Mixed Food Bloggers Conference 2014

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Mixed Food Bloggers Conference at
Mountain Lake Resort in Pembroke, Virginia.
The resort where Dirty Dancing was filmed!!
This was my third time attending Mixed and for me, this was the best year yet!
You can read about past conferences here and here.
Mountain Lake is absolutely beautiful!

I did not plan to attend Mixed this year since I had just attended Food Blog Forum
in Asheville in August.  Two conferences were not in my budget, but I noticed that
Dixie Crystals Sugar was hosting a Mixed Cookie Contest.  Dixie Crystals would
pay the conference fee for the three cookie finalists and guess what?!?!!
I was chosen as a finalist!
Woo Hoo!!
My entry was Pumpkin Dark Chocolate Cookies.

Mixed Food Bloggers Conference

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend Mixed, my very first food bloggers conference and it was fabulous!  Susan from Doughmesstic and Paula from bell'alimento were our lovely hosts.

The conference was held at the Mountain Lake Hotel in Pembroke, Virginia.
The hotel was the location for the movie classic "Dirty Dancing", starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.
I have been a big fan of the movie ever since I first saw it in 1987, so I was so excited to be there!

Mixed had so many generous corporate sponsors.  KitchenAid, Dreamfields Pasta, OXO and Dixie Crystals were just a few of the amazing companies that that were represented.

I received a swag bag with all of these goodies when I first arrived and that was just the beginning!

The first night we attended a mixer with lots of cookie tasting.
My new friend Janet from The Army Mom made these adorable penguins.

Melanie from A Delicious Bite made Chocolate Expresso Snaps that were delish!

I love me some chocolate :)

Karyn from Pint Sized Baker made these beauties.  I love the detail!



On Saturday we had a full day of sessions on photography, food styling, cookie and cake decorating just to name a few.

Marian from Sweetopia taught us now to decorate sugar cookies with royal icing and buttercream.

She is an AMAZING cookie decorator and is the sweetest person ever.  I loved meeting her!

Next up was cake decorating with guess who?!?
Duff Goldman!!





















Duff provided us with a huge assortment of cake decorating supplies to play with.

Katie of Katie's Cucina was my cake decorating partner.

We made an awesome team :)

Here's our finished cake.  Isn't it pretty!

Duff was really helpful and so nice too.

I really hit it off with Melanie from Melanie In The Middle and A Beautiful Bite.

Melanie has two blogs, four kids and is so fun to hang out with!

I learned so much and met several amazing new friends at Mixed.

It was a great experience and one that I will never forget!

Thank you Paula and Susan for hosting such a great event.