Note:  I’m sending lots of love to Boston today. Here are some ways we can help and here are 13 examples of people being awesome during/ after the tragedy.

I love blogging. Duh. I live and breathe blog. And meeting bloggers IRL (in real life) is super fun for me. Conferences (BlissDom, Haven, Bloggy Boot Camp, Snap) are awesome, but can be expensive. So, here is my suggestion: Get to know the bloggers in your city and have you own meet ups! (Interacting with other bloggers is #9 on the first post I wrote about how to grow your blog!)

If you’re new here, let me give you a brief recap:  I finished grad school for educational administration in Dec. 2011 (I could be a principal in Texas!), quit my teaching job I’d had for 4 years, and moved to FL in January 2012. Andy and I got married in our living room (with 4 guests) on 2.22.2012 (Read more about that here). I found a part time social media job at EDENS, that I loved, continued blogging, and Andy worked for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Fast forward to November 2012. Andy got a job offer in Texas with a friend’s family business. I wrote a letter to the universe and BAM… Andy put in his 2 weeks notice, I had to quit my job, and we moved back to Texas (Read more about the why we moved here). We just bought a new to us house in Austin and I got a few new jobs! Which leads me to the point of this post… I promise I was going somewhere with all of that!

So, let me start with TreeHouse. It’s awesome, and I loved shopping/browsing there before I moved to Florida. It’s kind of like the Whole Foods of home improvement. It’s a start up in South Austin, and only one location as of now. When I moved back to Austin, I knew I needed to find a part time job(s) to supplement the blog income. Since I did social media for a EDENS in Florida, and loved it, I figured contacting businesses I love in Austin and asking if they need social media help was a good start! I contacted TreeHouse and bam, I do social media for them part time. (If you love environmentally friendly home building, follow along on facebook and twitter!) Not only do I do facebook and twitter, but I also get to plan blogger events which is my very favorite part! TreeHouse did its first blogger event last week, and we tested products, toured the store, and hung out with local DIY bloggers. Fun! I got to meet and hang out with some awesome bloggers: Lindsey, Kristen, Allison, Beth, Gina, Amy, Lisa, Marla, and Jenn!

Jason led us on a tour through TreeHouse and we learned things like:

Allison really liked the Tweet Tarts and Insta Grahms I made for the event (free printable coming soon):

Everyone got goodie bags filled with treats:

Here are all of the girls starting the TreeHouse tour. Ohh and check out those prize packs… Switch light bulbs are pretty amazing. I would love to have them in every room in our house! And look… Andy even attended our blogger event!

Kristen, the lucky duck, won the grand prize… a Nest thermostat! We recently got one too. We just switched our HVAC to a 2 zone system, so more on all of that and how to install a Nest thermostat soon.

I heart my job(s) and these peeps. Oh and the boys in the pic are Kane and Jason. Kane does marketing for TreeHouse and Jason is one of the co-founders, who was also our tour leader of the evening.

So, if you’re in south Austin and want to check out a fun store… come on by TreeHouse! And if you’re a local Austin green/DIY blogger leave me a comment if you’d be interested in attending the next blogger event!

Note: Because of the Easter weekend, Monday Funday is not happening today.Next Sunday at 7p CST, Monday Funday will happen again! And I will be announcing our new 6th hostesses!

Talking blog is super fun for me. My real life friends don’t get things like ad networks, google +,  twitter parties, WP, themes, pageviews, google analytics, RSS feeds, etc…  The questions, “What are you going to do about the feedburner drama?” or “What day is your linky party?” are not things you can talk to non bloggers about, ha! Thus, why any type of blog conference makes me giddy! I’ve been to 2 blog conferences: Bloggy Boot Camp and Haven (Day 1 and Day 2) BlissDom is my third!

I had not planned on going to BlissDom, but the cards just kept falling into place! 1: Andy and I decided to move back to Texas so I could easily drive to Dallas 2: Allison from House of Hepworths and Jessica from Don’t Mind the Mess had room for me in their already booked hotel room  3: I convinced Taylor from Taylor Made to come as our 4th roomie and share a bed with me even though we had never met IRL!

To save you from the moment to moment update that is happening in my head, I’m going to share my top 10 BlissDom moments. You’re welcome : ) (Oh and there’s a big announcement in item #7!)

1: Roomies.  I heart these girls. I’d only ever met Allison in real life (IRL), but had a blast slumber partying with the 3 of ‘em! From left to right, we’ve got Jessica, Allison, Taylor, me all looking fancy on our way to the Spazmatics at the Glass Cactus!

2. Spazmatics. I’ve seen the Spazmatics play a handful of times in Austin, but I think this one was so fun because it was uber spontaneous and free… 2 of my favorite things, ha! I had no idea they were going to be at the event! Oh AND did I mention, we had front row status… we are basically groupies.

3. Bus Pictures. This happened after the Spazmatics. It was a bunch of blog girls on a bus back to the hotel. With a pole. Fun! I had tons of fun dancing like a manic with Kristen, Jodi, and Hillary + the roomies.

4. Road trippin’. The wonderful Kristen was our road trip driver (and cookie maker extraordinaire!) Road trips are always a good time because you get to talk for lots of uninterrupted hours! This was even more eventful because we took an off roading excursion in the mini van, I got to drive my first mini van, and on the way home we stopped at Czech stop… best. kolaches. ever.  Thank you, Kristen, for driving!

5. Head Shots. I have to admit, I did the free head shot thing both days! Thank you One2One Media. I thoroughly enjoyed taking silly pics and I think I am going to actually use one of these as my new profile pic for all of my social media outlets. Which one do you like best?

6. Key Notes (and free books). I did not know who Scott Stranten was before BlissDom. If you don’t know him, he writes books, is super opinionated, and I love his ideas about social media! (Social media is SOCIAL!)  He told stories about social media wins and loses in big business. I loved the story about the Ritz Carlton being a “Joshie” Company! Apparently, a little boy left his lovie at the Ritz, the parents told him Joshie was on vacation, the Ritz sent the lovie back with pictures of Joshie’s vacation and it even had it’s very own Ritz Carlton ID card! Talk about making an impression (see bottom right pic below, that’s Joshie on vay-cay! We also got one of his The Book of Business Awesome/ Unawesome  fo’ free. I read the awesome side already.

7. Winning Sweet Prizes. Blog conference= tons of free swag, which is pretty fun. But, these prizes were extra special! I won Amdro pest and weed system and lots of Pennington smart feed for our new YARD! That’s right, we finally got a house baby (House hunt part 1 and house hunt part 2). I’ll be sharing more deets about that very soon! Fingers crossed I’ll have a growing garden soon too!

8. Urinals. Yep, that’s right, urinals made the top 10 list. With so many women at one event, the hotel got smart and turned the boy bathroom into a girl bathroom by sticking fake plants in the urinals, ha! Every time i walked in there, I smiled!

9. Selfie Group shots. Definitely one of my very favorite parts of the conference was meeting, tweeting, chatting, and dancing with other bloggers. Our Instgram feeds looked a lot like this.  Oh and 2 more of my favorite people are in these pics: Kelly, Mackenzie

10. Meeting and chatting it up with Bloggers from all ova’. That’s Pizzazzerie in the bottom right, love her and her blog!

For lots more pics and BlissDom mania, my roomies did (or will do soon) BlissDom recaps too. Check out Taylors, Allisons, Jessicas. In conclusion, BlissDom rocked, but not because of amazing sessions or sweet swag. It was wonderful to meet the girls behind the blogs I read and love everyday, meet new bloggers, and stay up late watching you tube videos, chatting about google+, and making awesome new friends.