Announcements: Spring Gift Guide, Giveaway Winners, UBP, and Asking Advice

Hello Ladies & Gents! I have a few blog announcements (and some requests) to make today.

Spring Gift Guide - First off, I'll be launching my Spring Gift Guide in May (exact date to be announced).  The gift guide will be reserved for mostly small retailers (etsy shops, mompreneurs, etc.)  This is one of the things that I do to say thank you to all of my blog sponsors.  Everyone who sponsors my blog gets a feature post written about their shop, and then the gift guide feature is just a little something extra I do to say thanks and to help promote these talented ladies.  So if you'd like to be a part of that, take a look at my PR page for all the details on ad prices and packages.  Also, if you're interested in sponsoring a giveaway on Simply Sweet Home, I will include you in the gift guide as well.  So send me an email if you are interested in that.

Giveaway Winners:  I have 3 winners to announce:  The winner of the Survival Seed Giveaway is Kerrie.  The winner of the $100 Gift Certificate to Tea Collection is Jennifer of Frugal Front Porch.  And Rebecca of Buttons and Bows is the winner of the DIY Fashion Giveaway.  Join me in congratulating them! Also, I want to send out a big thank you to everyone who entered and anyone who helped promote these giveaways!

UBP 10' - I also want to take this time to thank everyone who's come over here from the Ultimate Blog Party and say thanks and welcome to all my new fans and followers.  It's so great meeting everyone, and I hope to see more of you in the future. 

Also, I have all the commenters from my UBP post saved in my inbox, so if you've visited me & commented, and I haven't been around to your blog yet, I should get around to you in the next few days.  And just because the party's over, doesn't mean the blog hopping has to stop!  I, for one, had an incredibly busy weekend and didn't have time to go to nearly as many blogs as I wanted to (although I did get a chance to visit some great ones! ::wink::).  And then I had a local event to go to which prevented me from going to the twitter party, so when I get an some "free time" I'm going to try and head over to some more blogs from the party!

Request for Blog Advice - Finally I have a small favor to ask. I've been thinking of swapping to my own unique domain this year, and I was discussing this with my husband the other day, and he thinks I should try to do that soon.  But I'll be honest....I'm clueless about this stuff!  I have a few people in mind that I'm probably going to email about this, just to get some general questions answered: which service did you use? how hard was the transition? etc.  And I just figured while I'm posting some announcements here, I may as well throw the question out there to everyone.  So if you've gotten your own custom domain, I'd love for you to tell me about your experience (in the comments or by email).  Some issues/problems that I've heard of from other people that I want to try and avoid are: losing followers, losing pagerank, losing comments, etc.  So if you can help out, I will greatly appreciate it! And I'll love you forever!

-Jerri