Part I – Personal Story

Welcome to the Mother Makings Blog!

This blog has been a long time coming and I am so glad you are here!

My name is Maggie Estes and I am the Mompreneur behind Mother Makings.

How Mother Makings was Birthed

Mother Makings was born out of my desire to form a creative outlet for myself. I also wanted to help my husband out financially .

It worked for the creative bit!  However, until now it was not quite the right time for me to devote the time needed for my small business to financially succeed.

When my boys were little I was immersed in a self-directed education mindset. This carried over to my sons because we homeschool. Creativity is a part of our daily lives. Now that they are old enough, I can model my entrepreneurial spirit. That is a far greater example than me only telling them about it without modeling it myself.

The core of Mother Makings came about as I was learning to make everyday household products that we bought on a regular basis in order to save money.

I was a regular hand cream and lotion customer due to dyshidrotic eczema, which I developed working at a commercial restaurant in 2000. That was a period of great stress and personal growth.

With the births of my boys, about ten years later, my attention turned to their health (as well as my husband’s and my own) with a ruthless eye to anything that might harm them. I began reading the labels with a hawk’s hunting eye and realized that my go-to hand cream was not only full of toxic crap it was also likely exacerbating my flare ups!

First I experimented with handcrafting vegetarian skin care products using coconut oil and olive oil. Then I heard about tallow balm… 

Andrew Gardner sang the praises of 100% grass-fed tallow in his article Traditional, Nourishing and Healing Skin Care and my curiosity was piqued.

I experimented making it myself and soon crafted my own version which became Tallowed Touch.

I named Mother Makings’ tallow balm  Tallowed Touch, to imply “Hallowed Touch”. Touch is vital and taken for granted unless you suffer from eczema in your hands. Tallowed Touch Tallow Balm restored my hands close to how they were a decade before the eczema. Diet and a commercial product purge were also a vital part of this journey. I will expound on that in future posts.

Mother Makings empowered me as a Mother and as a Mompreneur (aka mother who is an entrepreneur). 

I want to share my journey with you and hope that you will find a way to empower yourself. No one can do this for you. You can be inspired by others, and their stories can help you to find your own path.

From the moment I first thought up the name of Mother Makings for my creative outlet / business I knew that it wanted to become a lifestyle blog. First, I had to go through many little steps and not a few stumbles to get here.

What is a lifestyle blog?

A lifestyle blog is a blog about the lifestyle of the blogger. It reflects what she / he is passionate about. A lifestyle blog often offers advice, tools, stories and resources to readers. Many of them are monetized and the blogger shares products that they believe in with affiliate links that will give the blogger a small commission if a reader clicks the link and buys something (this is never paid for by the reader/buyer). 

Lifestyle blogs really helped me out while I was home with my two precocious, high-energy sons. Full-time mothers can find themselves isolated and out of touch with the women we had been before becoming a mother. Reading other blogger’s experiences really helped me not to feel alone and inspired me.

My favorite blogs were and still are by full-time, often homeschooling mothers with serious DIY tendencies. These women and occasional men are my lifeline and their generosity really inspires me. Their blog posts were their gifts to me and their other readers. 

The Mother Makings Blog is my gift to YOU. I hope that it inspires you!

Don’t Let Perfection Stand in the Way of Progress

A good friend recently passed along the words that her daughter always tells her “Don’t let Perfection stand in the way of Progress”. 

These words are my motivation for getting this blog published. You did not see it sooner because striving for perfection caused me not to even take a step. I suppose it wasn’t the right time for me either but now it is!

Mothers and People Who Mother are the future of sustainability on Mother Earth. Women are the life-bearers and this makes us the protectors and sustainers of life as well as sustainable traditions. Yet we cannot do it alone, which is why I am creating the Mother Makings Blog. A virtual space, with resources that can inspire mothers all over the world to become mompreneurs of small sustainable businesses. We can change the shape of business and capitalism through our practices.

Now that you know a bit of my story I would like to hear yours!

Say Hello in the comments below. Tell me how you found out about Mother Makings and where on our beautiful Mother Earth you are located!