Adelaide!

On to other exciting news, I’ve just had the details finalised so I can let everyone know I’ve been invited to be special guest speaker at the Adelaide Beauty Conference! I’ll be speaking about blogging and giving a nail art demonstration on a couple of the girls attending. So excited! I’ve never been to Adelaide and I’m so lucky that the first time I get to go it’s because I’m being flown in to talk to fellow bloggers! They wrote the most flattering article about me on the site too, I feel very fancy!

To see more about the conference take a look at their website over here:

http://www.adelaidebeautyconference.com/

IMATS!

In other travel news James and I will also be attending IMATS in Sydney this year. IMATS is the International Make Up Artist Trade Show which is held every year in Sydney. This year there is a blogger’s weekend happening around it called ABBW (I know, so many acronyms I’m confused now too!) and we will be flying down to Sydney for the weekend! I’ve only been to Sydney once before and it was just overnight so I will be very happy to spend a bit more time there with like minded people and explore!

Blogopolis!

So as you’ve probably guessed, on Saturday James and I were lucky enough to go to Nuffnang’s Blogopolis Conference. It was basically a conference with around 300 bloggers from all around Australia who came to talk about the ins and outs of blogging. There have been a lot of run downs of the day already including some really in depth looks at the content covered so I will just show you guys photos and my funniest moments from the day ^_^

Full gallery with many photos of me posing with various awesome bloggers and people I respect. I will update with everyone’s URL’s and info as soon as I feel a bit better as well as the link to the professional photos.

Apologies for the crappy picture quality, I didn’t realise some of the settings on my Lumix had been changed until we got home >_< the other half of these are from my phone that I was live tweeting on the day.

[zenphotopress album=310 sort=random number=50]

My favorite parts:

On the way out in the morning it was pretty chilly! It was an early start so we left home at around 8am to walk to Fed Square

This is how James looks that early in the morning…

My outfit for the day was my Jesus Diamante dress, a belt and a shawl.

We got a bit lost on the way there but were lucky to meet up with Tim and Ming who are the founders of Nuffnang, below I’m with Tim while Ming was signing in! I was so surprised how big Federation Square was, even though we live very close by we haven’t actually been over to explore in the entire year that we’ve been here, how sad is that?

This is what a bunch of bloggers look like when we conference 😉 Oh yes, everyone heads straight for the coffee table!

Miss Grace and I had a Nail-Off competition, I’m pretty sure she won haha! We decided that I should do a whole line of Grace inspired nail art which involves large amounts of chips. How cute is her jewellery? The one on the left is a little mouse!

I failed pretty miserably at playing Blogger Networking Bingo. Basically we had to introduce ourselves to people in the room and see if they fit the boxes, first one to fill them all won. I was too shy to get many though >_< Next time give me a game of Pictionary and that will get us all talking and possibly yelling and beating each over the head with note pads! BAM. ICE BROKEN.

There were a lot of talks and advice given, the most amusing of which I took from this was from Mr Gadget: don’t write your slides on the plane ride over very late at night because you will accidentally confuse your dot points and tell people to give up blogging hahaha!

You may also have some serious stock photo abuse going on too hahaha! Don’t worry Arnold I still loved your presentation and your stylish suit made up for it!

Morning tea was yummy cupcakes and short bread. I was so excited meeting new people that I forgot to get milk for my tea before the next session started *_*

For lunch James and I went out with Ayr and Super Kawaii Mama for some sushi and Lord of the Fries.

We were nicknamed “The Fancy Hair Brigade”…. no clue why 😉

On Friday I stayed home for ages and was late for several appointment because I was waiting for my new business cards to arrive, very inconvenient but worth it because I’m really happy with how they turned out! Of course I kept forgetting to hand the damn things out which was pretty stupid. If anyone wants some let me know and I’ll post them to you!

I think the main difference I noticed in this convention to other blogger gatherings I’ve been to here and overseas is that everyone here was really shy! Quite a few people later sent me messages saying the were too shy to say hello and I kind of felt the same way, there were so many other wonderful people there that I wanted to talk to but it was hard to get the courage up to make the first move. I think maybe because everyone was there to learn and take notes that maybe the tone of the event was different than the meet ups and awards I’ve been to in the past. Who knows, I still had a great time!

If you wanted to say hi but were too busy/couldn’t find me/were too nervous, say hi here!

I finally got to meet Lori who writes one of the most heartfelt blogs that I have ever come across. She has so much strength and determination and she has been one of my role models for a long time.

She gave me my most treasured item from the day: a wrist band with her url and the word SPEAK. I can’t explain the motivation behind it as eloquently as she does but the message is clear: if you are in trouble please SPEAK.

I spent most of the conference live tweeting and taking notes on my ipad which is funny considering by doing that I kind of failed as a blogger by not taking more photos! Enjoy staring at the stack of business cards I didn’t hand out XD

After everything was done there was a two hour gap between the conference and post drinks party so a group of us went out to dinner. Ming had a craving for lobster so we went out searching for a place.

Group of bloggers catching the tram= hell of a lot of fun camwhoring and falling over in inappropriately high shoes.

It was pretty rainy but that made it an even more fun trip!

Lobster was found and I was pretty excited because I had never eaten it before!

As it turns out, I love lobster! Sorry bank account!!

Of course there were some mishaps, Grace even had a lobster related injury. Don’t worry Grace, it matches your manicure 😀

We headed home afterwards because I was too tired to do the after party but not without one last photo!

We happened to bump into Tim, Ming and Arnold again on the way and showed them our favorite bubble tea place. AWESOME night full of awesomely yummy things! So sleepy by the ends and very glad to be home!

So thank you again to everyone who made the day awesome, thank you to Nuffnang (especially Lynda) for holding the event, thank you to my hilarious friends for keeping me laughing and most importantly…

thank you to YOU for continuing to read!