I wish every one a Merry Christmas. I hope you don’t get too stressed out by the family visits and will feel refreshed in the new year.
Everyone knows how difficult it is to quit your job. Even if you leave for personal reasons you can do absolutely nothing about – you still have this really bad feeling. When you are working as a Nanny it is not only about leaving your work environment. It is about leaving the kids, leaving the family, leaving a place that feels like your second home (or if you are living in is your home).
When it comes to Nannying whether you get a new job or not largely depends on the reference the family you’re leaving will give you. This makes it virtually impossible to leave your current Nanny position ONLY if you have already found a new one – without your current family knowing. This means that you will often need to tell your family, ask them politely for a reference and often also give notice at the same time. All of this depends on your situation. Be honest with your family and tell them how you are feeling. (Remeber: Your family is supposed to give you a reference. It doesn’t matter how bad you have done whatever things, there is always something good to say about you. Please also bear in mind that they have no right to give you a negative reference. If they haven’t got anything good to say about you they should say nothing. Your family might also ask you to act as a reference for them – it goes both ways)
You want to leave for personal reasons (pregnancy, going back to your home country…)
This is probably the best reason to quit your job. Your family will be sad, shocked or whatever but they will help you make the best out of that situation. Not a big problem – it is your choice and they have to accept it. Remember to ask them about a written reference if you want to go on working as a Nanny in your home country – not every family who checks reference wants to call foreign countries (esp. if there are language barriers).
You want to leave because you’re not happy in the job anymore (you don’t get on with the kids, you’re being asked to do things you never agreed to do such as cleaning…)
Speak to your family about your concerns, often they don’t even notice they ask you to do things you’re not supposed to do. There is a lot of things that can annoy you once you have been with a family for long enough. Make sure you find a good moment to address these issues, sometimes this talk will resolve the problem and you will love your job again.
Unfortunately sometimes you will discover that there is a big gap between what your family wants you to do and what you agreed to do. Your family’s requirements might have changed and you might both decide to end this work arrangement – for the family to find someone that suits them and for your to find a position that suits you. You will be equally pleased with this decision and now you just need to agree how this change is to take place (2/3/4 weeks notice? Handover period? etc.).
You want to leave because what your family has to offer you is not what you want (anymore?) (Pay, holidays, hours etc.)
In this situation the Nanny is often in doubt if she should address this problem. I say go for it. If you feel like you want more, tell them. I know it is not easy, but if you’re not happy with things you need to talk about it. It will be difficult to discuss things like pay without thinking of yourself that you’re greedy. You’re not. You want to get what you deserve. Ask them about things in a quiet moment and give them time to think about it for a few weeks. Make sure you’re your best and they see what you’re worth. If there is no change possible, then give it another few weeks and tell them that you have decided to leave. Give them notice politely and ask if they’re happy to give you a reference. Make an agreement on what happens if they find a new Nanny before you have a new job. If possible have a handover period where you show around the new Nanny. After all you are the one that’s leaving because you’re not happy anymore – so try and make sure the new Nanny has a good start. Your family will appreciate that.
Of course there is so many other problems that can come up. After all we’re all people and all different hence why this is just a little guide. You know your family best – follow your heart. I have been through this yesterday. It wasn’t easy but it went well and I am glad I have finally done it. Now look into the future.
My boyfriend and me have purchased a new phone that makes having internet on your phone kind of essential, hence why I checked out the options for the two of us and I can’t believe what I see. PAYG customers seem to get a noticeably better deal if you’re just looking to purchase internet.
I am currently on a Solo 15 and get about 300 mins and 600 texts – but no internet. The only option for me as a pay monthly customer seems to be to pay £7.50 on top of my £15 that I already pay. From what it looks like I can only book this from the next time my bill is due (27th) so how am I going to get internet on my phone over the next 16 days without paying £1 per day? The other alternative is upgrading my contract to solo 20 which I honestly can’t afford – and which I don’t need when it comes to mins and texts.
And the obvious question to me is “Why do PAYG customers get such a better deal on their internet?”
£2.50 for 5 days
£5 for a month
£20 for 6 months
I can’t believe this. I also got a new SIM card with my phone, but I obviously need to my old phone number to work.
What am I going to do? Run around with 2 phones using one for calling and texting and the other one for internet until I can cancel my contract? How can these people be so unflexible and the deals for monthly customers so – excuse me – shit?
I have to admit that I love Christmas. From when I was a child I enjoyed the beautiful stories about snow, presents and festivity. When you have your own children (or work with them) you get the chance to live through the most beautiful time of the year being enchanted by the children’s enthusiasm and interest.
I am currently trying to spread the Christmas Spirit with the 2 year-old I am currently working with. This afternoon we will do some Baking and maybe also some crafting. Unfortunately all my run around the pound shops earlier was in vain – none of them seemed to stock christmas crafting sets. So normal paper will have to do the job. After all she’s only 2 anyways.
