Blissdom 2012

(Patty, Tammy Wynette , and Ruth)

Going to your fourth Blissdom is like having your fourth child. With the first one, you do everything right and fret and worry over every last detail. With the fourth one, you realize that all those things you fret about don’t matter that much.  The first Blissdom I took oodles and oodles of pictures.    This time it  I was there 36 hours before I took the first photo.  That poor fourth baby.

I had decided not to go this year since I’m speaking at The Pearl Event in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS!  {the event is sold out and I’m literally shaking in my boots}

The night before Blissdom began, my friend Ruth at Living Well Spending Less—who wrote the sweetest post about how we met at Blissdom last year—-told me she had an extra ticket and would love to give it to me.   I was so amazed at her generosity and was ecstatic at the opportunity to see my friends and be inspired by the most amazing women on the planet.  My dear sweet Stevie encouraged me to go and my sister agreed to love on my girls for the weekend.  I threw some things in a bag and headed down the road.  My wonderful friend Patty  and my new friend Emily were so kind to take me as their roommate.  It was such a blessing to spend the weekend with them.

I texted Stevie during the first session and said,  ”I was SO meant to be here.  I love you and am so thankful that you get this.”

I came back full to the brim with inspiration and ideas and a serious line-dancing, lack-of-sleep hangover.   The re-entry is the worst!

The sessions were great but by far my favorite part was learning at the Blogging School of Ruth.   She is the woman.   She is hard core blogger mom, ultra-organized and motivated and when we asked her how she gets it all done, she told us she gets up at 3:30 and works until 7:30 every morning so that she can still be a full-time mom.   She runs four blogs and has become a successful momtrepeneur and is somehow able to balance it all, despite the fact that she’s been blogging only  a little over a year.   Her spread sheets scared the heebeejeebees out of me and when she asked about my ‘editorial calendar’,  I looked at her like I had seen a ghost.

After a lot of pondering and hemming and hawing and after my server crashed and I was faced with upgrading my hosting capabilities, I’ve decided to accept a few ads on my blog.  Ruth was so helpful and gave the best advice of anything I’ve read or heard at any conference.   She is a conference unto herself.  She couldn’t believe that I’ve been paying all this out of pocket for all these years without ever monetizing.  I’m kind of a purist and have resisted the trend to monetize but I’ve come to realize that if I’m going to continue doing this, I need to be able to earn enough to pay the hosting and design fees etc.

I hope you won’t mind the changes in the sidebar but I promise you that the writing will continue to be the best quality original content that I can produce.

So many of my faithful Blissdom friends couldn’t make it like Melissa and Emily and Nester and Ruthanne.   I missed you so much:)

But I made some wonderful new friends and had this been my first conference, I’m sure I’d have ample decent photos to show you.   Since this was number 4, their names and blogs will have to suffice.

I absolutely loved meeting Angela,  Heather, Jaima, Mary Lauren, Jenni, and  Sarah.  I even took Angela, Heather, Jenni and Ruth out into Nashville for a little Anthropologie eye candy.   I played Stand by Your Man for them and sang it real loud.  They may or may not be traumatized.   Which reminds me of my  favorite tweet of the weekend:

This is what I wearing at the time, for those of you who asked!  Maybe I’ve missed my calling although the girls in the car with me this weekend who had to endure my karaoke  would beg to differ.