The Guavalicious Life

When I looked at the calendar this morning, I couldn’t believe that a month from now I will be flying out to San Diego for the BlogHer conference. BlogHer11 will be my second BlogHer. After taking New York by storm, or at least surviving, I feel much more prepared for this year. So along with help from Twitter friends here are my top ten tips for BlogHer packing. I will be adding a new top ten list every Sunday until BlogHer!

Top Ten BlogHer Packing Tips

1. Plan for swag: There’s a lot of swag at BlogHer and trust me, you will come home with way more than you thought. I personally like to tuck an extra soft sided suitcase into the front pocket of my carry on so I can check my swag. Target carries a line of expandable bags that fold up into a pouch and retail for about $15. Just remember to strategically pack the heavier items in your carry on so you’re under the 50lb limit. If you would rather ship, consider bringing pre-printed labels with you to save time and money. Then you can used the shipping station supplies and just drop your boxes off at the hotel mail room. And don’t get caught up in the swag mania. Think about what you will really use and drop everything else off at the swag exchange which the year is planned for outside of the breakout session rooms.

2. Pack Comfortable Shoes: Trust me: you will walk constantly. I think I did a mile or two just in the expo hall. Add in the parties and the fact that the conference is next to instead of in the hotel and it’s a guarantee that you will be exerting yourself much more than normal. You’re probably already planning comfortable shoes for the day but consider packing some flats for night as well. Dancing in flip flops is a lot more fun! And if you get new shoes be sure to break them in before going to the conference.

3.  Be strategic about technology: Bring a oulet strip for your room (I like this Belkin Mini Surge Protector Dual USB Charger for in room use) and I bring a second small one for the sessions. Consider what you will really use: if you’re not on the photography track, do you really need the fancy camera or even a camera at all? Especially if you have a smart phone with camera/video capabilities. If you don’t plan to blog and can take notes with pen and paper, leave the laptop at home.  But if you need that laptop and want to be online consistently, consider getting a portable hotspot since the wifi at the hotel and convention center will probably be overloaded.

4. Use Hangers!: You probably have one roommate, you may even have three. That’s a lot of clothes than need to be hung up. Consider hanging your clothes up before you leave and just packing them on the hanger. If you plan to wear different accessories every day, attach a ziplock bag with them to the hanger.

5. Simplify Your Skincare Routine: Currently I use three products at night and four in the morning. But to BlogHer I plan to only bring three things: makeup wipes, night cream, and moisturizer with sunscreen. Believe me you’ll be too tired for all those extra steps when you get back to your room at one am and the extra bottles just take up valuable bathroom counter space.

6. Bring a Separate Makeup Bag: Even if you only room with one person, the bathroom gets crowded. Keep your makeup and hair stuff in a separate bag so you can use the mirror in the room while your roommate is showering. Same goes for your hair stuff. And if you have the room, consider bringing a hair dryer.

7. Consider a Capsule Wardrobe: You may have picked up from the above tips that space is at a premium. Keep your room neat and leave more space for swag in your suitcase by bringing a capsule wardrobe. What is a capsule wardrobe? It’s pieces that mix and match and do double duty. You don’t need a separate outfit for every party. Instead consider elevating jeans with a sparkly shirt or adding jewelry and a cute shrug to your daytime dress. For five days I will probably bring: two dresses, one pair of jeans, a blazer, one pair of slacks, and four t-shirts. And only 3-4 pairs of shoes.

8. Pack pajamas and extra underwear: I usually sleep naked but my conference bed mate Claire prefers that I wear pajamas. Many people advise cute ones in case of pictures but I won’t room with anyone who would post a bad pic of me, so I just throw in lounge pants and a tee. Why extra underwear? Because if you can catch a shower before the parties it feels better to put on new underpants.

9. Medicine: In addition to your prescriptions, bring your favorite aspirin equivalent, cold/flu daytime and nighttime medicine, immodium, tums/pepto, and anything other “just in case” medicine you might think you will need. And take the aspiring quivalent every night, it helps with the soreness and drinking.

10. Snacks: I way over packed on snacks last year but I still think it’s helpful to have a variety of snacks: protein or cereal bars for missed meals, nuts for protein to keep you going, and a sweet or salty snack or two for late nights or hangovers.

So those are my top ten packing tips! Something to add or a question to ask? Please leave a comment. And check back on Tuesday when I will post a picture guide to organized packing along with my “carry on” only credo. What other BlogHer prep top ten lists would you like to see.

Part of my summer bucket list is cleaning out my closets. I have about eight weeks of home time during the summer and eight closets in my home so it seems like a natural project to take on.  I eased into it this week with our hall closet. A major selling point of our house was this closet. For some reason having a place for people to hang their coats seemed to make this place feel like a “grown up” home.

