Getting ready for BlogHer 2012

It’s sneaking up! This year BlogHer will be held in New York City. I had written it off as a possibility knowing that airfare, plus hotel and the actual conference ticket cost would be an expense that could hardly be justified. But…. my hubs has many frequent flyer miles from his work related trips and TA-DA! It suddenly went from a day dream to a possibility and landed smack dab in reality! This year’s conference will host approximately 4,000 bloggers, many (like myself) will be going it alone, super excited and nervous to meet many other bloggers they are both familiar and unfamiliar with.

So, what have I done in preparation for this trip – for which I leave in FOUR DAYS!?!? I picked up a few needed goodies. My purse is always too heavy and I’ve actually taken the shoulder strap off of it to prevent the knotted shoulder muscles and migraines that come with lugging heavy bags via a shoulder strap. So how on earth was I going to make it a whole weekend with a laptop plus in a shoulder bag? I’m not. I picked up a rolling computer case with enough room for everything I would have in my purse plus lots of little items I’ll pick up at the convention. The bag is light enough to carry by the handles if need be, but I am super excited to avoid shoulder strain by using the rolling feature. Side benefit, the hubs can use this bag (instead of his sporty computer back pack) on his day trip flights for work!

If you know me by now you’ll realize that I couldn’t just pick up any supplies, I had to get the “green” supplies whenever possible. I didn’t see any rolling bags made from recycled water bottles but there ya go computer accessory companies! There’s your next huge product right on a platter for ya. I was able to find a 9 1/2 in x 6 in note book made from sugarcane fibers which are a waste product in the sugar making process. Love it! I also bought a pack of pens made from recycled water bottles. And now that I’ve mentioned water bottles, I’d like to ask that you put your water bottle down! Bring your reusable and easily washable glass or stainless steel container filled with water with you. I’m bringing my glass water bottle to BlogHer and hope to avoid water bottles all together.

Back to my pre BlogHer planning…. I also picked up some nice shoe inserts to keep my feet from hurting while walking around the convention floor. Per a suggestion by another blogger, I have my labels all printed up. There are plenty of sponsors asking for you to fill out their contact forms and knowing this, brilliant planners world wide have saved their fingers from callus by making labels with their name, address, email, phone, blog URL and Twitter handle. Thanks for the tip ladies! (My sister in law did this when she was going to bridal shows so I really should have came up with this on my own….)

It was great news for BlogHer attendees (you may smell the sarcasm now) when the weather report suggested thunderstorms for the entire length of the conference. Because of this, I also picked up the cutest, lightest, little umbrella I’ve ever held from Target at quite a deal. I have since rechecked the weather reports and they are now suggesting that we may only experience thunderstorms on Wed the 1st and Sunday the 5th. I’m just hoping not to run into any thunderstorms while in the air. Fingers crossed!

Wish me luck! I’ll be sharing live BlogHer action Friday and Saturday via Facebook and will have a post for you with all the fun on Sunday! Let me know if you will be going and we can try to meet up!