Thursday, April 21, 2016

Meeting My Fellow Blended Bloggers, Oh And A Conference Too

There is so much to say about my recent Vegas trip. I can't even believe that one day we all just decided to take Lana's advice and go to the BAM conference in Vegas, and suddenly less than a day later my Canadian friends, Shaunacey and Deena had booked their tickets, like holy heck this is actually happening!
Here are a few bullet points of what I learned while at the conference (one of the sponsors: Chicos. Keep reading for a small giveaway at the end, I know so exciting right?)


  1. Twitter isn't as hard as I imagined. I always think I don't want to bother people with a bunch of twitter stuff, but in reality only a fraction of your followers are going to see any given tweet, so go ahead and tweet away, I think I tweeted more this weekend than the last couple of months combined.
  2. I think the panel of how to get a book published was WAY more interesting than I thought it would be. I wasn't even thinking of writing a book, but these ladies got me fired up...afterwards some of us took a break from the sessions to sit outside and chat in the sun, and when they asked me what I would write about I had no idea. Deena had suggested she would like to read about my marriage and how interesting it seems (in a good way)...which got me thinking...what would your book be about if you were to write one? I'm giving this marriage one some serious consideration. Have you read my marriage series yet? What topic do you want me to cover that hasn't been already?
  3. There was another panel about how to get essays published. While I haven't really dove into this area yet...it really got me thinking and excited to maybe jump into those world of essays and getting published else where.

I think that Sheila did an excellent job recapping the conference, so if you want a full in depth recap of the conference then click here

Okay so now what I thought about meeting these ladies in real life...this is a picture of all of us, Alison was last to arrive and we couldn't wait to take a picture together, our first selfie together. Warning: There might be an overload of selfies.


Since there are so many lovely people to talk about I'm just going to go in the order in which I met them, just like the movies...only seems fair right?

I made these for the ladies, I know they always see them on the blog, but never get to eat them, so I thought I would give them a taste. Consensus was: delicious, first thing everyone grabbed when we got back to the hotel each time.


So I was off and driving and this was my view for a really long time.


And then I had to pee...and it looked like that...screwed! Finally after about 45 minutes I found a bathroom! Phew!


Okay enough about me, onto the ladies! I cannot tell you how nervous I was meeting everyone. First up was Sheila, I stood there waiting for her in the lobby of the Venetian...just like a first date, butterflies in my stomach. But you know what happened? As soon as we saw each other we gave each other big bear hug like we were old friends who haven't seen each other in a while. Totally normal meeting someone for the first time after talking for 2 years. Our first selfie, of many, was on the way to the airport to pick up Lana and Carrie. Where Sheila taught me how to use Snapchat. in the cellphone lot.


Next up was Carrie and Lana (which is pronounced Laana, like it rhymes with banana...I had been pronouncing it wrong for 2 years, it was hard to break that habit). Funny when you meet people for the first time, Carrie was MUCH shorter than I thought she would be, for some reason I thought she would be super tall. Not so much, she was my height.  Carrie gave the biggest, hug where it was an embrace that was so filled with love it almost made me cry, is that weird? I'm sure it is, but I told you anyway. Lana she was exactly the height I thought she would be and gave an equal great embrace. I feel like we're on Son's on Anarchy now.

We hung out for a while and got some dinner while we waited for the others. I gave some group selfie lessons. I've pretty much perfected them. Anyone want a lesson?


Finally, after a lot of texts with pictures like these in them...

Happy that they were together on a plane with wifi!


Sad that they still had a long way to go before they saw us. 

 
We finally met Deena and Shaunacey, in the same spot I met Sheila, we ran towards each other like that in a romantic comedy giving each other hugs all around. Just kidding, but there were some great hugs. They were tired, but there was still one more person we had to meet!


Finally rolling in around 10pm was Alison! Sweet, sweet Alison. She was the one I knew the least, but since we were sharing a room I knew we would get plenty of time together.


After spending 3 full days with these ladies, eating 9 meals with them and countless hours chatting and talking and laughing, oh the laughing, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much the whole weekend. I can honestly say that they are the best group of woman I have ever met. We met because of a style challenge but we have become so much more. I cannot wait to meet the other Blended Bloggers, hopefully next year, we're thinking Toronto!

What I loved most, was that even though we've never met, just because we read each others blogs, I feel like I know them better than some of my friends in real life. Although now that I've met them I can say that they are my in real life friends too, not just some people I met on the internet. It was actually pretty cool hanging out with fellow bloggers, I've never done that and it was awesome that you could just stop, take a random picture and no one even bats an eye.



Tomorrow I'm going to being doing a Friday Favorites on more of the Weekend that didn't make it in this post so stay tuned for some more fun and a lot of selfies!

Now go check out the other ladies and see how they are recapped their experience in Vegas.

Deena - The one who makes you feel at home and that she's your best friend, you've known her forever and you know you can call her for anything. She's the life of the party, always has great ideas and keeps our group whole. And she brought ketchup chips and jam...Mr. has been eating the chips non-stop!


Shaunacey - The one who has two kids roughly my kids age who just gets it. My beer buddy. Has my same sense of humor and we can joke about all things kids related, but know at the end of the day we love our kids to death. I love her cute accent, even though she didn't think we did,  I really did and I could listen to her talk all day long!


Lana - The one that lives closest to me, and who I hope to see again before Toronto. The one who has a great smile (despite nothing believing so) and goes along with the punches, says what everyone is thinking and is so encouraging it makes you feel like you can do anything (actually that is really everyone).


Carrie - Sweet, sweet Carrie. The who is small and petite, but you just know that she's beat down a bear for you. And I'm fairly certain she could bench press all of us put together, no joke! She's determine, loveable and has the best laugh. She makes me believe that anything is possible.

Alison - The one who was the shyest at first, but watch out this girl is funny! She has this one liners that just has you rolling. I love that even though she didn't go to the conference, she was right there with us before and after, she's so creative and outgoing, not afraid to be by herself all day while we were conferencing. I love that about her, she wanted it, so she did it. I want to be more like that, carefree and curious with a love of pretty things and puppies, always the puppies, although I think her blog should be called kittens and cute stuff or something like that. Her cats really are cute.


Sheila - The one I shared a bed with. Strange that you can share a bed with a "stranger" and totally be okay with that and it not be weird. The first one I met and we kept getting lost while picking up Carrie and Lana because we were chatting and laughing so much. She taught me snapchat...which I'm still not sure of, but she's my tech girl, it could have to do with all the teenagers she has running around.
Okay enough of the mushy stuff. Since Chico's was nice enough to give us some extra shirts, I'm going to give away three shirts! I have sizes X-Small, Small and Medium. I will keep picking names until the all of the sizes have been given away, so don't forget to enter what size you are! The shirt you are getting is a graphic tee, fitting from yesterdays post right? It says "Hello I'm Fabulous" and quite frankly you all are fabulous!

I am wearing an x-small here, so the sizing is very forgiving


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