Blog Goal = Accomplished!

Today I reached my goal of writing EVERY SINGLE DAY on my blog in 2013. It was both easy and hard. I both loved it and hated it. I did however get so much out of this experiment. I wanted to see if I could stretch my creative juices by forcing myself to keep up the blog everyday and I did! I wanted to grow my readership and I did! I did write some posts ahead of time and set them up to post later, especially during the last few weeks since I had a baby and knew my time would be limited.

I wrote on my laptop that was slowly dying and earlier this month was rewarded with a new MacBook Air. It's my Christmas/Birthday present and I love it! I'm also thinking of it as my reward for sticking to such a hard, daily goal.

I love that this year was documented in such a fun fashion. I also loved having some discipline in my life which really has little discipline. As a Stay-at-Home Mother, I have a very loose schedule. I don't have to answer to a higher authority, just two little dictators. I can change plans at the last minute if I want but when I committed to blogging every day, it meant I had to blog every single day.

Thank you so much for coming along on this journey with me. I plan to keep blogging as much as possible but I won't be blogging every day. I'll probably blog three times a week or so. I do need to decide which weekly features to keep up, i.e. Sunday Favorites, Pinterest Thursday. I feel that they might become monthly features rather than weekly features. Let me know if you have any favorite weekly features that you'd like to see!

Here's to a fantastic 2014! Happy New Year!

More International Food Blogger's Conference Ruminations

The International Food Bloggers Conference was simply amazing. I've spent the last few days ruminating on all the great tips and techniques that were shared along with all the great food that was served.

There were two sessions on finding your voice as a writer and I was reminded that personality is an important factor in blogging. The panelists also mentioned persistence, passion and platform as other important factors.

If one does not have an interesting personality that they share along the passion and persistence to blog, then they won't succeed even if their platform (blog) is the most amazing thing out there. I think this is true of life. It's like dating or interviewing for a jog. If you don't show the other person that you have a great personality, passion for what you are doing and the persistence to do it, then why would they be interested in you? But you have to remember to present all of those things on a great platform, be it a stellar resume or a fantastic outfit.

The platform problem is one I often struggle with. I want to have the most amazing, awesome, best website out there but I'm not a web designer and nor do I want to hire a web designer. I can however learn more about web design and pester Scott to help me with web design as he knows a lot about it. I just need to work to solve my platform problem while remembering the other P's.



Other panels covered topics such as technology and blogging, ethics in blogging and photography. The technology panel really brought out my inner geek. I get a little bit excited talking about SEO and how to best monetize your blog. Elise from Simply Recipes talked about how she best uses ads on her site to make money at blogging. Elise's blog is her job and where she makes her income so I was very interested in how she does this. Her site is wonderfully designed and she has taken careful steps to place ads within her site without taking away from the look and feel of it.

The ethics panel brought up a lot of passion. Some bloggers believe that they should be held to the same ethics as professional journalists while others don't see themselves as journalists and don't understand why they should be held to the same standards. I am trained as a journalist so I am a bit biased here. I do believe that bloggers who want to be taken seriously as authority figures should be held to the same standards as journalists. They should be transparent and honest.



The photography panel got me thinking. They talked about using the right props to make your photos pop. They reminded me off how a surface can make or break a shot. Unfortunately there was not a photographer on the panel so I didn't get as much information on food photography as I would have liked.



I'm looking forward to the next conference and all the information I can gain professionally and personally. I realy enjoyed learning more about how food bloggers think and how they want to work with companies. It was great to see that blogging is gaining a professional view. I think some bloggers will continue to use their blogs as personal vehicles but it is great to see bloggers taking the bull by the horns and working to make their blog into their jobs. I can't wait to see what the future of food blogging looks like.

International Food Blogger's Conference

This weekend was the IFBC in West Seattle. The company I work for was one of the sponsors so I was lucky enough to attend and meet some really wonderful food bloggers. I have so many thoughts and ideas from this conference that my head is spinning. Spinning so much that I think I will just focus on all the wonderful food from this weekend in this post.

The morning started with pastries from Bakery Nouveau, a wonderful West Seattle bakery. I've heard reports about these treats but I've never made it to Bakery Nouveau to try them out.

After inhaling a few pastries, I am now an official Bakery Nouveau fan and really must visit the actual bakery.



By lunchtime, the pastries had been consumed and all that was left was one lonely bread basket.



The food at the IFBC was amazing. A portion of Saturday's lunch was made by Kerry Sears from Four Seasons ART Restaurant. He included cured lamb bacon that had been cured at ART and it was amazing.



There were also freshly made donuts along with an delicate stinging nettle ravioli from Cantinetta. Boom Noodle provided a cold dish with a cucumber base and a bruschetta-like spread.

Day two of the conference brought even more amazing food. Breakfast was provided by On Safari Foods with coffee from Stumptown Roasters. There was an egg dish that literally melted in my mouth and the coffee from Stumptown was perfect as usual. Stumptown Roasters actually talked at the conference about their Direct Trade coffee practices and really impressed me. I'll be purchasing their coffee when possible.



Lunch was provided by The Herbfarm, Spring Hill and Six Seven at the Edgewater with foods from 4505 Chicharrones, Theo Chocolate and Salted caramels from Das Foods.



Six Seven and Seattle Caviar made these crepes topped with caviar. The crepes were the perfect host for the yummy caviar.



The Herbfarm provided a lunch that was no more than two days old, except for the cured meat. The radishes were freshly harvested that morning, the eggs were plucked from the hens just hours before and the butter churned the day before. You could literally taste the freshness in each bite.



The Herbfarm raised this pig which was slaughtered last year before they cured the ham into the most delicious salami. The marbling was just right and the meat was tender yet full of aromatic spice.



The food was just as one would expect at a food blogger's conference, which is to say that it was amazing, surprising and absolutely perfect. I'd be thrilled to have attended this conference just for the food but I still have all those thoughts floating around my head. I'll spill those thoughts in another past later this week.

I do have to say that food bloggers might be just as passionate as knit bloggers. I think it is because of the great topics they have fallen in love with.