Women at work and their tips, challenges, advice, complaints, and experiences

When you’re a busy woman with a full-time career (and maybe even a full-time family), it’s a relief to find competent and dependable help to take care of some of your home improvement projects. Empire Today is a home improvement and home products company that provides just that – a great job for great prices from a company you can trust. They specialize in carpet, flooring, windows, and bath renovation products. The company has been in business for over 50 years, which means they’ve proven the test of time.

Empire Today is based in Northlake, Illinois, and operates in over 50 major USA and Canada metropolitan areas, so it should be quite simple to find one in your area. Perhaps you are familiar with famous Empire Today Man and the oh-so-catchy advertising jingle: ““800-588-2300 Empire!” Here is one of their vintage commercials—I get a real kick out of it—and the jingle has been the same for years.

To make it even easier for you to fit home improvement into your schedule, Empire Today offers a wonderful service of coming to your house and giving free in-home demos and in-home project estimates. An Empire Today expert will actually take the time to come to your abode and work with you to find the best flooring, carpet, or whatever you need to make your home more beautiful and increase its value. As you’ve surely guessed by now, Empire is not just a carpeting company, but also install all types of flooring, such as hardwood flooring, ceramic flooring, and laminate flooring. In their in-home demos, the representative will actually bring products and samples so that you can see “on location” what looks best in your home before you commit to buying. This helps avoid horrible scenario of spending a lot of money on new carpet or flooring upon seeing it in the store only to find that when you actually get it in your house it doesn’t match the color of your furniture or walls!

Well, Workerettes, I just have to share the news with you all.  I've given my notice to the wonderful (truly fantastic, actually!) editorial team here at Know More Media and I'll be riding off into the cyber-sunset soon.  I know that you've probably seen how quiet things have been lately on my part, and I should share why: we've learned where we'll be moving this fall and it will take me out of the country - not where I had thought we'd be going.  With that comes legal issues to be resolved with visitation for my daughter, implications for working at home that still have to be investigated, and the usual gamut of "normal" moving issues.  Add in passports - oh yes, I'm sure some of you know how fun those are to try to get situated - finding a new home for the dog, and more, and you'll understand the perfect storm of stress I'm dealing with.  *chuckle*  I have truly enjoyed writing here at Workerette and I've had a wonderful time getting to know those of you who have taken the time to leave comments or email me feedback.  I won't be totally disappearing, of course.  Those of you who read Seasons at Home, The Griffon, or Notes from the Homestead will see me making my usual appearances.  You can still find me blogging, just not quite as frequently, while I try to keep things going and get all these new issues resolved. For the most part I'll be turning more toward family issues and less toward work.  Not exactly the decision some corporate-focused Workerettes would make, I'm sure, but in this season of my life it's more than overdue.

Please take a moment to leave a comment with a link to your own blog or website.  I'd like to be able to visit you loyal Workerette readers, and I'm sure others will want to pop by your sites as well.  I'll still rely on the expert advice dispensed by my fellow KMM authors, and I'm sure you will too!

Until we meet again - happy trails to you! 

Every Workerette knows how important it is to plan ahead and try to streamline things like grocery shopping, meal preparation, and kitchen storage in order to (hopefully!) add a few more minutes to the day.

Hopefully with Menu Plan Monday you'll be able to get some ideas for things to put on your own future menus - or maybe you'll become inspired to streamline things around your own house with menu plans.

 

I recently received an email from Laura Stevens over at The Rosen Group asking me to review a new text available for homeschool families called the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments.  Unfortunately this book is well above my kids' schooling level, but I wanted to pass along the info for those of you who may have high school or middle-school aged students who could use a leg up on chemistry labs.  I know when I was in high school something like this would have been a real help to me! 

Read on for the press release about this interesting-sounding new book; be sure to let me know if you and your teen(s) give it a shot.  I'd love to know what you think of it!

I received an activism alert from Mothering magazine today that really caught my eye.  The headline was "one million mothers raising one million dollars - one dollar at a time".  Sounds interesting, doesn't it?  It became more intriguing when I read the actual blurb, which explained the concept: one thousand women donating one dollar and passing along the information to all of the women they know, who do the same....well, you can see where that all leads.  But it's not a chain letter or a pyramid scheme, it's a campaign to raise a million dollars and build a birth center.  Here's the basic info I read:

Every Workerette knows how important it is to plan ahead and try to streamline things like grocery shopping, meal preparation, and kitchen storage in order to (hopefully!) add a few more minutes to the day.

