Haven 2012 Recap {Part 2}

On Friday I gave you the first part of my Haven recap. I left off talking about the last session I attended on day 1 of the conference which was all about photography.

One thing I forgot to mention was that in between our sessions, there was a chance to walk around to all the wonderful vendors that came and get a chance to learn about some of their products and what they do. So a sincere thank you to The Home Depot, MiniWax, Rust-oleum, PureBond, Oreck, Annie Sloan, Frogtape, 3M, Ryobi, Royal Design Studio, Homes.com, MirrorMate and Moen.

Later that night we had another cocktail reception sponsored by Rust-oleum. Even though I was able to get through the first reception/networking event the night before without completely dying of fear, I was still a little nervous to attend the second one. Luckily by then, I had formed a little group of friends {or our posse we liked to call it} and was able to hang with them while still meeting several new people at the same time.

 {Photo courtesy of Finding Home}

From left to right:: Me, Bonnie & Trish from Uncommon Designs, Daune from Cottage in the Oaks, Kristin from The Hunted Interior & Laura from Finding Home

This picture is proof that I was in fact at this conference and that I’m not just making all this up and stealing photos from those that actually did attend.

Friday kicked off another day of sessions. I attended a session called DIY Blog Design by Creative Kristi. Since switching to WordPress, I have really gotten into all the html/coding of my blog and was excited to learn how to do more things. Kristi did a great job teaching us how to create our own graphics, change some of the CSS of our blog and recommended some plugins to download.

The next session I attended was Advanced Painting taught by Miss Mustard Seed of Mustard Seed Interiors and Shaunna from Imperfectly Perfect. We learned all about chalk paint & milk paint {both of which I’ve still yet to try and am dying to}. Miss Mustard Seed is also coming out with her own milk paint line and gave us a tutorial on how it works and all the fabulous colors she will be carrying.

{Image courtesy of DIY Village}

That’s me, listening to Miss Mustard Seed demonstrate how her new milk line will work.

The last session of the conference that I attended was called All About Advertising. I had heard from several people the day before how great it was, but let me just tell you, it totally blew my mind. I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything they taught us. Beckie from Infarrantly Creative is an advertising genius. We learned all about what not to do and do when it comes to monetizing your blog. We learned all about affiliate programs, how to handle giveaways, how sponsored posts should work and how to manage advertising on your blog. You can see me in the bottom corner of this photo furiously taking notes.

{Photo courtesy of DIY Village}

Overall, I had an amazing time at the conference and met some amazing people. My only regret is that I wish I had the guts to walk up to more people and get to know them more and snap some pictures with them. My introverted nature just totally took over, but next time, I’m going for it!

I hope that this encourages you either to attend a blog conference if you’ve ever been on the fence, or if there’s something you’ve feared doing, to go for it! I blogged about how blogging has forced me to take risks, and this was another risk that came with a great reward! I feel blessed to have formed some of the connections I did at Haven and can’t wait until next year to make more!

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