My Snap Experience

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Snap Conference here in Salt Lake. If you haven't heard of Snap before it is an annual conference for creative bloggers. I believe this was the fifth year of the conference. Being new to blogging I hadn't really heard of it before but probably about 6 months ago I started seeing stuff about it everywhere. There were lots of people doing giveaways for tickets to attend. After seeing it so many times and noticing that it was in the same city that I live in I decided to check it out. I read a little bit about it and thought it sounded like it would be really neat to go to. They have classes about blogging, hands on craft and DIY classes, and opportunities to network with other bloggers and companies. I happened to stumble upon a giveaway for a ticket on The Creative Income Blog. I decided to enter thinking that I wouldn't win, I have horrible luck with winning, I never win drawings or giveaways. A few weeks later I got an email that said "You Won". I think my first reaction was excitement, both for the opportunity to go to Snap and the fact that I actually won something. Then I started to kind of freak out. What am I going to do with my kids, two of the days are school days and we have three kids in school at two different times plus two more kids at home, how can I possibly make this happen? In addition to the how are we going to make it work part, I started to think about how I would be going to something where I didn't know anyone and most of the people there have been blogging for way longer than me, some of them are people whose blogs I have read and followed for years. Thinking about that made me really nervous. I am not the most outgoing person and this was a huge step out of my comfort zone. Luckily for me I have an awesome husband who immediately put in a request to get those days off work so he could take care of the kids and was super encouraging to me when I talked to him about my fears of going.

I am so glad I had the opportunity to go. I met some amazing people, made some friends, had some great networking opportunities, learned about some new products, listened to some great speakers, learned a lot, felt inspired, and the amount of swag that they give you is pretty crazy. The picture only shows a fraction of all of the stuff that I brought home.

I feel bad for all of the people that had to try to fit that stuff in their suitcases to fly back home. I drove back and forth everyday so I was able to just bring my stuff home with me each night. The first night we all got a big bag of swag and the sponsors had a lot of make and takes and things they were giving out at their booths. My kids favorite was when I brought home Happy Meal toys for them from the McDonald's room. I was most excited about the craft supplies.

They also had some hands on classes were you could learn to sew something, crochet, paint, tile, etc. I took a class on paper piecing and it was probably one of my favorite things that I did. The classes on blogging were awesome and really helpful but it was so nice to sit and sew for a while and learn a technique that I have wanted to learn for a long time. Not to mention the fact that the sewing machines they had were way nicer than mine so they were kind of fun to use. I didn't have time to finish my project in the class but I wanted to make sure that I got it done so I worked on it the next couple of nights and now I have a new pillow with paper pieced blocks in it. I can definitely see some more paper pieced projects in my future. Maybe some will even make their way here to my blog.

They also had a little service project going on during the conference. This year they chose to do something for the Ronald McDonald House. I had the opportunity Thursday morning to go with a group of people to tour the Ronald McDonald House here. It was a neat experience to see everything that they do and to find out ways to help. At the conference we made cards for the families to use while they are staying there. That is something that I had never thought about people needing while staying someplace like that. I hadn't thought about how you might be missing birthdays and other things that you mind need a card for. McDonald's had a room set up at the conference where you could go and make cards to be donated. It was another fun opportunity to sit and do something creative and we got to do a service for someone at the same time. 

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to go to Snap this year and I hope to be able to go again next year. I feel like I learned so much about blogging and hopefully I can apply some of what I learned to make this blog better. Having this blog has been a fun adventure for me and I have really enjoyed having a place to share my projects and can't wait to share some new projects and ideas with you.