The Ribbon Cutting!

After two weeks of blood, sweat, and tears, the new My Precious Pennies is finally here!!!  The design has been up since Friday afternoon, but I have been tweaking it, disciplining widgets, and adding in new features.  Finally things are truly finished (with a few exceptions). I am so excited to FINALLY share this new blog with you!  Okay I confess, maybe there weren't any blood involved, or sweat for that matter, and there weren't too many tears either, but it sounded dramatic and cool.

I hope that you like the new design!  It's a lot crisper and user-friendly than what I previously had.  Birdie's Secret Garden is a great design by Gisele Jaquenod, but I simply outgrew it.  My inspiration for the new design, believe it or, was Chloe's new collar.  Isn't it pretty?  Granted, I didn't want to add to Chloe's already HUGE ego, but the colors were just too cute to pass up.  You can see the ego in her eyes too...

But if it weren't for Blogger Boutique, this design would never be live on your screen today.  Although I designed the graphics and the layout of the blog, I am just a graphic designer and not a coder.  Ragan came to my rescue in my darkest hour and rescued me from the depths of my despair.  If it weren't for her, I would have a pretty Photoshop image but not an actual blog!  Ragan is an absolute joy to work with - my design was completed in less than 24 hours, and I could not be happier with it.  Through every stage of the process she kept in constant communication with me, and I appreciated that beyond all words. 

All of your favorite features on My Precious Pennies are still around, but they've just been relocated to a new home, so make sure you get a complete tour here.  It might be a bit frustrating at first, but I'm sure that this new design will make everything a lot easier to find.  The only thing that is still a work-in-progress is the Freebies - the same layout (incoming & received) will apply, but I'm trying to make it even MORE reader-friendly by allowing you to search for a freebie by date, received-status, and type. 

In case any of you are wondering what brought about this change, I'd have to be completely honest and admit that I've been thinking about it for a while.  However, at the same time I wasn't sure I was comfortable with being a blogger and putting myself out there.  When I first started blogging, it was a "let's see where this goes" thing.  I didn't have a plan or a goal - I just blogged to blog!  Freebies 4 Mom was one of the first blogs that I read, and recently I have really taken Heather's "your blog is your small business" theme to heart. 

Small businesses have business plans and a structure, and unfortunately my previous design just didn't offer that with the amount of information that I had to share.  You can expect to see more structure in the future with this gorgeous new design.  Small business also have brands, and I was in need of an unique and individual brand.  And thus, Squiggy the Precious Pennies pig was born.  You'd laugh at me if I told you how many other pigs I rejected simply because it wasn't a penny that was going in...

As a "small business", I also wanted to bring in something from my bloggy efforts.  I'm not expecting to get rich off My Precious Pennies, and I'm certainly not going to sell out and advertise everything under the sun.  But since I'm putting so much time and effort into this, it would just be nice to get something back, even if all it'll do is provide some extra cash for a Starbucks treat. 

Thank you to all of the encouraging comments in the past two weeks - I really appreciated them.  Things were so miserable at one point...on Thursday morning I was almost convinced that I would never see the birth of my new blog, and I almost gave up...until a guardian angel sent the wonderful Ragan to me and by Friday afternoon I had a fully functional beautiful blog.  So, if you have ANY designing needs whatsoever, stop by Blogger Boutique and tell her My Precious Pennies sent you!