Kristen and I take in the sights of Chicago courtesy of Safety First and 360 PR. No really! We were like, totally out on the town and there just happened to be a giant logo floating in the sky. And um…a curtain. Behind it all. And some strings. One of the great things about BlogHer is the chance to connect with incredible women I might otherwise never meet. So I thought (somewhat inspired by David Wescott’s new series of posts about online female role models) it would be fun to introduce you to some of the women who I don’t think I’ve really talked about on Mom-101.
And also introduce you to some great fruits.
Carol from NYCityMama is one of the sweetest, most authentic people you could ever ask to meet. I get to see her a lot at press events in New York City because in a total bizarre concidence, she does in fact live in New York City. Which is so weird because it’s in her blog name and all. Seriously, randomness like that happens all the time and if you read the Celestine Prophesy and got through more than the first three pages after about 16 attempts like I did, you would know just what I mean.
[photo credit]
The starfruit is native to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, although I ate it in the Dominican Republic last year. It doesn’t actually look like a star because stars are generally spherical.
MomtrolFreak, aka Laura, asked one of the first questions in my panel about brands and blogs that was so awesome, I should have jumped right off the stage and handed my microphone to her. Here she is (at left) with Shelly who I don’t know but I’m sure is also lovely. She may not in fact be lesser-known since she won a Social Luxe Lounge award for guilty pleasure blog, but for some reason @momtrolfreak doesn’t yet have 4 million twitter followers, which is beyond me.
[photo credit]
This is a prickly pear which actually tastes more like watermelon than cactus or pear and looks like it would be a bitch to get out of my kids’ clothes.
(photo credit)
Alma calls herself MarketingMommy and I’m only bummed I didn’t get to hang out with her more – although we did get our fill of togetherness around the pathetic $5 blackjack table when we spoke at a conference in Vegas earlier this year. She is both an insightful blogger, and a great friend because she doesn’t rat you out when you order blue cheese dressing with your french fries.
[photo credit]
This is a Quince which is particularly good as a paste served with manchego cheese, when you’re entertaining pretentious foodie friends and want to impress them. If you are entertaining botanist friends and want to impress them, call it a Cydonia Oblonga–and then just serve chips or something.
Here’s Sam, aka Tempting Mama, doubling-fisting cocktails at the wonderful Nikon sponsored party while having her hair made all the more tempting. (She could also use some love and support on her blog right now so…)I would have joined her in the chairbut I’ll be honest, I saw the curling iron and ran away. Also, I had to go take blurry pictures of Carson Kressley, which are blurry in part because I don’t own a Nikon.
Nikon, if you don’t give me a free camera right now I’m going to tell the whole world about my crappy photography skills. That’ll show you!
This is a citrangequat which actually, until now, I thought was a part of the female anatomy. Turns out this is not at all the case as you can see from the leaves. It’s part orange, part kumquat, part citronella candle or something like that.
In yet another terrible photo, this is Josette from Halushki, one of my beloved roommates (the other being Christina of Fairly Oddmother), who is here wielding two free kiwis, thus covering both blogger and fruit all in one photo.
And they said it couldn’t be done.
Great post. Sounds like a great time. I think I should go to the next Blogher.
Oh man, who else would think to school us in the fine art of meeting fun bloggers and fun fruit in the same post?
Heart you. -Christine
This is a really cute post, and I have now broken my no-blogher-post-reading rule twice in one day.
What these bloggers don't know – specifically Sam and Jozet (didn't meet the other two lovelies) is that I was totally “squeeing” (as the young kids say these days) meeting them.
I'm impressed with your fruit knowledge. Is there anything you DON'T know about? Seriously.
Believe it or not, living in the suburbs, I've had Quince paste (like a jam) suggested to me with a purchase of Manchego.
I think you need to start a fruit review blog.
If I was from a less enlightened decade, I would make a comment about Carson Kressly being a lesser known fruit.
Also, you are totally f-ing with Alma's D-List schtick by linking to her.
You are entirely more endearingly weird than you let on, and this post proves it. I had a hint with the tuna thing.
I'm glad I could pull together the two plot-lines of your post in one photo. Thank you so much for not posting the one of me with the boysenberries.
