Archives for November 2011

Here are some more of my walking around pics from San Francisco!  I don’t have much time for narration since I’ve got a test tomorrow that I haven’t started studying for yet, but I’ll do the best I can.

The steepest hill I’ve EVER seen! (so steep that it has this zigzag road so that cars can go down it!  So cool!)

I love Hydrangeas!

View from the tops of all these crazy hills we climbed up!  San Francisco is gorgeous!!

This one might be one of my faves, though I’m not sure exactly why.

Walking around by the piers around Fisherman’s Warf…

Alcatraz.  Wish I had had time to go out there on the tour!  Next time!

Another of my faves- I love what the lights did in this one!  Beautiful!!

I can’t wait to go back next year!!!

Last time I talked about Friday’s events for the Foodbuzz blogger festival, so today I’ll wrap up the rest of the festival.  The next post after that will be some more sightseeing pictures.  I didn’t want to overload one post with too many pictures and I took a lot of great sightseeing pictures so I thought that I would give them their own post!

Saturday was a quick breakfast and then on to the sessions!

The first session was a general session featuring a panel of bloggers about taking your blog to the next level.  To be honest I didn’t really know who very many of these people were, but I did know who that second lady from the left was- one of my favorite people, Mama Pea!!

And she brought enough cookie dough balls for the whole class!

Then it was on to some break out sessions!

The first session I took was about getting your DSLR out of auto mode.  Ashley lead the session and she did a great job.  I learned a lot about some of the more intimidating aspects of a DSLR and I feel a lot more confident about using my fancy pants camera now!  She’s posting a lot of the info from the session on her blog right now if you want to follow along!

The next session I went to was all about Adobe Lightroom and it was lead by Marc.  This was SO great.  I’ve had lightroom for a while but I’ve only used the basics like brighten, white balance, and sharpen.  It’s pretty daunting if you have no idea what you’re doing, but Marc really helped talk us through all the steps from start to finish when editing a photo using lightroom.  It was great and I took a lot of info away from the session.  As soon as this insanely stressful week is over I can’t wait to get in the kitchen and get to cooking and taking pictures with all my newfound knowledge!

Next was the Tastemaker Pavilion.  Oh. My. Goodness. There were so many vendors with so many samples.  I was SO full by the time I left!  Here are just a few pictures (it was hard to take pics with my hands and my mouth full of food!)

The first thing we see when we walk in the door- a table full of chocolate!!!

Sabra is my favorite hummus (p.s. I got a coupon for a freebie from them, there will be a recipe coming soon featuring Sabra!) 

This gin was SO good!

Tyler Florence was there signing autographs but Foodbuzz did NOT do a good job letting us know he was there- by the time I heard they had already cut off the autograph line.  I was not a happy camper! 

Baby cupcakes!  Can’t go wrong with that!!

View from the balcony of the Tastemaker Pavillion- beautiful!

Then I headed back to the hotel for a nap before the Gala Dinner.  Very very bad idea.  I woke up very groggy and looking super zombie face.  I was dragging all evening and it definitely showed!

Hey, remember that time I said I walked right up to Mama Pea and introduced myself?  Horrible awful zombieface picture of me, BLAH!!!  But I had to show it because that’s my proof!  She was so sweet and just let me gush over how much I loved her cookbook and didn’t run away screaming when I made a beeline for her as soon as our eyes met. Love this lady!  Hopefully next year I can get a little more sleep so I can get a better picture with her!

Tyler Florence cooking demo!

There were some unpictured vegetable samosas and bread for appetizers while we watched the cooking demo.  And wine.  Lots and lots of wine.  Then dinner was served! The salad had some sort of blue cheese vinaigrette but I wasn’t really interested in it so I just ate the pears. (really, only ONE dressing can be offered?!)

And the barley risotto with roasted vegetables looks kind of plain but it was AMAZING!!!

The best part of dinner was new friends of course!

