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1st off… Happy Friday!  Are you ready for the weekend?  I know I am!

In case you missed the big news here this week… I started a new spin-off blog, Power of Paint.  It’s a blog for paint lovers.  It will mainly be featuring great paint projects plus I will be having guest bloggers sharing their tips and techniques.  If you love paint I’d love for you to check it out here.

Ok.. onto the 2nd big news of my week!  My head has been spinning for a little over a month now over some news I heard.  Did you know that as of March 1, 2012 Google Friends Connect (GFC) will no longer work on wordpress blogs?  I know.. stinks!  And there is a lot of chatter that eventually GFC will phase out completely. 

So I recently set myself up on Google+ and have been bracing myself to remove my GFC widget… thinking about how much I’m going to miss seeing your cheery faces on my sidebar.

Then last week I was contacted to be a part of a group of amazing bloggers to help test a new “followers” tool… I jumped at it!

Bloggers know a good “follower” tool is really needed and I’d prefer to have one that is not tied to a million other services (seems like Facebook, Twitter and Google are linked to everything else on the Internet).

We wanted a simple, fast, easy-to-use and reliable service.  Well the owner/creator of Linky Tools (Brent Riggs), has been working his fingers off to create an awesome new followers tool… let me introduce you to LINKY FOLLOWERS (www.linkyfollowers.com).

Brent has created a FREE service that a group of us mom bloggers have tested and helped develop. It launched yesterday and you guys are among the first to be invited to try it out. I was part of the test group and I love the new tool! I highly recommend it to you.  Here’s a glance at how it looks in a sidebar…

Keep in mind this is this service just started… there will no doubt be some bugs that the test group didn’t catch.  Just contact Brent (brent@brentriggs.com)… he is great about fixing things fast. Don’t let a bug or an “oops” hurt your first impression. You’re being invited to be some of the first users of this great new tool, and your feedback will help him iron out any problems very quickly.

One last thing, the inevitable question: can my GFC followers be automatically moved over? NO. Google won’t allow access to those accounts but more importantly, YOU really shouldn’t sign up someone to a new service. They should voluntarily sign up themselves. You’ll need to ask your GFC folks (and all your blog readers) to follow you using Linky Followers but its easy, quick and did I mention, free?  They’ll love the tool. It’s a cool way to organize and follow the blogs you love.

There are really cool features that you did not have with the GFC tool.

You can get started by FOLLOWING ME from my Linky Followers widget on this page… right over there on my side bar–just below my sponsors OR right HERE…

You might have noticed I removed my GFC widget.  If you have been following me through GFC you will still receive my info for a few more weeks… but I encourage you to follow me through this cool new tool & get it on your blog too you don’t miss you on anything!

Oh and I didn’t forget… I’ll be back in a bit with our family’s favorite dip!