BTW, I adore you more than you'll ever know. And not just because you shared your room with me. I've adored you since the very first time I've clicked on your blog. And no, I'm not drunk right now. SMOOCH!
Yum, prickly pear. They make awesome margaritas. And if you drink enough of those, you won't care about your laundry. 🙂
OMG, you are so sweet to write about me and even, as a bonus, write NICE THINGS! I now have an enormous girl-crush on you. And I won't even worry that the only photo proof that I was at BlogHer makes me look like a balance-challenged i-love-you-drunk with a ham hock for an upper arm. Stupid me for standing next to @Shelly_Overlook, who is totally skinny. Gah. But at least you can't see that I had a cigarette (don;t worry, I'm jsut a social-media-smoker). Thanks for the shout-out; I am looking forward to 14 million followers tomorrow!
Good thing you knew better than to hand me the mic–it didn't work out so well for them when they did that in 'Sponsored v Unsponsored.' 😉
oh and, the fruit thing? BRILLIANT. Immahafta try me some of those.
oh ANDDDDDDuh: um, I didn't actually “win” the SocialLuxe guilty pleasure, but I was a top five finalist. The winners were Craftastrophe and MamaPop, to which I subscribe. It's just like they say at the Oscars, “it's an honor to be nominated in a category with such wonderful and talented blah blah blah yadda yadda blah.”
p.s. (can I technically DO a p.s. when this is my THIRD comment?) Nice touch on the Nikon blackmail. #nikonhatesshittyphotography
But thank you for giving me the award in your mind. I am really beginning to like your mind. I may move there.
Look at you spreading the love around the blogosphere. Love that about you. 🙂
Great post-entertaining AND informative! Go 'head Girlfriend!
Thanks to this post,I now have more good things to read… yay!
OMG…I'm so touched you did this! And then featured a fruit you tasted in the Dominican Republic right after me! So in essence you Dominicanified (can you say that?) like a quarter of your blog right there! How cool are you??? Oh, and the fact that you sent out the tweet about my loosing my phone, which I found, but till this day am still getting RT tweets about it being lost from all over the world…like I said…you rock and I love you. Besos.
I think this is my favourite BlogHer post yet! And Sam looks so cute all double-fisting and what not. Wait, that came out wrong…
The kiwis and spife had some of the best marketing at the whole Expo because it was so simple and unexpected. Who wasn't talking about kiwi fruit by the end of Friday?!
I also got to me NYCityMama and thought she was neat. I'm definitely adding her to my feed reader.
For the record: I ATE those kiwis! And they were delicious!
Great post—-I do know a couple of those you mentioned but must check out the others since I think you have great taste in people.
NYCityMama Rocks! Got to throw down with her a few weeks back at a NYC blogger get together… She is special… Spicey! (Shit, is that how you spell spicey? spicy? I'm such a loser)
Nice!
My love of kiwis (the fruit, not people from New Zealand… although my husband is from New Zealand. Hmmmm…..) is one of the reasons I can't completely jump on the “eat local food only” bandwagon. Because for some reason, our California kiwis are never very good. They never seem to get to that perfect stage of ripeness. They are always either rock hard or past their prime. How this can be possible when kiwis shipped from the other side of the world manage to reach me when they are ripe and yummy boggles my mind.
Prickly pears, on the other hand, are common in my home state of Arizona. We mostly ate them after all nutritional value had been extracted and they'd been turned into little jelly candies, though.
My mom harvests her prickly pears and makes prickly pear lemonade. She also has a quince tree. And a sapote tree. And my dad is working on his avocado orchard, and a whole lot of other stuff (we're country mountain folk)
Well, at least I don't have a shrimp skewer hanging out of my mouth as I had earlier. That's a bonus, right?
Am classy. I know.
And meeting you and Kristen? TOTAL highlight of the weekend. You ladies are so wicked awesome I could put you in my pocket and sneak you over the border to Canada where we could all live happily ever after.
Is it okay if I fast forwarded past the fruit. Although the pics were lovely, even sans Nikon.
It was great seeing you at BlogHer, like, 10 times. Saying “Hi, how are you?” 10 times. Which was all I could muster, mostly because I'm shy and partly because I'm a long-time admirer of your work (which is a good reason to muster more, I know).
