Binkies and Briefcases

Bloggy Boot Camp: Charlotte, NC

May 20, 2013 by Stephanie Leave a Comment

We got back last night from the 4 day trip that I WON to Bloggy Boot Camp in Charlotte, NC. (Thank you SITS Girls, I’ll love you forever.)

We left on Thursday from Pennsylvania and drove down to Charlotte. We spent all day driving, and pulled in at 1am, so we didn’t technically get there until Friday. Eddie went with me. It was a kid-free long weekend! (our first one since 2011.)

I will have more posts coming telling you all about Charlotte. Today I want to focus on the conference.

It started Friday night with a kick-off cocktail party. I buddied up with Brenna from Life After Laundry. We “met” online last year during Online BlogCon, but this was the first time we met in real life. Brenna is adorable and so sweet and I could listen to her southern accent ALL DAY.

Saturday was the day of the actual conference. Eddie booked tee times at two different golf courses and was gone all day, so don’t worry about him. We were told to dress casually and that the room might be chilly because of the air conditioning, so this is what I wore.

Shirt: Calvin Klein
Jeans: the Limited
Flip Flops: LL Bean

We got our name tags and were assigned seats for the first few sessions. Brew Over Ice was there with Keurigs so that we could make iced coffee or Snapple. (Did you know they make Snapple K-cups? I didn’t.)

Tiffany and Fran, founders of the SITS Girls and Bloggy Boot Camp, did some talking and then the presentations began.

First we heard from Ashley and Shell, two bloggers who had been able to turn their love of social media into real jobs (making real money) managing Facebook or other social media accounts for businesses.

Then we heard from Casey, the Director of Analytics for Collective Bias. He spoke about Search Engine Optimization and Analytics. A year ago I might have fallen asleep, but I’ve fallen deep enough down the blogging rabbit hole that these numbers are important to me and I was really engaged.

Then we heard Brittany from That’s Vandy speak about blog design. She had some great tips that I definitely plan to implement. I think her talk was my favorite of all the tech-focused. (I’ll do another post soon with my top 10 take aways)

We broke for lunch (chicken, veggies, and key lime pie) and then my favorite part…

I got to hear Robin O’Bryant! Robin is the author of the hilarious book Ketchup Is a Vegetable and Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves. I was offered a trip to the Bloggy Boot Camp of my choosing, but I chose to go to Charlotte because I knew Robin would be speaking. She spoke about the world of publishing and how to break through the door.

With Lori from Loripalooza and Robin O’Bryant.

Then Cynthia from Nap Warden designs spoke a little bit about photo editing, specifically using PicMonkey. I got a few take aways from this session as well, like the way I save my files. I’ll be saving as .png instead of .jpeg from now on.

Then Tiffany and Fran from the SITS Girls spoke some more and we all broke for a wine tasting. I don’t drink alcohol, so this normally wouldn’t be up my alley, but I had a great time.

I got to meet Stephanie from When Crazy Meets Exhaustion and a lot of other new friends.

I had an awesome time. I think if I was a new blogger I would have been completely overwhelmed and curled up in the fetal position after all of the tech-speak and business talk, but I am at a point in my blogging career that made everything very relevant and super helpful.

Thank you SITS Girls!!!!!

Filed Under: blogging

Building the Dream: Cross Bracing

May 15, 2013 by Stephanie Leave a Comment

This week they continued adding support to the floor joists and started laying the plywood decking that will support the first floor. (I don’t have pictures of that yet.) The excavator is also planning to come back and dig out the areas that will have crawl spaces.

We also planted a row of young maple and birch trees that will eventually hide most of our view of that commercial property you see on the right side in the first picture.

Nicholas loves this survey wheel. It marks how many feet you walk. He likes to just walk around and around the property. Once he went over a mile!

Out of all of the kids, Abby takes the most interest in the building process. She likes to look at the plans on our computer and try to get an idea of what everything will look like or go stand “on the concrete” down inside of the basement. Sometimes I print the plans on a regular sheet of computer paper and she will use crayons to “decorate” her room.

It won’t be long now until the framing starts. I can’t wait to get a better idea of the size of the rooms and see it start to come together!

Filed Under: building the dream

How to heal your heels for flip-flop season

May 14, 2013 by Stephanie 7 Comments

Warning: This post is full of nasty pictures of my feet.

My feet are gross. They are the only part of my body that my husband truly cannot stand. They are SUPER dry and my heels crack and sometimes bleed.

Once, as a gift, my mom even gave me a cream meant for a cow’s udders, hoping it would help. It didn’t.

Yes, I have already had a pedicure this year (and paid extra for the “scraping”) and my heels still looked like this:

Yuck. I know.

But then I read somewhere (I think it was a Facebook comment on a recipe) that coconut oil made a great moisturizer, so I decided to try it on my heels.

We had this one on hand because it is what I like to use to pop our popcorn. They sell it at our regular grocery store. You can also buy it here.

I’ll walk you through how I use it in case you need to heal your heels too.

It is solid in the container and looks like this

I use about a teaspoon’s worth for each foot.

I spread it on with a washcloth because I don’t like the way it makes my hands feel greasy for hours if I use my fingers.

Grease up your feet and put on a pair of socks. Otherwise you will slip and fall trying to walk on laminate or tile floors. Not that I would know. (Yeah, I totally fell on my butt the first time.)

This is after 2 treatments. I’m going to continue twice a day every day until Thursday. There are still a few small cracks in the back right now. Hopefully after a few more treatments I won’t be too embarrassed to break out the flip-flops when we are in North Carolina for Bloggy Boot Camp this weekend!

I should also note that I have REALLY sensitive, fair skin. I can’t even use most laundry detergents without breaking out in hives. The coconut oil is very gentle and doesn’t cause me any irritation. It also doesn’t have any odor, which is a plus.

Let me know if you try it!