m still going strong.

I learned how to make inside-out sushi rolls (where the rice, not the seaweed is on the outside) over the weekend, and though I don’t think I’ll be hired at Nobu anytime soon, I liked that I could pepper the outside of my avocado rolls with as many black sesame seeds as my heart desired. For me, cooking seems to beget more cooking, so the next thing I knew I was making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies after finding this absolutely faboosh Oatmeal Chocolate Chip recipe on CanadianLiving.com.

One thing I am most proud of is that I took Homemakers.com editor Jen Melo up on her challenge to bring lunches to work instead of buying them (see point #4 of her column). Egg salad on whole wheat, organic kielbasa sausage on crackers, fruit, nuts: Not exactly inspired choices, but healthier than the Chinese takeout I favour, right?

So just one week left to go, and I’ll be back with an update.

How about you? What’s the longest you’ve gone without eating out (and why?)

-Helen

Leave me a comment, and win a $25 gift certificate to Canadian online beauty retailer Glowing Beauty!

Our lovely on-mat-leave web editor, Jenn Gruden, saw fit to organize this mini-giveaway for the More Daily blog. In the admittedly harried weeks since she’s been gone, I didn’t have the time to put this up. No longer! Starting today and ending Monday March 7 at midnight, if you leave me a comment in this blog about your “oldest” beauty habit, I’ll pick a (Canadian only) winner who’ll get an email with a coupon code for $25 worth of beauty products from Glowing Beauty.

It specializes in hard-to-find salon and spa products, carrying 2,000 items from such lines as Gehwol, Clarisonic, Skeyndor, Tend Skin, Revitalash and OPI.

So what’s your oldest beauty habit? Maybe it’s slathering on a clay or mud mask every Saturday evening, or using a peach-pink blush, or maybe you have a brown mascara predilection that’s been going strong since you were a teen. Let me know!

P.S. Don’t fret if you don’t see your comment as soon as you post it. We moderate all comments before they go up.

Good luck, and looking forward to your responses!
-Helen