I DID want to tell you how much I enjoyed your panel. GREAT job. 🙂
Great post! Love how you laid it out! Looks like a great time – thanks for introducing me to all those great bloggers!!
hey, thanks for the links to the other blogs. I feel like I came late to the party and I'm still trying to figure out where all the rooms are. It's nice to have someone who knows her way around point out the lesser known hotspots. 🙂
I'm so happy you linked to Alma that I'm not even going to mention how weird it is that you cut off my face. Ooops. 🙂
But laplanderson, I was just trying to capture your best cheekbone.
Talk about girl-crushes! Liz you are the ultimate in bringing people together. I am by no means even close to as talented as what comes through your blog, but I might consider myself close to stalking status that I come back every chance I get to live vicariously through the big city people with all your wit. You are all my daily dose of what it would be like NOT to live in Alabama but rather some far more exotic place where you can buy wine and not feel the stares of condemnation.
Doesn't stop me though!
I'm one of those people who own The Celestene Prophecy, after being told I MUST read it. I only got through about 20 pages. I have been trying for years to will myself to pick it up and try again, but I just keep moving on.
I listen to that Jungle Book song Bare Necessities more often than I like to admit (with my kids, I swear) and wondered every time he sings about it, “What exactly is a prickly pear?” Thank you, for a great mystery is solved.
I do not think it was right that you noted one of the bloggers could use support right now. When asked to help others in the past you have always declined, you have not been kind to the new bloggers trying to find the way, why are you helping this woman?(and not others?) Do you not feel threatened by her as you must by others? I think you need to step down from your “pedastal” and stop preaching about honesty when you really are not truthful yourself.
Is a “pedastal” different from a pedestal?
Yeah Liz, how dare you write what you want on your own blog? What kind of person are you anyway?
Oh wait, this is your personal blog isn't it? Hmm. 🙂
Pedastal…isn't that a creature from Harry Potter? You have a mythological creature from Harry Potter? Can I touch it?
I am so confused about the fruit. Yet it makes me so happy to see another writer struggle with photography, just like ME.
Dear Anonymous
I think you and your “pedastal” should get on a pedestal and BLOW WITH INTEGRITY. Or get a life.
Dear anonymous: I was thumbing through Blogging Etiquette Weekly this morning and noticed that Crazy is out this season; poetry is in. All complaints should be presented in the form of a haiku. For instance:
Summer wanes, Anon.
Blogging Etiquette dictates
That you can it now.
I'm with @rookiemom- whitney. Alma has to can that D-List project now.
We have this book called the Visual Dictionary of Food (or something; it's pack away right now). If you lived next door to me, I'd totally let you borrow it for your next post to help you continue your quest to educate readers about exotic fruits. People need to know about durian.
I like the fruit-blogger theme. If you decide to feature me, please put me next to a mangosteen, for 2 reasons: 1) Everything is all about me, right? Right? and 2) Fresh mangosteen is the only fruit on my bucket list.
Heh. I saw VDog's response to your 'troll' tweet in her twitterstream & came over for a look.
Oh, internets. ;p
[I check hers out a lot cuz we're sisters] 😛
Anon – Did you even go over to that blog to see why the woman might need support? You should really try knowing what you are talking about before being a rude asshat too cowardly to leave a name.
Dear Anonymous,
Um, she's not giving support to that blogger as a CAREER MENTOR, for fuck's sake. The poor woman is going through something really awful in her personal life. Mom-101 is being A GOOD FRIEND. She's asking for support for the person, not for the blog. If you asked her for help in the past with as much class and professionalism as your comment, gosh, I wonder why she declined to help. Plus, isn't there some sort of irony rule about calling someone out on their honesty while writing under the Nom de Plume “Anonymous”?
It is you, oh Disgruntled Blogger, who must remove thyself from thy ped-ass-tul.
p.s. Suck it.
wonderful Blogher recap…since i couldnt attend i have so enjoyed reading about everyones escapades…
Looks like you all had a blast! I just found your blog and really like it! Have a great day 🙂
A fabulously original combination of topics- I would expect no less of you!
Great to see you again, as always.
This was a fun read! I'm sad Alma will be leaving me on the D-List alone, but she deserves it. Even if she's not a very good gambler (I somehow got in on that joke.) Good to see you for 5 min at blogher!