The one where I gush about the conference

I have a ton of unpublished posts on this blog. I write them up as things happen, but I never have time to put in the pictures. Seeing as how I wrote this post last June, I figure it's probably time to throw the pictures in and publish it here. I'm trying to wrap up my posts so I can put this blog into a book finally. So this week is going to be catch up week. Brace yourselves.


Once upon a time I wanted to host a quaint little blogging conference in Utah. Then I heard of a girl and her friend who had the same idea. It was meant to be. Fast forward 7 months, insert thousands of emails, phone calls and sleepless nights and you have the

This post consists of a wealth of information that I felt necessary to document. So for your convenience, I've made it available to skip it all and save precious moments of your life. If you're my mom and would like to read on...and on...

It was a blast. And it rocked my world.

We drove into Utahon Wednesday evening and I rushed straight over to the conventioncenter to put together swag bags. By the end of the night we filled 5 or 6 cars full of swag bags as we tried to transport them to onehotel room. There was no way they'd fit so I ended up checking into myhotel room a day early just to throw all the goods in.

Thursdaywas the greatest, busiest day ever. My partners in Crime and I went toSalt Lake to be interviewed on the Mormon Channel with Cjane and TeresaCollins. Then we ran straight to another church office to meet with Dallaswho is in charge of the Mormon Messages. We got to review and giveinput on future messages and bounce around a few ideas.

Thenwe were whisked off in a limo to go to our speaker dinner. This was thefirst time I had EVER ridden in a limo and I was super excited. Yes Iam 27. Yes I have been deprived. Where I grew up we had like one limoin town. And it looks like this. Except ours had long horns mounted to the front. Dead serious.

So I never had such an opportunitybefore.
We made our driver stop at 7/11 so we could get somesnacks and drinks...and pretend we were rockstars. I had the limo driver convinced to jumpout of the limo and yell

"IT'S OK! I'M A LIMO DRIVER!"

But he totally chickened out. Would have been awesome.

That's the Mombabe, Blue Cricket and then Leelou with bright red eyes cause I slept a total of 8 hours in 3 days.

So then we were off to meet most of the speakers for the conference and eat some yuuummy food!

Then we had to leave a little early to go to the Girls Night Out party with Teresa Collins.
Sheis one of the nicest people I've ever met. She made some adorablescrapbook make-and-takes and showed us all how to make fabric flowers. Everyone got to mingle and snack while we got polished, massaged, waxed and pampered for free!

First time I ever got my eyebrows waxed. I'm totally sheltered I know.

My E-bestie Chari

It wassuper low key and relaxing. We then retreated to our swag bag filledrooms and organized registration packets until 3:30 in the morning. Oye.

Friday was just as much fun with some amazing speakers whotaught us a ton and made us laugh our butts off. Friday night was thebig Social. We had a candy buffet set up so we could snack while wemingled and listened to Mindy Gledhill and then Cameron Rafati.

Jeremycame to the social and may or may not be in love with Cameron. 70% ofthe married blogging mothers there may or may not have also fallen inlove with Cameron. He's super cute. And abnormally tall. And please love this song as much as I do.

Then Saturday were the break out classes. I taught a fun classon blogging basics and then taught another on HTML where I did a liveblog re-design. I was busy running all over the wholetime and was really bummed that I had to miss so many of the otherspeakers and panels.

By the way, there were around 25 vendors set up at theconference and I must tell you that Oh Sweet Sadie has some of thecutest stuff ever! Blogfrog, Persnickety Prints, 300dpi and Basa Bodywere some of my other favorite vendors. They seriously rock.

We had tons of great giveaways. I held the ipad for a long while. Debated running off with it. Almost tried.

We wrapped things up with Cjane singing Whitney Houston balladsand Sophie Uliano speaking to us all in her adorable English accent.

It was one of the greatest things I've ever been lucky enough to bea part of. Elisa and Caroline are some of the most amazing women I'veever met. They have taught me a TON and I love them to death.

I will tell you that I got to meetsome seriously awesome people. Meeting other bloggers is such an strange experience. You meetsomeone for the first time, but you're like old friends. Severalhundred people walked into a room and immediately were unified.Blogginghas played a big roll in my adult life and I've met so many greatfriends, learned, laughed, cried and grown in the last 3 years.