I’ve wanted to share this news with the whole world for some time, but I didn’t feel like it was official until I heard the heart beat. Penelope & I listened to the heartbeat at the doc’s office on Tuesday, and all is going well! We are just thrilled. The crazy part is that I’m nearly 14 weeks along! I didn’t think I was that far along at all. Surprise!!

My belly is starting to grow now & I feel like I need to make the necessary arrangements for my upcoming giant belly. I’ve needed a full-sized apron for ages, but now that I’ll have a huge belly just asking for stains & spills; I finally made one.

I made sure my apron was high-waisted & pleated to add room for my growing body. We’ll see how well it fits when I’m 9 months & bursting at the seams. It didn’t take me much time at all to make it, so I made a matching apron for Penelope, too. I’ll post pics of her soon.

Here’s the breakdown of my pregnancy so far:

• Morning sickness isn’t nearly as bad this time around as it was with Penelope.
• I’m craving spaghetti, top ramen, pizza & a special brand of English muffins.
• I’ve gained about 10 lbs so far.
• I swear I’m having a boy, and we will be finding out in about 4-5 weeks.
• I’m totally exhausted all the time.
• I can’t eat sweets; the smell of marshmallows & Nutella makes me want to vomit.
• Everything smells like mildew.
• I’m due sometime in February, no exact due date yet.

So there you have it, the cat’s out of the bag!! Hope you have a good weekend! My weekend plans include taking a million naps & desperately try to catch up on all the sleep I lost in New York.

The first two days were spent being crazy, crazy; prepping for the SocialLuxe party. We all worked so hard to get everything perfect for the big event. Can you believe these swag bags?! They were completely stuffed with the most amazing things. Chris was pretty happy to find out that I was coming home with another pair of skull candy headphones.

{Survival kit photos courtesy of She Posts}

The Avery survival kits were a big hit at the party. I had the privilege to work with Avery & design the labels for the kit. I can’t tell you how handy these kits were & how wonderful Avery is. The bandaids, hand sanitizer & Starbucks gift card definitely saved me!

Friday I spent half the day touring private designer showrooms with 31 other bloggers with Shop At Home. Thanks to them, I went home with some fabulous shoes & a yummy scarf that’s getting me all excited for fall(I’ll share pics later). After my little shopping spree I got pampered yet again at the Getting Gorgeous party & met up with some really fantastic bloggers & sweet brands.

Friday evening I helped out with the Kirtsy Gala by painting inspiring words on people. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of what I did. If anyone has any, would you send them my way? Pretty Please? I’d like that. In addition to the body art, I participated in the art gala by donating a piece to the show. I’ve been dying to share it with you & now that the party is over, I can! I was assigned to read & create something in reaction to this epic post. You better believe I was sobbing after reading it.

I wasn’t quite sure how I could do any justice to this post. It was a pretty tough assignment. I finally took inspiration from an ad on the sidebar & made a little piece about that. I’m not sure I’ve done any justice to the author or her story, but it was an honor to work on this project & so great to have an excuse to break out my watercolors.

This trip was exhausting, but absolutely worth it. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to survive the big apple without my friends & family looking out for me!! My mother-in-law drove 11 hours up to SLC to spend time with Penelope & Chris. My mom met me in New York & helped me survive by making sure I had enough food!! Moms are the best.

Did you go to BlogHer? I’m not sure where to find all the BlogHer recap posts, so if you’ve written one, please include the link in the comments! I’d love to read all about your experience.

I’ve been looking forward to passing out my business cards at BlogHer for a while now. Now that I have everything all in one place, I’m so excited to share with you what I’m handing out to the fabulous folks I meet here!

Mrs. Fields generously provided me with 11 dozen logo cookies (they’re as delicious as they are adorable). Uprinting provided me with business cards (still love them!). I made & cut vinyl “i still love you” stickers with my silhouette SD and stuffed them & my business cards in the envelopes I ordered through the fabulous Action Envelope. To polish the whole presentation off, I hand-calligraphed “<3 Melissa” on the front of each envelope. Call me crazy pants.