Even though we don’t often use it since we enter our home through the garage, the closet is still a repository for coats of the moment and shoes that we don’t want the dog to chew on. And during the winter, mittens and hats get stashed here. I also like to stick my boots there during Missouri’s mud season, also know as Spring.  In my head I thought a shoe rack and some bins for items that would be returned to their owners would be perfect. So what did I end up with? Take a look.

The changes were pretty simple. I added hooks for the girls backpacks so that they could hang them up themselves. Once those were in, I thought a shoe rack was too much so I put a bin at the bottom right. It’s woven plastic so it can be rinsed out if necessary.  The rug underneath will help soak up rainwater and snow from boots. Plus it provides a nice pop of color. There are two bins on the top shelf: a large one for items that we need to pass on to friends and a small one that holds sunscreen and sunglasses right now and will hold mittens, hats, etc. in the winter.

I spent a little more than I wanted: $3.14  for the rug and $18 for the three bins. But for the organization and look of one of the first things our guests see, I think it was worth it. What do you think?

One more thing… when we opened the closet after we moved in, we got a pleasant surprise:

We missed it in our whirlwind pre-buy look (we bought the house about six hours after it went on the market). It’s just an unexpected piece of whimsy.

It’s hard to believe that this is the last day of May. My kids’ last day of school is Thursday and I would be lying if I said I was looking forward to it. As I dip my toes back into the working world, I definitely hard it find to balance being home with my kids and working out of the house. But I want to enjoy the time I do have with my kids while they are still young so I am trying to readjust my attitude. I may have to scale back slightly on social media work and concentrate more on blogging which I can do in small chunks of time.  And I am working on a list of things we can do together. Plus a few projects I would like to get done around the house.

Summer Bucket List

• make an outdoor house, tent or some kind of playhouse
• draw with chalk all over our driveway
• visit every park in the city
• frame all those unframed pictures sitting around my house
• clean up my office
• take at least one weekend trip with the family
• become a better blogger
• rock BlogHer and TypeA
• participate in the library’s summer reading program
• take the girls to the St. Louis zoo and Kansas City zoo
• read picture books on a quilt with lemonade, outside of course
• play with all the games we own and sit in a drawer unused
• have more picnics
• do everything on Mama Dweeb’s Top Ten Summer Staycation Ideas
• in the eight weeks of summer at home, clean out the eight closets in the house

I know there’s got to be more.  What is on your summer bucket list?

Even though I love to write things down, since it’s the best way to clear my head, it’s just not working out for me anymore. I spend at least of my home free time online; it only makes sense to move move of my planning to an online space. Plus I can’t lose the notes I write online.

My husband, who hates the clutter my notes produce, is always sending me handy websites to help me out. On Monday he saw Food on the Table on Netted and sent me the link. Since it looked like a good way to get me out of my food rut and stop my random buys at the grocery store, I decided to to give it a whirl.

PROS:

• able to log in with Facebook
• easy to use interface
• recipes I hadn’t seen before
• grocery list shows measurements so I can check to see if I have enough before adding items
• can email grocery list from site so husband can do the shopping

CONS:

• only has one store in my area (HyVee where I don’t usually shop since Gerbes is up the street)
• does not give the option of searching for only natural or organic meats
• recipe choice layout does not show full names or pictures

I see this  as being a solution for weeks when I don’t know what I want to make, have an empty pantry, or am pressed for time.  But it’s deifnitely not the solution to my meal planning problem. Does anyone have a better site that they use?

I have declared April my spring cleaning month. A month to get things cleared out and my life in order. I need a clean slate before we start the dog days of summer. Though there will be plenty of the regular old hand and knees traditional scrubbing spring cleaning activities, I also wanted to take it to the place that I spend most of my time: online.

So I started today by tackling my inboxes. Over the weekend, I read my friend Tim Miles’ blog post on keeping his email in-box clean and got inspired to emulate him. I don’t know that I will ever be able to get down to zero every night but I know that there’s room to improve. Vastly.

The first step was to close down Twitter and Facebook, pour myself a cup of tea, and concentrate on the task at hand. Thanks to Tim’s advice, I had Instapaper and TeuxDeux open so I would have somewhere to transfer items to. It was on like Donkey Kong. I delved in and deleted at will, unsubscribed from almost every newsletter, and took care of all the niggling things that I had been avoiding.

The next step was to utilize the numerous Gmail hacks to make my in-box more efficient. Since I keep five separate email accounts, I decided to forward all of them, except my personal one, to one inbox. Then I spent some time creating labels and filters to speed up my email processing. If that doesn’t help, I may move up to multiple inboxes.

Now that I had my accounts streamlined, I set about streamlining Gmail itself. Gmail labs has several upgrades that make your inbox more efficient. My favorite? Auto Advance which “automatically shows the next conversation instead of your inbox after you delete, archive, or mute a conversation. You can select whether to advance to the next or previous conversation in the “General” Settings page.” How have I lived without this?

There are still kinks to be worked out but I think I am on the path to a clean(er) email box. Let me know if you have any tips to share!