Vancouver Mom Blogging Event

Tonight I went out to a networking event for mom bloggers in Vancouver. I dragged along Jean-Louis and Tristan for support :) We pretty much don't do anything without each other. I was also quite nervous to go alone and meet friends I have made over the years in my virtual world. Until tonight, I have only met one of my Tweeples in real-life. I have been on Twitter for over two years now. Kind of ridiculous, right? It's so ridiculous I had to put "meet another virtual friend in real-life" down as one of my resolutions and goals for 2012.

I'm not sure how it happened but I made the top 30 list of mom bloggers in Vancouver this year. In fact I just made the list because someone else bailed out. I guess you can say I was a wildcard nominee :) I have never set out to be very public with my blog and have kept a fairly low profile since I started blogging in 2008. I have just a few followers and I don't even tweet about 99% of my posts. I tweet about my Swoon For Food posts but not posts for this mommy blog. Wildcard or not, for me to be one of the top 30 mom bloggers, someone (at least one person) must have nominated me and I'm completely flattered! I know it wasn't my husband because he was as surprised as me. In fact when it came time to vote for the top mom blogger out of the top 30 list, he didn't even vote for me. I told him to since I didn't want to look lame with no votes but he forgot :( Dang.

View at Museum of Vancouver

As one of the top mom bloggers this year, I got invited to the event last night to celebrate Vancouver Mom Bloggers at the Museum of Vancouver. I almost didn't go but then I got permission to bring both Jean-Louis and Tristan :) I only had to purchase a ticket for Jean-Louis so that was cool. There were around 150 people there this year. Moms were going to be pampered since they had stands for hair styling, make-up, nails, and of course wine and food. A few bloggers from the previous years spoke a bit about what they knew about blogging to inspire us all. They all did a great job too! We also got professional head shots done and was sent home with goodie bags. Huge ones! Omg. Thank you to all those who sponsored the event and thanks for supporting moms who blog :) I'm totally blown away by all the great gifts and coupons. If that wasn't enough, there were prizes and we ended up winning one from Aquaventures. Woohoo!

We got there at 6:30PM for the start of it and left around 8:30PM. I had picked Tristan up early from daycare and he was all bathed and dressed up before we left. If we were going to go out during a week night, I wanted us to be organized so that we could more or less still be on schedule with our daily routine. It was a dress-up type of event so I took advantage of it to dress Tristan up :) He's got a lot of dressy clothes but he doesn't really get many opportunities to wear them. I was more excited to groom him than myself!

Thanks to the blogger event, I was able to meet two of my virtual friends. Two! In fact, I was hoping to meet more but it was hard to find them in a crowd of 150. Many of the ladies there were also ladies I follow on Twitter but I only had an avatar picture to work from. Unless they follow my blog, they would not know what I looked like from my avatar either! I also chatted with a few others who were there just to network. Surprisingly, they were not part of the blogosphere.

I'm glad I went to the event. It really wasn't as scary as I thought it would be :) I did feel awkward a few times standing alone trying to find people. I was glad Jean-Louis and Tristan came with me. Most importantly, I am thrilled to be able to check off one of my 2012 resolutions: meet another virtual friend in person! Go me! :)

Aquaventures prize bag!

Think Tristan can get away with the pink swim cap??