Well, it’s been about a week since I last posted and so much has happened since then! Wade and I left last Thursday evening for Atlanta, Georgia to attend the Haven Conference for Bloggers.

The trip started out very smoothly and we were having so much fun spending time together, but that all came to screeeeeeching halt when we went to baggage claim in Atlanta.

No luggage for Wade.

My luggage made it, but he was stuck with the clothes on his back.

So Friday morning rolls around and the conference gets started with a Welcome Session led by Marian of Miss Mustard Seed along with Shaunna of Perfectly Imperfect. These two successful bloggers shared a few personal stories and got us all excited for the weekend. In total I would say about 400 women and… 5 men were in attendance including my Wade who was still wearing the same clothes as Thursday night.

The weekend consisted of educational and instructional classes taught by famous bloggers and experts in different fields. In between the classes there were opportunities to meet various vendors. These vendors ranged from Home Depot, to Ryobi tools, to Wagner, to Mod Podge plus so many more.

Wade and I got the brilliant idea to ask vendors how we could win a t-shirt from them so that he would have something clean to wear.

Another aspect of the Haven conference that I personally loved was the fact that they matched first time attendees with a seasoned blogger to create a “tribe”. These tribes of attendees met daily to bounce ideas off of each other and ask questions. My tribe, led by Shaunna West, included myself and Wade and eight others. The joke of the weekend was that our group had a “token” male.

Saturday night was the big celebration, “The Saturday Soirée”. This was such a fun event because we got to dress up and be pampered with great food, great music and great conversations.

Everything wrapped up on Sunday with a few morning sessions, and then Closing Ceremonies featuring the Keynote speakers John and Sherry Petersik of Young House Love. From there Wade and I headed home. The entire trip back we chatted about what we had learned and how much fun we had. We both agreed that the number one takeaway from the conference was “Slow and steady wins the race”. A great reminder of this came when we found a giant sand turtle on our beach the next morning. Our neighbors spent the weekend on the beach and left us this adorable turtle named Tank.

I’m so excited to share with you all the ideas I came up with over this past weekend!

-Wendy

P.S. Please forgive my poor iPhone photos. With so much excitement, I forgot to take out my good camera. Silly Wendy.