All About the Haven Conference

This past weekend I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Haven Conference in Atlanta, which is a full four days of fun, friends, and inspiration of every kind. This will be my wrap up post, so I have to warn you now, there are tons of photos! I tried to collage them, but still ended up with more than a dozen. So, let’s see if I can sum up all the Haven happenings in one short – OK maybe long – blog post.

The Haven Conference is a chance for home and DIY bloggers like myself to meet each other in person, learn all about blogging and do it yourself stuff, as well as meet partners and sponsors in the area of home decor, renovation, clothing, products and more. I went last year too and couldn’t wait to see all my bloggy friends and meet others in real life.

This collage says it all – Snazzy bloggers who made their own bags at Huckleberry Love – photos in the shower – DIY stars, and friends!

So here we go, the hotel, sessions, friends, partners, fun, parties and more!

The Hyatt Hotel

The conference was held at the beautiful Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta. Not only steamy like everyone says, Hotlanta seems like a pretty cool city. The accommodations and food were nothing less than fabulous. We got lots of treats up in our room. That’s Karah, my roomie, at The Space Between on our balcony blogging one early morning. Isn’t she dedicated? Isn’t she going to kill me for posting this picture of her in her pajamas?! These were some of the views from our digs.

Room service? I think so! We got to feast on fruit, cheese and crackers, beverages and s’mores. I am a mean s’mors maker. Here is Jessica at Stay at Home-ista and Breida at breida with a b popping the champagne. Room party! Below them is Kelly and Carrie from Making Lemonade, plus our hotel engineering assistant who had to come clean up a fallen light that crashed to the ground in the bathroom when nobody was looking. Ghosts!

Next up Swag!

The Haven crew does an amazing job of partnering with sponsors to bring us all the cool gadgets. When I checked in at the conference registration, I was handed a giant Ballard Designs bag with all sorts of fun things. We were scoping out the goods on Instagram on the MARTA train from the airport and caught a preview of the fabric – woot!

We got the new Shape Tape by Frog Tape {I have the wavy – what should I make with it?!}, a Comfort Grip by Rust-Oleum for spray painting, along with a ton of other stuff. Fabric from Online Fabric Store, safety glasses from 3M, our choice of tool from Kreg {I got the rip cut} and later in the conference there were huge prizes you could win from the sponsors. Sharon from Bringing Creativity to Life and Lisa from Before Meets After each won a week to drive a new GMC vehicle. Lucky ducks!

Now Let’s Talk Sessions

I mean the reason you go to a conference is to learn stuff right? I attend talks on Google-ing up your blog, advertising, working with brands, and a hands on class with Brittany at Pretty Handy Girl and Sandra at Sawdust Girl about casing, which was great since Brittany covered how to do a plank wall and I’m planning on that project for our basement bathroom. Excellent timing on that session!

Below on the top left is Taylor at Powerhouse Factories, Crystal at izea, and Alison with Duck Tape and Frog Tape. Next to them is Katie and Sherry who talked about being blog friends. And the bottom pics are of Brittany and Sandra’s session. Look at all the power tool lovin ladies!

Blog Friends

The best part about going to a blog conference is to actually meet in person all the people whose blogs you read and whose pictures you see online. Yes they are real live people! Now this can be intimidating, especially if you are new to a conference, but fear not I promise you, meeting bloggers in person is the instant they become your best friend. Especially with this group. The energy from these women can power a mid sized city, I am not joking!

Now let’s see if I can remember who everyone is…

Top left is Karah, my roommate at The Space Between; top right is Elizabeth from The Mustard Ceiling, my blog designer! It was perfect to meet her in person since we had emailed back and forth for many months in extreme detail. I mean, this woman knows my passwords {OK, knew them, I’ve since changed them, you know she has to log into your blog and all that}.

Bottom left is Brittany, Pretty Handy Girl getting frisky on the Ballard Designs bench. Middle right is Alison at Refunk My Junk, we met last year. She was one of those people I approached all shy-like saying “Hi, Alison, I’m Jessica from Decor Adventures, we met last year…” and she was instantly hugging me “Let’s get a picture!” It’s so nice to be remembered 🙂

Bottom right is me, Lisa from Before Meets After and Sabrina from Plantation Relics.

