Just a note: MoneySavingMom.com will be undergoing to major maintenance tomorrow, thanks to the skillful hands of Joy from FiveJs.com.
We had a custom theme built earlier in the year, but have been waiting for a good day to install it — and we decided on July 4, since most people will be enjoying fireworks, family, and good food — not worrying about checking blogs! 🙂
However, if you stop by tomorrow, I just wanted you to be aware that you may not be able to access the blog for part of the day, or things may look weird or not work. It should all be back in much better working order by early Thursday morning.
We’re excited about the updates and possibilities that this custom WordPress theme will allow us to implement. But we first just have to get it installed!
Because of the update, I won’t be blogging at all tomorrow. Instead, I’ll likely be enjoying a completely unplugged day in the middle of the week: sleeping in, drinking free Starbucks coffee, reading a good book, catching a free family movie at our local movie theater (yes, they are still open tomorrow!), making a Layered Nacho Dip to take to a family gathering, hanging out with my family, grilling out, and shooting off a few firecrackers.
I’ll also be thinking about how blessed I am to live in this wonderful country — where the American Dream is still possible! {A big thank you to all of you wonderful military families who sacrifice so much for our freedoms here. We owe so much to you all!}
Happy 4th, Crystal! i’m not always in agreement with everything you post, but I have SUCH enormous respect for you! I want you to know about the two areas where you’ve inspired me most: blogging is numerous uno….I’d been talking for two yrs about starting one but basically was lazy and kept procrastinating! One day I said to myself, if MSM can handle it with little kids and a husband, So can I! (I’ve been divorced and totally single for yrs and my kids are all adults!). So I taught myself with manuals and got busy with WordPress last fall! Thank you for teaching me by your example! I’ve loved blogging….every minute of it!!
The second area in which I owe you thanks, is couponing! I’ve taken to doing deals like I’ve done them all my life! For some reason, I have a real aptitude for juggling the numbers in my head, stacking this with that, and saving money, money, money! If not for you showing how to do it,I might never have played (and won!) the “game”.
Anyway, I think its a testament to the greatness of America that a northern agnostic can learn from and have an ENORMO respect for a southern Christian! There are lots of places in the world where this could NEVER happen!
Sorry if this is a bit long for a comment, but I felt So grateful to our USA today, I wanted to tell you!
Thank you so much for your kind encouragement! I’m so proud of you for your hard work to teach yourself the ins and outs of blogging and couponing. Way to go!!
May you be blessed this Fourth of July!
Have a fun day.
Our local fireworks were tonight.We got to see them free from our apartment balcony.
Enjoy your day off!
Thank you for everything you do! Tomorrow is a big day for our little family – it’s our last July 4th as an active duty military family! My husband is leaving the service after six years on Sunday and we are so excited to start our new adventure in life 🙂
I was a military wife for 7 years.I remember the first day as a civilian wife! Enjoy your new adventure.
Hope everything goes well with the installation of the new theme and you have a nice 4th with your family.
Happy Fourth! Looking forward to seeing your new wordpress theme! I’m sure it will look gorgeous.
The theme is on the backend, not the front end, so there won’t be much of a difference on the front side — just a bunch of stuff on the back end to make things more efficient for me! 🙂
I just read your comments and wanted to thank you for thanking our military!! As a military daughter and spouse it is very hard when your husband or loved one is off fighting for our country those little thanks make a big difference!!!! Thank you!
I’ve been meaning to offer a suggestion for a while – hope it’s not too late. I would love to see a dated archive type thing on the side. For example, if I am not online for a while due to power outages, it would be great to go back and click on the day that I missed, instead of having to scroll down, click older posts, scroll down, etc. Or if I saw a post on a Monday and five days later I wanted to look at it again, it would be much easier to find if I could just click on that date.
The updates were actually finished about five months ago, we’ve just been waiting for a good day to do the big install!
However, we do have a dated archive here: https://moneysavingmom.com/archives — this is just for the content posts, not the deal posts, though.
You can also click on “Add to My Favorites” for any post you want to save to refer to later. More details on that are here:
https://moneysavingmom.com/2012/03/save-a-post-to-read-later-introducing-my-favorite-posts.html
Most people aren’t as organized as you to know which date/day they saw the post on, 🙂 so they My Favorites feature has been really helpful for a lot of people to be able to save those posts they want to go back to and refer to later.
Enjoy your day!!!! It sounds like so much fun! I will be in the ER working as a nurse. I actually love working holidays– everyone that comes in is usually so bummed to be there, and I love helping them feel better. Keeping my fingers crossed for no fireworks injuries. Leave the fireworks for the professionals!
Sounds exciting! Congratulations…and enjoy the day off! 🙂
I can’t wait to see it. I’ve always thought your blog design was great – hard to imagine it could be improved – but change is exciting. 🙂 Have fun at your movie! We’ll be spending the day with friends and enjoying one of the nearby small-town Independence Day celebrations.
Most of the design is on the backend — instead of using Thesis, we’re switching to a custom WordPress theme with some custom features. It won’t be anything really noticeable on the front end (the part that you all see when you go to my site) but it should help streamline things on my end as far as formatting posts, etc. goes and should make my blogging time much more efficient and productive. At least that’s the plan! 🙂
This upgrade will allow us to add some features I’ve long been dreaming of, but which weren’t possible with the Thesis theme we were using. I’m excited — and hopeful!
I’m kind of glad to hear that as I really love the look and feel of your site – clean, organized, and fresh!
I’m glad to hear it won’t affect the front end because change is hard for me in the blog world to adapt to. Another blog completely changed it’s page and format and now I hardly go there simply because I can’t navigate it now. It’s probably only me and if someone just pointed out a few things I’m sure I’d be fine but….
So I’m glad that the change will help you but not loose me!
Sounds great! Happy 4th to you guys! 🙂