If you find yourself in New York/BlogHer, come find me! I have some goodies to give you!!

Well, this is my peace out until Monday when I hope to have my act together enough to share more NYC/BlogHer details. Hope you have a great weekend!!

One of our many engagement photo outtakes. We were in a silly mood that day.

I’m so happy to be making this crazy journey with Chris. He’s my best friend. I thank my lucky stars we were able to find each other in the mess of the college dating scene. I love you, Chris!!

Friday, my folks treated me, my siblings & our kids to Toy Story 3; Penelope sat sweetly on my lap the whole time & I just about bawled my eyes out. Friday night we hung out with my dad’s family and I got a peek at my uncle’s new iPhone4.

Saturday, my dad & I ate lunch at Bruge’s Waffles & Frites where we enjoyed the most delicious waffles & fries & fry sauce ever. Seriously. EVER. Saturday afternoon we partied with my mom’s family & went swimming. Not sure I’ve ever seen Penelope so petrified of water before.

Sunday, I barely squeezed into this patriotic outfit; I must’ve gained weight or something in the last month because that skirt does NOT fit anymore. Oh well. Sunday evening we dined with my grandparents; Penelope & her cousin had way too much fun playing with dress-ups, toy guns & water.

Of course I forgot to bring my camera to every single thing this weekend! I seriously missed out on some great photo ops. BLERG!

How was your holiday weekend? What did you do?

My experience would not have happened if it hadn’t been for Avery office products, who generously sponsored me & 7 other lovely ladies. They graciously provided us with our conference passes, meals and excellent lodging. We were in heaven hanging out in our 4 bedroom, 5 bathroom, 3 livingroom, 1 sauna penthouse. Seriously, Avery hooked us up! I love it when large companies make personal connections in social media and put a face & personality to their brand. They also had some neat products to share with us & other conference goers as well. I’m really looking forward to making my very own custom binder.

Les Madeleines of Salt Lake City made these delectable treats.

The suite party Avery sponsored was just hoppin’. We had delicious food, great music & awesome company. You know you’ve got a successful party on your hands when the party goes ’til 2am, and it was only scheduled until 11pm! Madeline and I ended up kicking a few party-goers out so that we could clean up & go to sleep. Sleep was definitely not one of those things that really happened last weekend. I still haven’t caught up on my ZZZs.

(this post is not in chronological order, btw)

Friday afternoon, I rode a gondola up to the top of the Canyons and attended the photography workshop where we listened to four panelists talk about different ways to make photos more interesting and pretty. I felt a little advanced for the session, but I still learned a few great tips & tricks. For example, If you shoot in f22 or higher and point your camera at the sun, you’ll get a pretty sunburst effect that you wouldn’t otherwise get in a lower aperture. I tried that on Saturday night at the closing party & it worked! Sort of. I’m blaming the un-interesting photo on my rush to head back to the hotel to pack.

The closing party was a lot of fun, but I was so exhausted from the weekend, I stupidly didn’t take advantage of the venue. I did take some fun pictures of everyone having a good time, though! To see more pictures of the EVO conference craziness, check out their flickr group!

Three cheers for Jyl, Rachael and their minions!! They put on such an inspiring and educational conference! Can’t wait until next year!

I’ve been working on some fun projects that I can’t wait to share with you, but since the computer is caput, they’ll have to wait for later. To give you a preview, here’s what you can expect to see next week:

iPhone Case 2.0

I had a brilliant brainwave the other day where I figured out a totally new and totally awesome iphone case design. I’m excited. I hope you are, too.

Nearly Completed Living Room

I’m not sure I’ll ever be done decorating this room, but it’s so close. Close enough that I really want to share it with you. I finally have artwork on the walls and furniture on the floors. It’s almost a complete style 180 from our last apartment, which is always fun.

I hope you have a fabulous, and exciting weekend void of any computer failures or errors.

