Ain’t no party like a pet blog party
I’ll be dedicating a couple of posts this week to my experience at BlogHer, which despite a strep-infected son, a mild encounter with a GI bug and my lack of ability to properly sell myself in an environment that is ALL about selling yourself, was a really fun time. I decided early on that I was not going to worry about connecting with sausage or lotion manufacturers (boy, could that be misconstrued!) and was just going to go and meet people and have fun.
I knew that there would be a contingent of pet bloggers at BlogHer, a small but mighty group of really great women (plus Tom!) who share my love of pets and ambivalence about coupon clipping. On Friday, we took over a couple of tables at lunch to touch base and reconnect.
If you follow many pet blogs, you are probably familiar with the Flat Pets who accompany a lot of the bloggers on their adventures. Needless to say, they received a lot of attention at lunchtime. And so well behaved, too! Not a single bit of food was stolen.
Because I am me and some things never change, I had the fantastic idea of putting together an afternoon gathering somewhere fun, but of course I didn’t come up with the idea until two days before it would actually take place.
Fortunately I have some organized friends who jumped- I’d say stepped, but it was more than that- up to the plate to help me get something together in a very short period of time to welcome my like minded friends to our beautiful city.
Carmen over at The Honest Kitchen was amazing. She not only helped me figure out a meeting place at the very last minute, she put together some beautiful and generous swag bags for everyone so we could strut around BlogHer with something exclusive like all the cool kids were doing. Except instead of mini bottles of shampoo, we got T-shirts and pet food. AND she bought everyone Starbucks. Bliss!
The Flat Pets of BlogHer wasted no time investigating the contents of the bags. They seemed to like them.
My husband works for local company Qualcomm, and on a whim I asked them if they would be up for sponsoring some snacks. Danielle from Qualcomm, to my utter delight, said, “Sure!” and look what we got:
They are called Heavenly Cupcakes for a reason. And yes, those are little fondant dog bones and Apollos on top.
And my friends Chad and Bev from Iams overnighted me a bunch of Iams goodies to include in the bags as well, which was an amazing effort for someone who was given 24 hours’ notice. These goodie bags were groaning with greatness.
(That is a canister of dog tea in the back, there. I think I may have to do a tea and crumpets post.)
To my utter and complete delight, on Friday we actually pulled it off. Dog and cat lovers together, Iams and Honest Kitchen representatives sharing cupcakes, purebreed fanciers and rescue advocates all enjoying an afternoon coffee break down by the water talking about our pets, away from the hustle and bustle of women elbowing each other over some free Dr. Scholl’s inserts. To me, this is what being a pet blogger is all about. And I wouldn’t change it for anything.
This is me failing at blogging, by the way. I took 10 pictures of the cupcakes and the flat pets but I didn’t get the actual people together for a picture at the cupcake party so I had to use this picture from the next day instead, which is missing half of the attendees. I plead sleep deprivation. Sorry about that, guys.
Paws up to the BlogHer Pet Peeps: Carmen at the Honest Kitchen, Gretchen at The Adventures of Kendall, Jen and Bev at Iams/Eukanuba, Joanne at Tiniest Tiger, Karen (and Skeezix!) at Mousebreath, Marcie at Helen Woodward Animal Center, Pam at Daily Oskar, Paris at DogTipper, Rachel at Preston Speaks, Susi at KnobNotes, and the BlogPaws team: Tom, Yvonne, Chloe and Miah!
