Thanks very much to all of you for your patience while I took some time off to relax a bit with my family. Our holiday was excellent, the weather was great and we had a wonderful time hanging out together. Interestingly, my access to the web was intermittent and not consistent like I expected, maybe that was a sign that I really did need to step away from the computer! lol

As I mentioned when I announced the break, I had a lot of thinking to do with my family about what the next phase or direction for Tipnut.com needed to be.

This site has blossomed into something bigger than anything I ever imagined, helping more than two million visitors each month solve basic household issues, get ideas for tonight’s dinner, offer suggestions on how to soothe toothaches, headaches and other common ailments plus curating hundreds (thousands?) of creative, crafty projects from around the web. Although there are attempts, there still isn’t another site quite like it even after all these years .

Thank you to everyone who offered their ideas, suggestions and even their services to help things go a little smoother around here. I really, truly appreciate it!

Although this website isn’t a family business and is just a place for me to share my passion (household tips, crafts, remedies, etc.), especially the vintage goodies, the work I do here does affect my family. As the site has grown, the amount of time it requires from me has grown with it. Do I hire help? Do I invest more time developing new tutorials, compiling remedies, cleaning recipes and tips from my notebooks, scanning and cleaning up vintage patterns, etc., or is it time to better manage what I already have published?

After six years of building this site myself, pouring my heart into organizing all the information I’ve compiled over the past couple decades (everything from fixing yellow armpit stains to DIY Febreeze and DIY laundry detergent), I find my heart now being pulled in another direction.

The core issue I’m having is that in the crafty/DIY niche Tipnut.com is a part of, we traditionally were women (and some men) happy to support each other with only a few bad apples in the bunch. Something changed in this little corner of the net awhile ago and to be honest, it’s just not fun for me anymore. Hiring help isn’t going to fix this.

It’s become clear to me that it’s time to take an extended break before I become totally disheartened and lose all my interest and motivation for keeping the site going. It might be a permanent break or maybe just temporary, I can only say that for now I need to take a step back.

What this all means:

• Wednesday Weekly Updates will no longer be published, they are on an extended hiatus. I don’t know if they’ll ever come back and this really does hurt me because I realize so many of you looked forward to Wednesdays. Not only as readers eager to check out the new goodies that were added to the site, but also as bloggers needing and appreciating the exposure and the little boost in traffic they got from it.
• Tipnut.com is still very much alive and relevant. The information will be kept online for years to come and I see no reason why that would change. Project pages will continue to be monitored for dead links and new projects will be added frequently…this just won’t be happening on a set schedule like before.
• I will keep the email subscriptions active for now, which means I won’t delete any subscribers. There may be a periodic announcement and review of what’s been added to the website, something like every month or two? Maybe?
• I will be working on a new site design. Actually I have been working on one since last year, I’ll just have more time now to get it done. Hopefully this will be up in the near future. Mentioning that now so there are no surprises .
• All past Weekly Update pages will be deleted. I know many of you keep them in your email folders to note items of interest so I will keep the pages online until the end of January 2013, this will give you several weeks to get your favorite bookmarks in order.

This all seems so cold and final, you and I have been a part of each others week for YEARS, and now I’m changing things. My love for this website and appreciation for your support hasn’t diminished and I still have so much more to offer, but the time has come for me to take a step back for a bit. I hope you understand and I hope you’ll continue to use and support Tipnut.com as you’ve done before, the information and resources will be here waiting for you as you need it.

For my fellow bloggers:

I wish each of you all the best and hope you find great success or whatever it is you are striving for. Thanks very much to those of you who supported the work that I’ve done here, it has meant so much to me . What a wonderful age we live in where what we type on our keyboards and even who we send a simple link to…can have a real affect on real people from all over the world!