Girl's trip: Pinners Conference in ATL

A couple of months ago, my friend Jenny reached out to see if anyone would be interested in joining her in driving down to Atlanta for a Pinners Conference. Basically the conference was a huge expo floor where hundreds of vendors could sell their amazing (mostly handmade) products and dozens of classes were offered taught by popular bloggers who have been pinned a lot (presumably). While not a super huge user of Pinterest, I do enjoy it and also really enjoy learning new skills. Michael was totally supportive and so I hopped on board.

I confess I often talk myself out of doing things like this, mostly because of the prep involved and the guilt I feel in leaving my family. I almost cancelled the week before, but I didn't and was really glad I went. I think my favorite part was just being with Jenny and Monica, enjoying good conversation with two women who are fully converted to the gospel and who love their families. The time in the 8+ hour car trip down and back sped by. (And the fact that we got back at 3:30am on Sunday and then headed safely to church at 9 was a tender mercy!)

As for the classes, I attended eleven (I think?) classes, one every hour and a half or so. I learned little snippets about a lot of things, some of which was very new (watercoloring) and some of which was information with which I was familiar (tablescaping, entertaining, etc.). I enjoyed analyzing the presenters (is that bad?), trying to figure out how authentic they really were by the difference in their "prep face" and their "game face" as they got ready to begin their class. It made me think about blogs and how some are a facade while others are a true representation of who that person really is (and makes me question my own!).

 Fashion essentials was taught by a cute girl who somehow made you believe you could totally pull off any trendy outfit.

 The gal who was teaching the Instapot class knew a lot about them, but unfortunately her three pots were plugged into one outlet and the circuit blew, causing them to lose pressure and not cook. Super bummer! But maybe an Instantpot would be a good Black Friday buy. Maybe.

 This water color class was one of my very favorite classes--and the only class we had all signed up for together!

One class was on macaron-making. It looks quite daunting, and frankly, I love my chocolate chip cookies so much that I don't know if I'd ever take on a recipe that is so temperamental. But buying them was a fun treat! I also got a few other fun goodies--some of the handmade jewelry and prints were lovely.

Robbie asked me what I was going to do at the conference, and I told him, "I'm going to learn new fun things!" "You can't learn new fun things!" he insisted. "You can only learn about church things!" Happy to prove him wrong. The tricky part now, however, is to make sure I actually use the skills I learned.