I came across a few pages with some interesting crafting ideas (incl.paper snow flakes), some of them are unfortunately in German but I’ll post everything anyways.
Christmas Cookie Recipes (Basic Dough and Variations)
Snow Picture – why not use some cotton wool to make a snow picture? Take some dark blue or grey construcation paper and maybe paint something on it like a street or some trees and the let the little one stick some cotton wool like little snow flakes on the picture. Add as many things as you like. Maybe you can also craft some clouds and stick them to the top of the contruction paper.
I know these stories are quite long but I tend to read to the little one anyways (mostly while she’s playing) and after the 2nd or 3rd story she will often come over to me and look at the book or webpage I am reading from, (even though there isn’t much to see) and will linger around and listen. Afterwards I usually try to do a quick recap so that she knows what I was brabbling about for the last 10 minutes 
.
German Links:
Weihnachtskarten – Christmas Cards ideas
Faltsterne – Paper Stars (similar idea to snow flakes)
If you know anymore pages you think are worth sharing, let me know.
I spent pretty much the whole weekend doing the lynda.com Illustrator Tutorial because I urgently need to finish a logo which simply proved impossible in photoshop – hence why I am now trying to figure out Illustrator.
Did I mention that it is so far a very frustrating experience? All these little difference between Photoshop and Illustrator just drive me nuts. I am trying to draw a light bulb and want to reflect one side to make sure it looks exactly like the other one – I’ve done that, but now the other side is not editable anymore oO The bounding box doesn’t turn up anymore and I can’t change the size of it. This is driving me crazy, any advice is much appreciated.
Thanks Google for pointing that out to me and giving me another 8 invites. Unfortunately all of my friends seem completely ignorant to this product and don’t fancy having an invite…?! Help.
I am unfortunately really busy at the moment trying to sort out my life offline. Going to interviews and next week probably trial days. So I felt like I had pretty much zero time off this week. I am kind of still thinking about doing my own site – but I just don’t seem to get round to it.
I was just scooping around for some hand-drawn fonts to see if anything inspires me. I was actually looking for one particular font as well, that has been used on p47 of the December issue of Company. (The handdrawn one) Something similar (sans-serif though) is being used by Carphone Warehouse on their website as well as in print.
So here is a collection of some collections. You know, for collecting.
Fudge Graphics has already compiled some cool hand-drawn fonts. AND the first one in the list is exactly the one I was looking for.
Hongkiat.com has a short introduction providing information on when to use handwritten fonts – actually quite obvious but nevermind a reminder every so often.
Another list at naldsgraphics.net.
These lists seem to cover the most used hand drawn fonts. Please also check out dafont.com and urbanfonts.com. Their pages are easily searchable and categorised. I will look at a few more fonts later on, so maybe I’ll write a second post on this.
I spent loads of time today creating one part of my boyfriends birthday present but in between that I found an ickle bit of time to compile a list of stuff that I found very useful to have/ interesting to read about. I can’t believe the weekend is already almost over…
<OFF TOPIC>
These fireworks outside my window start to annoy me and I blame all nonsense I write today on them 
</OFF TOPIC>
I will try to categorise the things I have a little bit.
Icon Sets
I suppose all of us are always interested in icon sets and I found quite a few different ones during the day. I really need to check my feeds more often…
Blogwiese.de: icon sets sorted by service
A collection of social media icons sorted by service instead of icon set
A nice collection of feed icons
Blogwiese.de: Social Media Icons
Social Media Icons in style of bottle tops
Webdesignfan.com: Hand drawn icons set
Various different gorgeous sets of hand drawn icons.
Usability
Part I of a series of articles about the message your contact form sends to people
Inspiration
spyrestudios.com: Grunge Style
A good collection of pages that use a grungy style
A literally hot collection of good logo design. Check it out.
webcreme: a great inspiration with great webdesign
get your daily dose of inspiration here
Useful Stuff
list of google wave extensions
well, that’s a list of wave extensions. I know, you would have never guessed that…
Tutorial
nettuts: From PSD to HTML tutorial
A good tutorial on how to turn your psd file into html
And last but not least something to drool and wish you were in a different place than your stinky old bedroom. DROOL NOW.
12 mins to go till Curry cooking. I’m off.
I am so annoyed with all these posts online about how parents should protect themselves and their children from all the bad people who pretend to be innocent Nannies BUT who considers the Nannies and protects them from families who just seem to want a bargain and think their Nanny is their own little slave house elf?
In my opinion there is a few things Nannies should consider before starting work with a family this is purely from my own perspective, things I would do better next time.
A lot of time families seem to forget (or not want?) to discuss many of these things with the future Nanny but it is so important to make sure you find the right match.
