With my 8th BlogOn in the bag and slowly recovering from a busy but fun weekend filled with lots of laughter, good friends, an unintentional lay in, great food, bad dancing, catching up with old friendly faces and making new friends I thought I give you the 5 ultimate things I loved about this years September #BlogOnToys and some good enough reasons you should go and get yourself a ticket so May the 4th can be with you at BlogOn next year!!
1. ROADTRIPS
Travelling alone is never fun but there is always somebody who can be found to travel with and make the journey up north way more enjoyable! I had the pleasure of getting picked up in Banbury (after a 2 hour train journey which I used to paint my nails) by my favourite road trip buddy Danielle (Blog by Baby) and we made our way to Manchester together! Going home I had the pleasure to jump in with Sherry (Life at Cooks Cabin) who lives local to me and we had great conversations about our BlogOn experience! Laura (the founder of BlogOn has created a BlogOn Attendee Group on Facebook which is brilliant to give a shout out to find some local bloggers to get together to share the journey!
2. PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999
For the last couple of BlogOn’s Laura started throwing a Pre BlogOn Party the night before the Conference and well this was the best one yet! Not kicking down the Paladone sponsored party last year which was all fun and games!! But this years Christmas themed Party was filled with free drinks, sparkly face painting, Christmas music and plenty of bad dancing (from my part) and cheesy songs played by the DJ (sorry – not sorry about that, those requests where mostly down to me!). We might have not been the last one standing when we left just before midnight but I most certainly had a brilliant time! Oh and prior to believe of some bloggers who were surprised I wasn’t hanging the next morning! I didn’t drink I just like dancing like a headless chicken even without alcohol.
3. BLOGON WELCOMING SPEECH
Laura’s welcome note sets the tone for the day (yes that’s including swearwords because why they hell not!!). This is why I love coming to BlogOn twice a year because it’s such a chilled atmosphere, the 200 strong crowd of bloggers – newbie or not always have a smile on their faces and conversations are flowing easily! The BlogOn helpers crew are just awesome in their jobs and the PR Folk are the best around who can take a good banter and joke (and by the looks of it they like us blogger too because they always gladly return again!!).
4. EVERYBODY LIKED MY PUDDINGS
When Alex Winter (Ex CBebbies Presenter) compliments you on your puddings you know you dressed right for the occasion! For anybody who hasn’t attended BlogOn in September yet it is Christmas themed and bloggers can dress up as wacky as they like from chicken hats to baubles jumpers everything goes!! He was not the only one to talk about them (puddings) and it certainly was a good conversation starter!
5. KEEP CALM AND COME & GET SOME!
The spectacular BlogOn Raffle is pretty famous now and with this years Toy Awards entries all being thrown into that pot I was rather spectacular and lots of bloggers where lucky to go home with some amazing prizes (mostly put away for Christmas this year I suspect). This year Laura introduced us to a new Raffle Caller Extraordinar aka Duncan (Thank you Claire for letting your mad husband loose we throughly enjoyed him!!) who made the raffle name shout out rather fun! “There is only one Becky Cowley!!”
Now I could waffle on a bit more but I thought I end it with 5 quick reasons why you have to bag yourself a BlogOn Ticket for May the 4th:
- Up to two full nights sleeps in a hotel room without your children! Yeah I would say that alone is a very good reason!
- Catching up with fellow bloggers and getting to know new friendly faces is always a bonus!
- You can WIN SOME at the Raffle and take home the most amazing goody bag ever (see below)! Don’t forget that empty large suitcase we aren’t joking about needing it!
- This time it’s all go for an AFTER BlogOn Party Saturday night which will be epic, no doubt!!
- The annoying non drunk German Wife will be there too (minus my christmas pudding tee that only comes out in September!)
To finish off my post here are some off my favourite pictures and of course somehow there is always at least 1 BlogOn lift selfie this time shot by the lovely Chris from SpencersARC.Daddy:
We’ve just been in the PARTY lift (going down) #BlogOnToys @BlogOnUK (spot the celeb ?) pic.twitter.com/iMsvVSStn3
— SpencersARC.Daddy (@PixelatedDad) September 16, 2018
And like Jenny from The Brick Castle picture rightly says:
Comments (7)
Was great to see you again, AK. I think the music at the party got much better once people started making cheesy requests! As always, BlogOn is such a rewarding day in so many ways. May can’t come soon enough.
Had the BEST time and you made it even better 😀 here’s to May!
Great to see you gain in person. It’s such an odd world this blogging lark. You can chat daily to people and then when you meet them it’s like your already really good friends. Love your account of the weekend. See ya on insta.
Awwwww AK. It’s always lovely to see you, it really is, and the puddings are just a voluptuous bonus 😀
I like what you did with that picture there – I must be the only blogger who has never doubted they chose the right blog name 😀
So much fun ? I was a BlogOn Virgin Tull last Saturday night! What a way to pop my cherry. I’ll definitely be there next year ? (SpencersARC.Daddy)
Great review. It was my first and I was far too introverted this time around! Next time I hope to meet you IRL!
that would be lovely I will be there in May again! ticket is already bought! Can’t wait!