Hey guys! I hope you’re having a great day so far this Monday. I’m exhausted from my incredible trip to Portland for FitBloggin’ 2013, and I was sitting at my desk thinking, “How am I going to sum it all up?” So tonight, I won’t sum it up, but give you a couple snippets. You know the song “Seasons of Love” from Rent? This one?
I feel like I want to create this huge slideshow with all of the photos from this weekend and tweak the whole “Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes” to be just the amount of time in a weekend. (I’m far too lazy and tired to look it up, so you know, it’d probably be like.. what… hmm… umm… 3,000 minutes?) Anyways! This weekend was beyond words one of the best weekends of my life and I don’t say that lightly, as best moments of my life include marrying my husband, graduating with my BA and MA, spending holidays with my family… you know, major stuff like that. This weekend was AWESOME.
Why? Because of all these beautiful, warm, radiant talented people.
FitBloggin’ 2013 Bloggers in Portland, Oregon. Photo by Carrie D Photography.
Do you guys have a friend or person in your life who just GETS you? The person who you can look at, and in a split-second, know exactly what they’re thinking? Maybe you have the same weird hatred of those strings in the sleeves of your clothes that are supposed to be there for hangers, but really just dangle on your armpits? Or maybe you both love feta cheese but can’t stand goat cheese? The friend who has no problem telling you that you’re being a big old bitch, but they forgive you because they know you’re just hungry? That kind of friend. They just GET you, every fiber of your being. Imagine that friend at FitBloggin’ — times 300. The sense of community at this conference is amazing! We are all one big like-minded tribe.
We did SO much this weekend. We walked around the waterfront of Portland.
Walking bloggers at Fitbloggin’ 13
We met new friends, people who decided that YES, weight loss bloggers SHOULD go on late night treks to Voodoo Doughnuts. (Don’t worry – I ate half of one and gave the rest away. They’re good but like, eh, overrated. We’ll discuss later.)
The Double Chin Diary and Project Unfluff take their mission of losing weight very, very seriously.
We got to try tons of new things, like doing squat challenges on a trampoline.
Jumpsport Trampolines had me bouncing with joy at FitBloggin 13!
We cried, and they weren’t pretty little delicate cries, they were big, snortin, honkin’ ugly cries. We got some things off our chest and shared our “Ah-ha!” moment about weight loss. (There’s a whole blog coming for this one!)
FitBloggin’ girls earn pretty peonies for sharing their stories!
We learned about awesome things we can to make our blogs better for you, the reader, and better for us, the blogger.
Nicole Bullock presents SEO strategies for bloggers at FitBloggin’ 13. Photo by Carrie D Photography.
AND…. we scored some amazing swag from our VERY generous sponsors! Look who happened to walk away with a Tiffany Key necklace from Nutrilite!
Celebrity chef Jason Roberts and Alyssa Curran of the Double Chin Diary celebrate a raffle prize win from Nutrilite!
I have so many wonderful gifts from sponsors that I can’t wait to share with YOU. I even packed up a whole duffel bag just for my readers – would you guys rather me have a giveaway where one person wins a TON of stuff, or break it up into a couple smaller different prizes? Let me know!
There’s so much more I want to tell you, especially about all of the wonderful bloggers I really got to know this weekend, but I need far more time than this Sunday night at 11pm type stuff is gonna give me. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more details, but this weekend has confirmed that writing this blog is one of my very favorite things to do — and it wouldn’t be half as special to me if it weren’t for you reading along. So thank you from the bottom of my very full heart! I am so excited to reach my goals with you by my side.
So now you know what I was up to this weekend – what were you doing? Dish!
(Special thanks to the awesome Carrie D. Photography for the pro shots and from FitBloggin’ bloggers instagrams for some of these pix. I think most are mine but if I missed a credit, let me know!)
Found your blog via me stalking the FitBloggin twitter stream. I could not make it this year but from all I read and see via Instagram it looks like it was a wonderful weekend. Love your recap and look forward to reading your blog!
Patty, please join us next year if you are able.. would love to meet you!
I can’t wait to read your upcoming posts about this! As for the giveaways I say, spread the love and break it up into to small prize packs 🙂
LOVE the adorable group photo of our walking group! And congrats on all your wins, that is awesome!
You summed it up rather perfectly. Practically what I would have written, but of course we already knew that 😉
Love your write up 🙂 and double love the fact you included the song from Rent – I love that song, it’s going to be in my head all night now.
You will need to do a whole new ‘kitchen’ post now 🙂
Can’t believe you got it all up already! So great to meet you and congrats on being so lucky!
Looking forward to getting to know you better via blog and in person now that I know we’re neighbors.
Can’t wait to read all about it! And yes, breaking up the prizes sounds good. Maybe one of these days Ill actually win something 😉 xoxox
Oh and now I have that song stuck in my head :p
OK, this? I LOVE THIS POST. Why? Because I got to see that FitBloggin’ isn’t just super skinny ladies whose thighs don’t touch and are sponsored by Reebok and won’t drop money on a nice meal for themselves, participate in group activities (unless it somehow benefits them), or socialize outside their group.
Maybe someday I will get to go to Fitbloggin’. Y’all seem awesome and it’s kind of comforting to see that there are some of “my people” there.
P.S. I would love to read the walking bloggers blogs. Reply with urls si-vous plait?
Liz, I had the same fears my first FitBloggin’ – I think this year there were actually more weight loss bloggers than fitness bloggers! Would LOVE to have you join us next year!!! Also – here’s a quick list of the some of the walking bloggers off the top of my head, but I’ll recap with full blog URLs for everyone in the next few days.
TiffanyJorge.com
SimplifyingSam.Wordpress.com
BeebAshcroft.com
DebRoby.com
it was so nice to meet you in person!
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