Hopefully with Menu Plan Monday you'll be able to get some ideas for things to put on your own future menus - or maybe you'll become inspired to streamline things around your own house with menu plans.

Remember, this isn't just for work-at-home moms like me!  You can be single with no kids, retired with your spouse, or working nights with both your kids and your parents to care for - planning ahead for your personal situation with a little bit of wiggle room for longer than expected shifts, school events, and business travel still puts you ahead of the game!

That said, here's what's on our plan for this week - quite a busy week, actually! 

Whether you're a Workerette juggling a job outside the home, an at-home mom, a work-at-home mom or all of the above *yikes!*, you've probably wondered if a slow cooker would be useful for you.  I'm personally learning that the answer is a resounding YES!

Even if you aren't a mom (or perhaps, are a gramma or great-gramma), planning ahead can only be a good thing.  It makes the budget a little less likely to break, the days a little more efficient, and with recipes like the ones these ladies are sharing, it can make dinner healthier and/or tastier!

In honor of Brownies (which hits right in the middle of my day and seems to really throw a wrench in the works), I thought I'd share this casserole recipe I found in Taste of Home cookbook.  I've adapted it a little bit because we don't care for regular onion or garlic; I prefer to substitute powders instead.  Here goes:

Over the past few days I've had cause to go through my file drawers and start sorting things out.  During my most recent "dig-fest", I spotted some magazines I'd meant to discuss with you gals.  Better late than never, right?

One article that caught my eye was "Get Hired", in the Feb/Mar 2008 issue of Working Mother magazine.  This well-written piece gives the reader some great ideas for heading back to work, making a career change, or snagging that promotion.  

Michelle Roberts hits the nail on the head with several points, including the reminder that moms returning to the workforce have assets that, while hard to define at first glance, translate superbly in a work setting.  Being able to multitask, show compassion, an ability to manage (both people and your time), being dependable, and having a strong work ethic are important to employers, no matter where you got the training.  In my personal experience, as a manager I'd much rather have someone who is dependable and trustworthy who needs to be trained for the specific tasks a job requires, than to have someone who's done the job for years but can't be counted on to keep certain business matters confidential or show up on time.

Head on over to the archived article at Working Mother and let me know what point you think is most useful for a woman (mother or not) returning to work after some time off, or looking to change fields.  My vote is for "amp up your ego".  Even after reading a multitude of articles and books explaining how women will undercut themselves in the workplace and socially, by deferring to others or being overly demure about their own talents and opinions, I realized I was still doing it myself while corresponding with others in a certain circle.  The worst part is, these people don't even know me - so why on earth would I lower their expectations of me by prefacing my thoughts with "I'm sure there are others here with more wisdom on the matter" or "This is my opinion but I'm sure someone else can tell you more."

DUH.  Old habits die hard, eh? 

Every Workerette knows how important it is to plan ahead and try to streamline things like grocery shopping, meal preparation, and kitchen storage in order to (hopefully!) add a few more minutes to the day.

Hopefully with Menu Plan Monday you'll be able to get some ideas for things to put on your own future menus - or maybe you'll become inspired to streamline things around your own house with menu plans.

Remember, this isn't just for work-at-home moms like me!  You can be single with no kids, retired with your spouse, or working nights with both your kids and your parents to care for - planning ahead for your personal situation with a little bit of wiggle room for longer than expected shifts, school events, and business travel still puts you ahead of the game!

That said, here's what is on the white board for our family this week:

Okay, so technically today is Saturday - but for some of my readers it's Sunday already.  So we'll go with that concept, okay?

Since it's the end of the month, I thought I'd share a nice big list of posts worth reading.  I'd like to do 31 since there were 31 days in May, but I don't think we need to go that far, do you?

I'd sure like to know what blog posts enthralled, enraged, or enlightened you this month.  Share, share!

For now, here's what gave me insight, chuckle, or a spike in the ol' blood pressure during the month of May: