Last summer I began hearing buzz about BlogHer and wasn’t quite sure what it was all about.  By the time it came around in August I learned a lot and I had wished I was there.  That was when I decided that I was going to attend BlogHer10 for sure this year.  Well I did… and now its over and I’m sad it went by so fast.  So now I’m planning for BlogHer11 which will be in San Diego in 2011, which is one of my favorite places in the entire world!!

I was fortunate enough to have two great sponsors for my trip.  Lane Bryant gave me a gift card to buy an outfit, which I turned into a few outfits with my thrifty shopping and Cook’s Ham sponsored my entire trip!  I’m very grateful to both of them!

But anyways here is a recap of my 4 days in New York City.  This post will just be Day 1 otherwise it will be way to long and I will completely lose you!

First I want to tell you that I’m not a city girl and I was very nervous about going into the city alone.  Once I got to the hotel all would be good because I was meeting my best blogging buddy Nicole from Nicole’s Nickels and my new blogging buddy Keri Lynn from She Saved but it was getting to the hotel that I wasn’t looking forward too.  I’ve never taken a cab in New York City.. actually I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a cab.  How was I going to get a cab?  Was I supposed to tip them?  These were the questions I asked my friends and family before I left.  This was a new world to me!

Well I made it there, I found a cab.. eventually and I actually survived the cab ride.  I don’t know how they avoid so many accidents, it’s crazy.  I could never drive in that city.  I’d say I almost died about 3 times from Penn Station to the Hilton New York.  After the first time the cab driver did apologize to me, however he called me ma’am and I didn’t like that!  Needless to say I was looking for the seat belt and very happy when we arrived at the hotel.

Day 1 – Thursday August 5th

The day began with a lunch atCaroline’s Comedy Club before we began the Kodak Bus Tour on the famous double decker bus. The gave us each a Kodak Easyshare M580 Digital Camera (I got the Purple one!) so that we could take pictures of the city.  It’s a really cool camera and I will be talking more about it soon!  Needless to say the tour was during the hottest time of the day so half way through a lot of us were way to hot to continue so we grabbed a cab and headed back.  I loved the tour and I’ll share some of my favorite pictures when I post about the camera.

Here I am with Nicole at Caroline’s Comedy Club sporting one of my outfits from Lane Bryant….

Next we headed to the Simply Smart event where we met Chris Evert and sampled some yummy recipes that were made with simply smart milk.   I will share those recipes with you when I post the winners of the Simply Smart giveaway along with some pictures.  I was super excited when they handed us our swag bag.  Not only was it small, cute and functional but it had a tennis ball autographed by Chris Evert in it!  My 5 year old loves tennis and she was very excited when I told her a real tennis player signed it.  She thought that was pretty cool!

Here I am drinking a Mocha Smartini made with Simply Smart milk…

Now it was time to head to Social Luxe. I heard it was the party to go to so I was very excited.  I wished I had time to change before hand but we had so many things still to do there was no time to go to the hotel.  Especially when it took us what seemed like forever to get a cab after leaving Simply Smart.   It was about 5:15 on a Thursday afternoon in NYC.. of course we had trouble getting a cab.  But we eventually made it only to wait outside for 45 minutes to get into the party.  I’m still not sure what the hold up was but I was very happy to finally get inside and out of the heat.  They handed us a very big SWAG bag and then gave us more stuff while there. It was a bit crazy.  Avery was the main sponsor and they let us design a binder from Zazzle which was way cool. While there, we met up with some other blogging friends and had a nice time.  I even got a massage while I was there!  That was the best part.  Well along with the table full of Ghirardelli chocolate!  (more on that at another time…).  Unfortunately after about an hour and a half it was onto the next party (yes I crammed way to much in while I was there as you’ll see if you continue to read).

Our next event for the evening was hosted by Bumble Bee. Do you watch Hell’s Kitchen?  Well Chef Scott was there cooking up some great recipes with Bumble Bee products.  Before I tell you anymore about this I want to explain to you how we had to get there.  Once again we could not get a taxi so we started walking there.  Well that wasn’t going to work for long, it was far away, it was still hot and at this point I couldn’t walk in the heat anymore.  I finally convinced everyone to stop and get a cab.  If we stayed in one spot we might get lucky.  Well unfortunately at this point we were way too close and no one would take us… I guess it wasn’t worth it to them.  Finally we stopped a very nice young man on a pedi-cab (you know the ones on the bike) and 3 of us squeeze into it and began the fun ride over to the Viking Demo kitchen.

Heather from Passion for Savings, me and Mindi from Moms Need To Know…

Once we arrived all I could do was suck down glasses of water!  Oh and did I mention we hadn’t eaten since 12 that day at the Kodak lunch?? Oh yeah it’s about 7:30pm at this point and I was beyond hungry (note to self.. next year plan on stopping in between events to have lunch and dinner.. actually don’t plan so many things in one day next year!).   The event was well planned, the had a nice variety of drinks, food and Chef Scott made some yummy recipes!  It wasn’t all tuna fish, that’s for sure.

Once I hydrated myself there, we then headed to our last event of the evening at the Warwick Hotel,  CraziBeautiful. That was very relaxing.  There was a small crowd (it was the end of the night by now) and everyone was very friendly.  One thing they gave us was an air brush make-up kit called Luminesse. Maybe you’ve heard of it?  This was a first for me.  They demonstrated how it worked and did my makeup.  I loved it.  IT felt so good and relaxing going on (the air was refreshing) and the makeup smelled clean and when on very light.  It didn’t feel heavy at all.  I was excited to be able to take that home along with some other goodies in our swag bag.

After spending about an hour there we headed back to the hotel to finally sit down and eat some FOOD only to find out that the only way we could get served food in the hotel was via room service.  We were so tired, hungry and our feet hurt way too much to walk the city looking for food that we decided to suck it up and order room service.   I can’t even bare to tell you how much it cost for a hamburger, fries and water.  It was a bit crazy but worth every penny.  It was good and it was food!

That pretty much sums up my first day at BlogHer.  Stay tuned for day 2.  (Warning, it was just as busy as the first day, if not even more!).

Here is the SWAG I received just on the first day….

Disclosure: I received a gift card from Lane Bryant to buy an outfit to wear to BlogHer and Cook’s Ham paid for my entire trip. That being said, my thoughts, opinions and words are my own and was not affected by either of these sponsorships.