Top left is some lounging on the new Ballard Designs blue velvet sofa with Anneke at This and That Life, Kristen from Bliss at Home, Elisha at Pneumatic Addict and me {the non gorgeous blond in the photo!}. Below that is Jessica at Stay at Home-ista and Diane at In My Own Style, my Haven roommate last year. Bottom left is Jena from Involving Color, Carrie at Making Lemonade and Kelly.

On the top right is Roeshel from DIY Show Off. Below that is the lunch ladies including Lisa and Celebrating Creativity, Jennifer at Celebrating Everyday Life, Karah at The Space Between and Laura Beth at A Step in the Journey. The bottom right is Karah, Jamie at Southern Revivals, and Debbie from ReFresh ReStyle.

Business Cards

The one major swag you will come home with after a conference is business cards. I mean like 85+, I counted. It was my goal this year to meet as many people as I could so I could learn about them and their blogs and all that fun stuff. Here’s some of the business card highlights.

Christina at Homemade Ocean brought little bags of Swedish fish! I mean, how cute. Those things were gone before we reached the lobby for lunch 🙂 Finding Home attached her card to a package of mints. How perfect is that? Trisha at Black and White Obsession brought a hole punch to keep all her cards on a ring. Brilliant and unique.

On the top right was a paint chip business card from Heather at Southern State of Mind. She collected all those cards and folded them all herself. It was totally cute. Amy at The Charming Blog packaged her cards up in a little envelope sealed with gold washi tape to keep the glitter hearts inside. Adorable!

The DIY Shuffle

What? Yes, the DIY shuffle. You didn’t know us bloggers had our own dance? We do now! Check out the video below of the lesson.

It was a dance with full-on thrift shopping furniture refinishing, social media blog moves all rolled into Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke. Not only can we blog and spray paint like pros, us bloggers can shake it!

On the top left is Ana White who gave the opening presentation. I had not seen Ana speak before, but she is so inspirational. She builds her own furniture and has recently published a book about it called The Handbuilt Home.

The Partners

One amazing thing about blogging is that you get to work with all kinds of amazing companies and organizations. There were more than two dozen partners at the conference and I stopped to talk with every single one. We chatted about our homes, and new paint colors, and tools and fun opportunities they have for bloggers. Plus they give away free stuff! Not only in the swag bags, but they showcase not-yet-released-in-stores products that we get to try out including power tools.

I was so looking forward to meeting Abbey and Kate from Online Fabric Store. They brought tons of samples for us to look at and we had a fabric swap right there at the conference. All attendees got 2 yards of fabric to keep or trade. I ended up with a green pattern and can’t wait to use it.

Karla and Brad from Thompsons Water Seal were new to Haven this year. They got to see us crazy Haven Mavens in full effect! Laura from HomeRight was showcasing their steamer, paint sprayer and other fun appliances. Guess who will be showing you how to use a paint sprayer very soon?? And the 3M crew gave out tons of new stuff and samples for us to try including lead tests, command strips, wood fill and their new clean sand sanding system. Can’t wait to try it!

Thanks so much for all the support these folks and others provided for the weekend. They ran out of business cards. That is how chatty we can be!

The Party

But we’re not all business at Haven. We can be out until the sun comes up.

Take 300 female DIY bloggers  plus 25 RYOBI marketing team members, add in cocktails and DJ Jazzy Brian and what do you get? Party! Oh yea, and add the DIY shuffle. I got to meet some of the RYOBI team early in the night and warned them that we had our own moves. I don’t think they believed me. I now think RYOBI will be supporting Haven into perpetuity…. 🙂

It’s raining men… with tools!

Phew!

I think that about does it. And there’s more pictures I didn’t even get to show.

If you went to Haven and we met or didn’t meet, leave a comment and say hi. If you didn’t go to Haven, have I convinced you enough that you need to go next year. Like Dan said when I got home

“I am going to dress like a woman and go to that!”

I definitely left inspired, refreshed and excited about ‘Embracing the idea of what if’. Thanks to the Haven team for an awesome conference! See y’all in 2014.

After all I need to start saying y’all when I visit the South 🙂