(1) Paying your tax
Your family is your employer and is therefore required to pay your tax. Nannies are not self-employed – as far as I know you can only actually be self-employed under certain circumstances and generally this is not recommended for Nannies. If the family asks you to be self-employed it may mean that they do not want to employ you properly and take out Employers Liability Insurance and pay tax or they just haven’t done enough research on what is general practice. This is illegal and has disadvantages for you – if you are new to the country and your contributions are still under a certain amount you will not be granted job seekers allowance in case you lose your job for instance.
(2) OFSTED
In recent months an increased amount of parents seem to be certain that they want their Nanny to be OFSTED registered. In my opinion the Nanny does not need to meet the cost of that herself because the only benefit to the Nanny is increased employability which is irrelevant if you like your job, whereas the families gets child care vouchers and tax benefits. OFSTED registration is not cheap and comes with a load of other things that need to be done (qualification, first aid, CRB check…). Should the Nanny leave before the year (since registration) is over she should pay part of the money back to the family.
(3) Paediatric First Aid
If you currently do not have a First-Aid certificate, your family should give you the days off that you need to do this certificate. I honestly think families and Nannies should go halves on the price of this (which can be up to £160 depending on the operator) as both of them benefit from it. Should you as a Nanny not be able to afford this course I am convinced that it is the families obligation to pay for this course. Just find an arrangement that works for both of you.
(4) Pay
Remember that your pay is not only the amount of money that arrives at your bank account each month it also includes the benefits you get from this job. Please remember to discuss things such as meals on duty and holiday travel, holiday pay and sick pay with your family. If you are applying for a live-in position make sure you have agreed on what’s included with your stay. Some families are happy to pay you travel and phone costs (to a reasonable extent of course). Even if you’re live-out you should consider asking the family for a little bit of extra money for your mobile, as you will often end up using it to organise playdates and outings. Also bear in mind that some families expect you to do Babysitting for them on a regular basis – some families require babysitting up to 2 times a week. Sometimes this is already included in your salary sometimes this will be paid extra.
When it comes to your pay itself you should never undersell yourself. You know what you’re worth! If the family wants a bargain you weren’t made for them. If they want to employ you illegally to be able to pay you less than minimum wage DO NOT accept this position. A lot of Nannies work for around £8 an hour even with minimal experience and no qualifications. YOU need to sell yourself. Feel free to ask for more and see what the family has to offer you. This job comes with long hours and lots of responsibility and the parents need to value this.
The way you’re paid is important too. Remind your family of the fact that simply handing you a cheque is not the same as paying you. It just means that they handed you a piece of paper. It will often take another 5 days for your cheque to clear and be available to you as pay – and therefore money. Ask them to transfer the money to your bank account at least mid-weak so that it’ll arrive for Friday if you need the money on your payday.
(5) Money for activities
So you and the little one are out and about all day, but who is paying for these activities? How about creating a little piggy bank with a notebook where the parents put in change and the Nanny takes it out to pay for activities and then leaves a not on what was attended. Never pay for the little ones activities in advance. This is not your job.
(6) Have a Nanny diary
A Nanny diary is a good way for parents to understand what you and the kids are doing during the day, you can note things such as Eats, Sleep, Nappy Changes, Spendings and write a general diary entry about the day. You can use this little notebook to keep up to date of illness and holidays too.
This is my first thought on this post I might be adding more things when I think about them next. Have fun looking for a job as a Nanny.
Can you think about anything I forgot?
I have recently been asked to design a logo as a birthday present. The company will provide personal training and shall be named Glow. The logo should incorporate the well-trained body as well as mental fitness. The typeface should be clean and curvy.
I am currently gathering ideas on this topic. So here is my collection of thoughts so far:
Typeface
I prefer a sans-serif font for this one and very much liked the clean and rounded look of Calibri.
Colour
As colours I chose a dark blue (very much black with a tiny hint of blue) and a lighter blue similar to Barclays blue. The letters G,l,w will be in the dark colour and the o will stand out in blue.
Mental Fitness
My idea on incorporating the aspect of Mental Fitness is kind of evolving around the name Glow and the o shape that stands out. So I decided to try and turn the o into a glowing light bulb.
Fitness and Body Image
I am trying to have a muscular body stand underneath the word Glow (with the o as a light bulb) holding it up, the light bulb being in the position of the head of the body.
Problems
Trying to draw a human shape without a graphics tablet, on a laptop seems to be virtually impossible…
Images and Inspiration
Well, I will go on working on this. I am so far very happy with the way the typeface looks, and the lightblub integrates well with that. It’s now time to deal with the shape of the body…
Pictures will be up as soon as I don’t have to be embarrassed about this utterly bad drawing anymore
Stay tuned.
