I have a ton of unpublished posts on this blog.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 put the pictures in and publish it here. I'm trying to catch up on 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 much information, so for those of you who'd like to read on...and on...

I'm not one to
brag, so I wont tell you that it was AMAZING. And I wont tell you it
pretty much ROCKED MY WORLD.



We drove into Utah
on Wednesday evening and I rushed straight over to the convention
center 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 one
hotel room. There was no way they'd fit so I ended up checking into my
hotel room a day early just to throw all the goods in.

Thursday
was the greatest, busiest day ever. My partners in Crime and I went to
Salt Lake to be interviewed on the Mormon Channel with Cjane and Teresa
Collins. Then we ran straight to another church office to meet with Dallas
who is in charge of the Mormon Messages. We got to review and give
input on future messages and bounce around a few ideas.

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

So I never had such an opportunity
before.

We made our driver stop at 7/11 so we could get some
snacks and drinks...and pretend we were rockstars.  I had the limo driver convinced to jump
out 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.

She
is one of the nicest people I've ever met. She made some adorable
scrapbook 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 was
super low key and relaxing. We then retreated to our swag bag filled
rooms and organized registration packets until 3:30 in the morning. Oye.

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

Jeremy
came to the social and may or may not be in love with Cameron. 70% of
the married blogging mothers there may or may not have also fallen in
love 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 class
on blogging basics and then taught another on HTML where I did a live
blog re-design. I was busy running all over the whole
time and was really bummed that I had to miss so many of the other
speakers and panels.



By the way, there were around 25 vendors set up at the
conference and I must tell you that Oh Sweet Sadie has some of the
cutest stuff ever! Blogfrog, Persnickety Prints, 300dpi and Basa Body
were 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 ballads
and 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 be
a part of. Elisa and Caroline are some of the most amazing women I've
ever met. They have taught me a TON and I love them to death.

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