In between the business of Thanksgiving and the hustle of Christmas I headed down to Virginia the last weekend of November for the Mixed conference. This was my first larger conference, although it was still a wonderful size compared to some of the huge conferences held! This was the first year of the conference and conceived and hosted by Paula of bell’alimento and Susan of Doughmesstic. I left Maine very early, my daughter was not happy with being woken up, took a few puddle jumpers and an hour shuttle ride up a very long and winding road to the Mountain Lake Hotel. Between the flight, the high elevation, and my sinus infection I was hurting but it was mostly forgotten once the festivities began!

While I was a leery of how I would do leaving my daughter for the first time and missing some fun Christmas festivities that were going on in town, I really wanted to attend this rare East coast conference that had some amazing speakers! Bree Hester from Baked Bree gave us some great photography tips, Tami Hardeman from Running with Tweezers shared food styling advise, Heidi Larsen founder of Foodie Crush provided some wonderful insight on eBooks, and Denise Woodward & Lenny Ferreira from Chez Us offered a wonderful presentation on video productions. I honestly learned so much and really got the confidence to try some new things with the blog in the future!

There were also two great hands on sessions with Marian Poirier of Sweetopia and Duff Goldman, “Ace of Cakes” Charm City Cakes. There is something to be said of a conference schedule that has me decorating cookies first off with Marian! I was fortunate enough to grab a spot in a smaller, 8 person, cake decorating session with Duff and two of the artists from his bakery, Mary and Elena. It was surreal walking into that room, let me tell ya!

One of the best parts of this conference was meeting other bloggers that I have gotten to know well on different forums. There was a small group of us who “knew” each other on a daily basis from a cooking board, but had never met in real life. It really was wonderful finally meeting them and honestly was the best part of this experience. They are some great ladies so check out their blogs as well! Heather from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks, Lynsey from Lynsey Lou’s, Amy of What’s Brewing in the Kitchen, Liz from Books and Cooks, and Stephanie of Brownies and Blondies.
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Throughout the weekend we met with some amazing sponsors and got to talk a bit about their products. There are really too many to mention here, but some of the ones I connected with were OXO, Dreamfields Pasta, Way Better Snacks (I can’t and wont stop talking about those tasty tortilla chips!), Real Butter, Wisconsin Cheese (Their Sartori Espresso BellaVitano Cheese is out of this world!), and Attune Foods. We received some fabulous swag bags and tasted a lot of delicious products!

On the final night we watched Dirty Dancing, a little nod to the fact that the movie was partially filmed at the resort. I honestly can not believe I stayed up till 1:30am after such a long weekend! On the final day we hit the gift shop and did a little walking tour of the resort and all of the Dirty Dancing high spots. I even sat in “Baby’s Corner.” I was never a big fan of the movie, but even a few weeks later I have “Time of my life” stuck in my head and can think of random quotes all day long. You will notice in some of the pictures that there is something missing, something quite not right. Yeah, the lake is gone. It will come back in a few years hopefully, as it does this from time to time, but it was rather interesting seeing the whole place dry up!

After that, I packed up my bags and was ready to get home! I hung out at the airport in Roanoke with Angela from Angela’s Kitchen and Katie from Katie’s Cucina. I always love how fellow food bloggers can immediately strike up conversations and let the time pass by like we all have known each other! They also were pretty supportive of me when I got just a teensy emotional when finding out that I may not get home until many hours past my expected arrival or not at all. Yeah, I missed my baby 🙂

So, no prizes were won but I came away with exactly what I wanted from the conference. A chance to share some stories, learn some new information, meet some bloggers I’ve looked up to for a while, and hopefully learn enough to bring this blog up to the next level!