Last weekend I had the privilege of meeting up with 17 fabulous Sacramento area bloggers. The meet and greet was hosted by Tracy of Then I Got to Thinking. This was my first ever real life blog meet up and it was absolutely fabulous. Getting a whole bunch of women from different walks and seasons of life, all coming together with one thing in common...we love to blog and it fills a part of us that our non-blogging friends and family just don't understand!
The event was held at Sienna in El Dorado Hills, a very beautiful and delicious restaurant. I think I hear a need for date night coming on!
It was very official, with a special menu selection just for us.
We laughed that of all places, here we were free to take pictures, tweet, and instagram all we want. No one to tell us to put our phones away! And there were a handful of cameras all prominently placed next to our meal! When the food came out, so did the cameras!
There is something so beautiful about meeting bloggers in real life. Many of these women I had just started connecting with in the last few months and still meeting them in real life...to put a real life face to their words...filled my little overflowing blogging heart!
I carpooled with the lovely Tiffany from Living Savvy {who I met up with the first time about a month ago} and Ana from A+M {below} who came from the bay area. It's a little surreal to get in a car with strangers, but it is so neat to see how quickly and easily we all got along! No kidnapping happened! ;)
One of the most exciting moments for me was finally meeting my dear friend Tanja from Postmodern Hostess. We go way back in blogging years and she is definitely one of those who I think truly gets me. I was surprised at how at ease I was talking to her...as if I was talking to an old friend. My heart was filled with joy, emotion, and excitement to take what I love so much about blogging and see it come to real life.
We also fought over who got to pose on their "good side". We took pictures on both sides on each of our cameras! So needless to say, I am sporting my left side in my photo!
And like a good little photographer, I tried to get photos of all the girls....
I stole this photo from Tracy: Leslie, Jane, Hayley, Shannon, Trish
I had to include this funny picture Tiffany took of me and my gargantuan camera. Who loves her camera? I DO!!!
And another one from Kimberly...
Tracy put together a fun little candy station for us to all take home some goodies. They were appropriately labeled in "bloggy talk".
Besides chit chatting and eating, we went around and shared a little bit about ourselves, our blog, and discussed a few blogging topics. The thing I found the most interesting was that we are all at different places in our blogs. There were a few like me who have been blogging 4+ years and some ladies who just started blogging in the last few months...and many who were in between. Yet we all desired the same thing...community in blogging.
We talked networking, Facebook fan pages, the love hate relationship with trying to get more followers...
But at the end of the day I was happy to say I met 17 new friends who all also love to blog. No judgments, criticism, comparing {as us women do too often}...but guards down with an understanding that we all put our hearts and lives out on the internet on a weekly basis...looking for connection and inspiration from other women.
And that is why we all continue to blog.
My heart is most definitely full.
#sacblogmeetup on instagram and twitter:
To catch up with what everyone else had to say about the event, Tracy has a little link up of posts from our day over at her blog. She also has another Northern California blog event in the making for September for any of you who are local and would like to attend!
