Alt Summit- Day One

I've been thinking about the best way to write about Alt Summit. I've decided that I'm going to let my iPhone do the story telling. Over the next few posts I'll be going through Alt Summit day by day via my iPhone photos. Enjoy.

Clockwise from top left:

-Coffee and Vogue. Travel Essentials.
-Departure: Palm trees from the plane window.
-Arrival: Snowy mountains from the plane window.
-Wrapped in my scarf in the cab. Alt Summit bound.

Clockwise from top left:

-Hanging out at the baggage claim where I met the very cool ModChick. Check out her blog. You won't regret it.
-View from my room at the Grand America (gorgeous hotel. GREAT service)
-Another view from my room
-Goofing off while on a webinar for work.

Clockwise from top left:

- Shift Summit (shift summit is a seperate from Alt Summit three hour seminar on social media and marketing for your business)
- Shift Summit
- Alt Summit swag box. Holler!
- Cute pencils from the swag box.

While at Shift Summit I met the lovely Marie and Melanie. I remembered Marie from the pre-alt online classes, so it was lovely to see her in person! Marie's cards had a vanilla fleur de sel caramel along with a recipe to make them. Notice that there is no photo of the caramel? That's because I ate it before I could snap one. It was delicious. Melanie's business card is actually a business card holder so that you can store all of the business cards you get at Alt! Very clever.

Our incredible Wednesday night dinner. More on that in the next post.....

Tay's Tips for Perfect Steak

You're welcome.

1) Gather your tools.
2) Turn on some great tunes.


3) Select a nicely marbled piece of ribeye from your butcher.
4) Sprinkle with sea salt and pepper. Brush with olive oil.
5) Cook in a cast iron skillet. Seriously. Just do it. If you don't have a cast iron skillet, find one at your local thrift store or invest in a new one. So worth it.
6) Heat the cast iron skillet on high for five minutes.
7) Turn the heat to medium high and cook on one side until the juices pool on the top side of the steak (around 4 minutes for medium rare).
8) Turn the steak and cook on the other side for three to four minutes (for medium rare).
9) Remove steaks from the skillet and allow to sit for five minutes. Don't be freaked out if you cut into the steak as soon as its done and it looks to rare. The steak will continue to cook while it sits.

10) Pair with vegetables with both strong texture and flavor. I generally go with sauteed mushroom, onion and asparagus.

11) Enjoy your finished product with a hearty red that may or may not describe the current mood you're in.

Oh, snap.

Stamp Giveaway- CLOSED

After finding an incredible designer for my blog/personal business card, I knew that I needed a solution to incorporate both my personal card and our restaurant business card for Alt Summit. After all, I attended the conference for both personal reasons and for our restaurant and didn't want to favor one over the other. The solution I came up with was to combine both cards in a Kraft Paper envelope (purchased here) and find an adorable stamp to use so that I could customize the envelope in order to stay consistent with both my personal card and our restaurant card. (whoa. run on sentence much?)


I found Trial by Cupcakes on Etsy and knew they could help me accomplish my goal. I was thrilled with their product and decided to order a stamp. Laura, of Trial by Cupcakes, was so helpful and helped me brainstorm the best design for my stamp. She not only gave valuable input, but put a rush on my order and got the stamp to me just in time for Alt Summit, despite my last minute order. 



The card combination was a hit (pats self on back) and was even featured on Kirtsy's feature on The Business Cards of Alt. Holler!   



Lucky for you, Laura has generously agreed to host a giveaway for your very own stamp! The stamp I purchased for my cards is actually an address stamp (example below from Laura's Etsy Site), so you can either do an address stamp, or simply a name stamp (like mine).

Or perhaps you'd rather have a stamp with your name, web site and email?

In order to enter the giveaway, please leave a comment on this post AND like my facebook page. For extra entries, feel free to blog, tweet or post on facebook about the contest. Just send me a link to your post(s) and I'll add an entry for you.


You must enter by Tuesday, January 31. The winner will be announced on February 1st.


These stamps are so well done and easy to use! They would make an incredible gift for your favorite letter writer (or keep it for yourself. I promise I won't tell). Please be sure to visit Laura's Etsy shop to check out her other darling items. I love the wedding maps! Such a clever idea. 

Good luck! 

Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year. The timing for this annual event could not be more perfect. Thank you, moon, for making your lunar new year right after two of the most valuable things I've ever signed up for; the Blue Lily workshop and Alt Summit. I arrived home yesterday afternoon and went straight to work until around 8:00. When I got home, my first instinct was to bust out my laptop to edit photos and write eleventeen blog posts. My brain, however, so full of ideas and inspiration, had turned into a pile of mush. And if there's anything I learned while at these amazing conferences, it's that I need to make my work valuable and original. So, I will come back soon to give you re-caps of the most creatively inspiring weeks of my life. I'm going to take this week to think about where my blog is going. Fun and creative new things are coming. This is a time of renewal and resolution. I'm so glad that the moon agrees.


Stay tuned.....

Blue Lily Teaser

Hi Pals. 

I attended the Blue Lily GoPro photo workshop in Encinitas this weekend. 

My one word sum up of the weekend: Amazeballs. 

I'm still SLOWLY editing all of my photos. I'm using photo shop now (yay!) but it takes me a very long time. Here is the one photo I finished editing......

If you've ever thought of attending one of Wendy and Tyler's workshops, DO IT! It was so fun, so interesting and so informative. I haven't laughed that hard in such a long time and my brain feels like it's going to explode. I met people I know will be in my life forever (seriously. my fellow workshop attendees are rad and I'll always stay in touch with them. not to mention how incredible the Blue Lily team is.) and I can't wait to use my sick new photo skills to shoot some wicked sharp photos. 

Alt Summit starts Wednesday so posting will be light, yo. 

Age

Quickly approaching 30, aging is often on my mind. On the day of the Iowa caucuses, I got to thinking about the 2012 presidential race and how fascinated I am with how quickly being the president ages our leaders.

I was perusing President Obama's facebook fan page and did a comparison. 

2008

2012

Wow! What a difference. I wonder what internal impact of such a stressful job might be? 

Check out this interesting slideshow on the Presidents' photos at the beginning and at the end of their terms. 

**photos of our president taken from his facebook page