• Before marriage/children, what were your dreams or goals?

• What clubs or organizations do you belong to?

• Where do you volunteer?

• What do you do that people compliment you on, such as baking, making invitations, etc.?

Tiffany Mathais, a stay-at-home mother of three boys in Reston, Va., recently started Camelot Video Productions with a friend. The company creates video tributes for clients using photographic and film media. "Besides being great friends, we also complement each other in terms of the gifts we bring to the company—she is more detailed in her creativity, while I’m a bit more big-picture and a risk taker," she says.

Think education. If you’re still stumped, you could develop or polish skills by taking continuing education classes at your local college or university, or through your county’s recreation department. Many professional organizations also offer workshops, training, and networking opportunities that might spark your creativity.

Narrowing down your choices

Once you’ve made your list, go back and select two to three things you think might make a good home-based business. Now jot down all the ways those ideas could become a money-making venture for you. For example, if you enjoy cooking, you could start a home-based business as a personal chef, a grocery-store shopper, a special-occasion baker, a caterer or a menu planner. If you have received compliments on your homemade invitations, you could start a greeting-card business, do custom-birth announcements, write personalized letters for children or design wedding invitations.

After you’ve exhausted the job possibilities for your two to three main choices, it’s time to narrow the field even further by choosing two jobs under each heading. Bounce these job ideas off your husband and a few close friends for their input. Even your children might have some good insights into what mom should do--you might find that they have a good understanding as to which one would best suit your personality and talents.

Working from home while caring for your children can be a rewarding and meaningful way to keep your creative juices flowing. Take care, though, to strike a balance between work and family obligations, and remember to always strive to keep your focus on your primary calling as wife and mother. "I don’t want to overextend myself because of my work in such a way that I can’t be a good student of the Word and provide good instruction to my kids," says Wolfe. "That’s our primary concern and we still constantly monitor my work flow to make sure we have a good balance."