I just wanted to share with you an interview that I did with The South Bend Tribune, our local newspaper, on some of the newest happenings going on with our website. I have to say, my favorite part of the article is this right here. Nothing else mattered when I saw that they had a picture of Emily helping me work! Unfortunately, Ethan was at school during the interview so he missed out this time, but Emily loved helping pose!

The author of the article, Kim Kilbride, also included three of my tips for savings on her own blog at Frugal Finesse. Many thanks to the Tribune for featuring me!

In the article, I mentioned that I will be going on two trips this month that I am looking forward to. The first trip will be to Bentonville for my part in the Walmart Eleven Moms project. If you are interested in seeing the vlogs from other bloggers, be sure to visit the official site. I will be spending a few days learning more about their corporation and getting to meet all of the great moms that are helping in this project. I will fly home and turn around to leave for another trip that is being sponsored by Suave for Glamour’s Reel Moments. They picked a handful of bloggers to come and be a part of the red carpet premiere in Los Angeles. I am so excited about both of these opportunities and looking forward to meeting just a few of my idols in real life and seeing some old friends too! I also can’t wait to make new friends.

I have been frantically working on entries for the week that I am gone and getting all of our great writer’s entries scheduled for the Family Bliss section of Blissfully Domestic.

All information related to my travels will appear on The Mother Loot, so that I can continue sharing about our regular old topics here! I hope that you won’t even realize I am gone and would really appreciate prayers for safe travels & prayers for my amazing husband who has graciously taken a portion of his vacation time to help with the kids so I can do some traveling & networking.

Thank you all for being such big supporters of our site and for continuing to help our website grow. I am thrilled to say that we came in at #13 in the FIRE Finance Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs this month. What an honor to be among some of my favorite people! I am gunning for a top ten spot next time so please keep telling your friends that this is the place to find good stuff about penny-pinching.

I am making my rounds in the community too and just got the opportunity to speak at Evangel Heights United Methodist Church, sharing ten ways to survive the economic crisis. Thank you to their congregation for asking me to speak and I hope that I can do more of that in the community! I will be sure to post my ideas soon on this topic!

When I return, I plan to shoot some new segments for our local news. I would really like to do a section on our site and a segment for our news featuring Etsy sellers. I am working on some entries and a commitment towards having a handmade holiday. If you are interested in being featured, please send me an email at amy@momadvice.com with a link to your shop. I think this would be a fun feature for our product review blog as well as sharing about shopping through Etsy for your holiday gift-giving this year!

Thanks again to the Tribune for our story and we hope we can continue providing great money-saving tips for families in this difficult time in the economy!

We had a record for the highest traffic ever this month so THANK YOU to everyone who has been sharing our website with their friends, families, and readers. We couldn’t do it without all of you!

This month’s top referrers were:
1. Freebies 4 Mom
2. Money Saving Mom
3. Twitter (and this is why you should use it!!)
4. Frugal Dad
5. Tip Nut
6. Dinner Tonight
7. Simple Mom
8. Walmart Money Saving Moms
9. Mommy Snacks
10. Marta Writes

This month’s top articles & entries were:
1. 35 Ways to Save on Your Grocery Budget
2. Mystery Shopping
3. Aldi Supermarket
4. Make Your Own Mixes & Convenience Foods
5. Picky Eater Dinner Ideas
6. Aldi Fall/Winter Menu Planner
7. Snacks For Mom: Do You Have Them?
8. Best Birthday Cupcakes in the World
9. Can We Survive a Money-Free Weekend?
10. Eat Your Heart Out, Martha: Bubbly Magnets

I know, I am supposed to be on vacation, but I had to tell you guys that the Walmart Money Saving Moms site is up. I was so excited to see that my Choosing a Coffeemaker video is up on their homepage- how cool is that? I have been chatting with all of the folks from Walmart and one of the bonuses for this project will be that I can get an early glimpse into the freebies that they will be offering on their site for our readers. I was really excited about that and being able to get the scoop for everyone! There will be some other great perks for our readers including giveaways and other wonderful opportunities so I hope to share all I can from this project with each of you.

Thank you all for your help in choosing my picture. You can find my profile is up and I went with the majority on this one and picked #10. I loved all of your comments and I am sure you will see these pictures floating around for everything now. Thanks again to Cathy Dietz for her amazing photography and to Walmart for footing the bill for my photo shoot!

In other news, we are running an amazing giveaway that you can enter for a gift pack of ten books from Hachette Book Group USA. All you have to do is tell me your favorite book, but you have to go here to enter!

We were also nominated for a Love This Site! award from Divine Caroline for the Parenting category. If you agree, would you mind just clicking once to put you vote in? I would so appreciate it!

Now I am officially back on vacation until tomorrow for our Freebie Friday!

I went and had my picture done (courtesy of Walmart) and I just wanted to get your opinions on which one you like the best. The fabulous Cathy Dietz shot all of these and I am having trouble picking because she did such a great job! Can you guys help me pick? Which one is your favorite?

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