Me and Betsy (I totally stole both of these pics from your blog- since I‘m in them I’m hoping you won’t mind too much!)

Me, Betsey, and Anna.

Loved chatting with these ladies.  I had SUCH a blast (even though I was a zombie face!).  After the Gala Dinner was over I headed back up to my room and faceplanted right into my pillow!

I just cannot say enough what an amazing time I had.  And also I cannot say enough how much I can’t wait for next year! 

Come back tomorrow to see some amazing walking around San Francisco pictures!!

Hey friends!  My life is fairly stressful right now.  It’s crunch time in school.  You know that point in the semester where there are eleventy billion projects due and several tests all in the same week?  I haven’t blogged in almost 2 weeks and I feel horrible!  Especially since I had the amazing opportunity to go to the foodbuzz blogger festival last weekend and had THE most amazing time!

Foodbuzz is a community of foodies and it is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever been a part of!  I’ve not taken full advantage of the greatness of foodbuzz even though I’ve been part of it for almost 3 yrs now.  This is all about to change very soon!  I’ll be re-focusing my blog and I’m getting a blog redesign very very soon.  As soon as that rolls out I’ll explain more about why I’m changing the focus of my blog.  I’m super excited about this and I can’t wait!!

Last year I saw everyone’s pictures and read all about the Foodbuzz blogger festival and I just knew that I had to try to go this year.  As soon as the email came out I grabbed my ticket!!

You guys I had the most amazing time at this and I met some of the most amazing people!  I’m SO SO happy that I was able to be a part of this!  This was not like another blogger conference that I went to this summer- that one was very cliquey and it felt like everyone was trying to “one-up” each other the whole time and they only talked about how awesome their blog was and how much traffic their blog got.  I wish I was kidding about that.  It was like we were all equals here.  There was no I’m a big blogger so I’m better than you and your tiny blog feeling.  I felt completely comfortable just walking up and talking to anyone there.  In fact I did- I walked right up to Mama Pea and introduced myself and chatted with her.  We’re totally BFF now by the way.   (she probably thought I was a crazy person but she was sooooo nice- I totally have a crush on her!).  There was no talk about numbers of readers or how much money anyone makes off their blogs.  There was only talk of amazing food, amazing recipes, beautiful pictures, great friends, and making your blog the best you can make it!  I loved every minute of this conference.

Now to some pictures!

Laura and I got to San Francisco on Thursday evening and had a little dinner(we went to a place called E&O Trading Co.  SO good!), then walked around a bit and ended up at the Ferry Building, then headed back to the hotel to sleep off a little jetlag.

Friday morning we grabbed some oatmeal and coffee at Starbucks and Laura headed out to an open house for a Dietetic Internship (which she said was really amazing, so I may have to go check it out next year when I’m looking at internships!).  After she left I walked to Trader Joes and bought some goodies (we don’t have one here in TX yet, but it’s been confirmed that we will be getting one in Ft. Worth in the spring, yipee!)  Then I headed back to the hotel and checked in for the conference.  We got a nice little swag bag with lots of goodies in it.

Then Michelle got there!!!  Love that crazy girl!  We chatted it up waiting for Laura to get done with her open house, then met her for lunch and went walking around SF taking some pictures!

Look at this hill!!  We totally climbed up it and I almost died twice!

Then it was time for me to get ready for the welcome reception and dinner!  When I first got there I felt a little awkward because I didn’t know anyone.  I was just about to get the courage up to go talk to a random person when Betsy walked right up to me and said hi.  We ended up hanging out and talking all evening!  Go check out her blog- she’s amazing!!

Dinner…

My dinner consisted mostly of beet ravioli (sounds weird, but it was amazing) and lentil salad(which I’m going to have to recreate STAT!).  I have no idea what the little desserts were but I had a bite of each of them.  The pumpkin-y one in the back was the best.

Saturday’s events coming up in my next post, so stay tuned!!