There’s no doubt, Gabby & the other fabulous Kirtsy ladies put on a spectacular conference filled with 100% relevant topics for design/creative bloggers. IT WAS AMAZING. It was rolling-on-the-ground hilarious. It was thought-provoking. It was an absolute blast. It was perfect. Here are a few of the highlights:

Early Bird Session: How to Find the Best Design Sites

• I got to meet with each of these ladies, and they were all so fabulous. (Allison of Petit Elefant, Nicole of Making it Lovely, Jaime of Design Milk, and Karey of Mackin Ink)
• Here’s the complete list of sites to check out (Allison put me on the list as the next big thing. Uh. . .  serious?!?)
• My google reader is bursting at the seams & so is everyone else’s.

Morning Keynote Breakfast: Why design?

• Putting all of my attention into blogging full-time made all the difference. – Maxwell, Apartment Therapy
• Martha is OVER. It’s all about being real, not flawlessly perfect. – Maxwell, Apartment Therapy
• People will always have an opinion about everything. – Heather, Dooce
• Heather Armstrong is a fabulous speaker and hands down hilarious.
• Grace from design sponge is so genuine and so awesome. I love her blog so much more now that I’ve met her in person.

Form & Function: Designing online

• What makes a good site awesome? Pixel perfection, good CSS, faster loading speed and sites that function on most browsers.
• Good clients trust designers. They know what they’re doing. – Struck Design
• Good designers don’t say no. They come up with something even better & knock the socks off their clients. – Struck Design
• IE sucks. – Bryan, Typekit
• Good typography is possible, even on the web. – Bryan, Typekit

Form & Function: Building your brand & business

• I came into this session a tad late, but it was still super inspiring. Victoria from SFgirlbybay is ridiculously cool. I cornered her a few times to chat and she was very, very nice to me.
• You don’t need to pigeonhole yourself in blogging. As long as it’s something you love & true to you, people will read it. – Gayla, You Grow Girl
• I try to make my life blogworthy. – Sarah, Sarah Jane Studios
• Blogging is a labor of love.

Keynote Lunch: New media artists

• Let the creative process take you on a journey. – Erik Natske
• Erik Natske does some incredible things with flash. Jaw-dropping awesome.
• DJ earworm does an incredible job of mashing up 20 different songs to make a cohesive song. Super awesome.
• DJ earworm did a mash-up for Annie Lennox. It’s stunning. Check it out here.

Design Theory: Designing Your Community

• Erin of Design for Mankind is another new favorite person (Goodness, I met so many!). She’s so genuine, sweet & super stylish.
• It’s good to keep the conversation going in the comments.
• Meaningful comments that add to the conversation, are key. It’s especially important to show appreciation for folks that take time to comment on your site & to those that may write about you.
• A canned response is better than no response. – Erin, design for mankind
• It’s not super important to follow metrics obsessively, but be aware of them. – Erin, design for mankind
• Blogrolls can be frustrating. Who to add? How many to add? Should they just disappear? {probably}.

Form & Function: Beyond Ad Networks

• This session was super helpful. I really enjoyed how each panelist had a different perspective & brought different ideas to the session. Maggie is another new favorite person of mine. She’s stylish, clever, a savvy shopper and super fun to talk to.
• If you’re a good writer, try selling your stories to a newspaper. (that does NOT apply to me)
• Sell individual ads rather than sponsorships.
• Sell more ads at a lower price.
• Stay consistent in your ads aesthetics. It’s not bad to send advertisors a style guide. Ads are like accessories to a great outfit. They’ve got to match.
• Make sponsored posts separate, and mark as being sponsored content. Charge 10x more for in content sponsorship posts.
• Hand-pick your sponsors, don’t be afraid to ask for advertising. You’ve got to grow a pair to be a successful blogger. Ask for what you want.

Is there a rewind button I can press so I can relive the conference? Goodness, I had so much fun! I didn’t meet a single person there that I didn’t like. I can’t wait for Alt 2011!

*I didn’t take these photographs, mine turned out terribly. You can see the event photos here.