Hitting the #BlogFest highlights

I can’t believe it’s been a week since we’ve been home from BlogFest in Vegas. The week of decompressing and adjusting back into the world of Portland has flown by in a blur. It’s wonderful to get to remember specific moments of such an amazing weekend.

We kicked the weekend off on a high and sweaty note! I jumped into booth set up (after a big reunion hug with Jamie, Nicci, and Alyse), which of course included photobooth shenanigans (we had to test out the photobooth after all), swag bag unveiling, and breaking into the red vines. It’s always nice having a prep day with the team, to reunite, set everything up, get our feet under us, and enjoy ourselves.

The weekend was full of awesome educational sessions, team twinning, and funny faces.

It’s great to see how the information we discuss at BlogFest is applied by our community of influencers that have been blogging between months and years. While a new blogger may be full of fresh ideas, but eventually they’ll be putting to use Katy Widrick‘s session of making old content new again. Talking SEO might sound like another language at first, eventually Lindsay Valdez‘s top 5 SEO Elements will make sense. And everyone always loves learning about how to make money with their blogs; thanks, Amanda Vogel!

Contagiasm

This year’s keynote speaker was led by Todd Durkin. Talk about getting amped up! We saw him accept the Jack Lalanne award the day before in front of thousands of people (Elaine Lalanne even gave his onsie-clad booty a little slap as he completed the push-ups she challenged him to), and then we got to see him the next day in our BlogFest room. He’s incredibly inspiring, and has coined the term “contagiasm,” the idea of being contagious with positive energy. He believes, as I do, that what happens in the mind, body, and soul is contagious, whether positive or negative. He showed us videos of his workouts and personal videos he sends his clients that got me positively amped to get in the gym and get after it. He also talked to us about his life philosophy, that life isn’t a marathon, but a sprint. A series of sprints to be more exact. Moments in life cause us to go hard, so we much recover just as hard to prepare for the next upcoming sprint. We must take care of ourselves, physically and mentally, in order to be able to truly be present and give it your all.

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The best part of the weekend is always the community. This being my third BlogFest, I knew a lot of sweaty, friendly faces and immediately started running into them Wednesday afternoon upon arrival and lasted through Sunday evening.

The squad is always up for all the fun pictures.

We always love to sweat with each other! This year’s Strong by Zumba workout, led by Jeanette Jenkins, was ridiculously fun! It wasn’t a dance workout by any means, but we still got our dance on.

By the end, we were full of big smiles, dripping sweat, and about to be so sore for the next three days that we couldn’t sit down without assistance.

We made sure to get our dancing in, though! Our booth was right next to the Les Mills booth, so we could jump in on their workout demonstrations when the music kicked on.

Not to mention the IDEA World Dance Party! We had so much fun and absolutely broke it down! Plus, it’s always fun to see everybody all dressed up and not in sweaty spandex.

Friday night happy hour is always a fun occasion as sessions are over and we get to relax and catch up with people, and network with our awesome sponsors.

Come Saturday morning, coffee was a MUST! We went off the strip and found the cutest breakfast place and loaded up on avo toast and coffee. You know this place was good because they had a throw pillow with a llama in a VW van. Such a great segue back to Portland life.

We get to booth babe it up all day long on Saturday at the IDEA World expo. It’s always such a fun day in our booth with all kinds of shenanigans and walking around to other booths.

This year we celebrated Alyse’s birthday on Saturday night! We got all dressed up again, went off the strip for dinner, and returned to the strip to bust a move in true Vegas fashion.

On Sunday, the PDX team was flying out later in the evening. We were able to enjoy some sunshine by the pool and discover an amazing taco place off the strip. Such a relaxing day (in Vegas, no less!) after the craziness of the weekend.

What an amazing week in Vegas, full of sweat and friends. I miss it all already!