Okay that’s gotta be the most ridiculous and possibly crass musical reference I have ever made. I love that song and Sam Cooke but I have officially maxed out the recommended safe usage of “CH-CH-CH-CHANGES” as a header/title.

You will notice that the homepage and some inner pages of this site have a new look. If the site still looks as it did last week or pages are crazily wonky please refresh your browser or cache. You may also notice a new archiving system to your right. It contains all of the old-school section headers (top and bottom of the page) with additional subheaders listed below. I hope that once implemented this new archiving system will make it a lot easier to navigate the site and locate older but very handy information.

There’s seven year’s worth of content on this site amounting to a WHOLE LOT of pages. Lots of information is good, right? Unfortunately, many of those pages were hand-coded by yours truly back in the day. You know, the olden days. As a result we have lots of work left to make all old pages reflect the new style and/or work within the new archiving system. Please excuse the mess while this integration is cobbled together. A crack team of tiny, kind of snarky, sometimes grumpy, but highly efficient elves are on the job!

And finally you will notice that the You Grow Girl site is no longer functioning as an online magazine with multiple contributors. There are all kinds of reasons for this but the short of it is that seven years is a long time and I’ve been slowly burning out. Moving the site in this new direction has reignited my spark and reserves some energy for me on a personal level. I will continue to write here regularly, and once the madness of the spring season rush and site changes have passed I will be recruiting guest posters to spice things up. I may even get to that newsletter thingy! Many who receive the newsletter have been emailing or stopping me on the street (I was surprised too!) to ask if I am okay and whatever happened to the newsletter. I didn’t know you cared. It is coming, I swear, but despite my efficient set-up those things take a surprising amount of time to write and prepare!

And last but not least I want to assure you that the forums are still running smoothly. In fact with spring in the air (except in my miserably cold and sunless part of the world, HELLO) the forums are in full swing.

-Peace out! (Is that still “cool with the kids?”) Gayla