Oh yawn.... I'm late today and moving slowly. Are you? Of course we watched the whole thing last night. Power outage and all. (My twitter feed was hilarious during that, let me tell you!) And now no more football for six months. I'm sure some of you are thrilled. Some of us (this household) are counting the days until spring training for baseball (eight). Oh, and thumbs down on most of the commercials...I left unimpressed, but you know what? I love Beyonce. You go girl.

Other than that ... we had a really lovely weekend. After two weeks ago, with the high stress of reeling over Vi's diagnosis and then last week with my trip, it was nice just to be home and be normal. Really, really nice. Kicked things off on Friday with some of my favorite gals. Low-key, night it, too many snacks, not many drinks, just catching up in the best way. It's so nice to know that you have a group of women nearby that you can lean on when you need and go months (too long) without seeing each other and still be right there. We all need people like that, don't we?

Neel and I had fun running errands together on Saturday, and our little dogs inspected every move he made, which cracked me up! Look how intent (#11) they are at what he's doing! My mom had pointed out over Christmas that the vanity in the guest bath might need a wee bit more storage space, so we added a shelf over the toilet. That room is done now, except for some art. I'll blog about it so you can see the finished project ASAP.

I finally opened the lens I had waiting for me for the past few days. It's an upgrade of El Cheapo, which has been hunting for focus lately. That Adorama box had been sitting on my kitchen counter since Thursday, but I waited. I'm really good at that, actually. I can't walk past a bag of chips, but I can delay gratification on the big stuff. Go figure. Good news! The lens is great. I played with it a bit this weekend and plan on digging in more this week. I'll admit, it's not quite as thrilling as a totally brand new lens, two of which are on my radar, but hmmmm...this is a pretty darned nice improvement so far!

We unexpectedly had one of Callum's friends for dinner Saturday night, so I unexpectedly made cookies from a mix that my friend Jackie gave me. I need to track down the recipe for the homemade mix earlier because they're delish! With Cal's friend visiting, we had just enough people to play "Spoons" by the fire. We could have used more kids, but we managed. I was blissed out. It really was my perfect evening. Kids willing to hang with us. No TV, just cards and laughter and a fire and music in the background. Who could ask for more?

We rarely go to brunch, which is a shame because I love brunch, but yesterday we tried a new local place called Chow. It was awesome. Neel's crab pot pie won the day. And I'd go back anyday too. My Bloody Mary was awesome. And it's a good thing Neel took a nap on Saturday AND Sunday because the Super Bowl was long, wasn't it? But a fun game, even with that freaky power outage. We spent the evening at a school chum of Callum's. It was great and we had a lovely time. We came home early and were in the car for most of the excitement, but that meant for extra puppy snuggles before bedtime. Our Violet continues to truck along. She was a bit wobbly on Friday and Saturday which had me worried. Obviously, at some point the steroids will stop working, but not yet, please not yet. By Sunday, she was full of pep and even followed us almost all the way upstairs to the second floor before we rescued her. It wore her out, but she's smiling and wagging at us still, which is good.

I have all sorts of stuff planned this week. Reading all the amazing links you've sent me, working on posts and the blog itself. Carving out a massive to-do list and some nice meetings thrown in. I still want to stick my butt in a bubble bath, though. What do you guys have going on?

So, I did it. I'll have a lot more to say about the actual conference tomorrow. It was a really clarifying experience for me, and I learned a lot. As you know, and my wonderful friends, really understood, it was hard for me to leave the warm cocoon of my home this time, but it was really good to go. Violet is doing great! She didn't miss me at all! She's practically prancing about the place and is even wagging her tail a little bit again. I hated leaving the snow behind too, but Neel and Cal had such a good time together...it's good for those guys to hang, just the two of them.

My flight was delayed into Birmingham, and halfway there a miserable headache kicked in. Nothing like cabin pressure, social anxiety, and a 20+ degree temperature change to wreak havoc with my sinuses. I felt simply awful by the time I got to the hotel, and I knew I couldn't manage the pre-party. I grabbed a bowl of edemame at the hotel bar and called it an early night. Should I have gone to the preparty? Maybe. But not going? I was totally down with that. The conference itself started with an amazing breakfast that focused on the international influences on Southern cooking (honeyed couscous, scrambled eggs, scones with whipped butter, meats and cheeses). Morning sessions ranged from "How to Write a Really Great Blog Post" with the witty and charming Adam Roberts of the The Amateur Gourmet to "Gathering the Stories Behind the Food: An Introduction to Collecting and Sharing" which was presented by the Southern Foodways Alliance (Now that's an orginaztion I'd like to learn more about!) and a panel of food bloggers including Lindsay Landis of Love and Olive Oil sharing basics of blogging. Lunch was an amazing soul-food Southern BBQ and included a fascinating talk about "Global Eats in the South," which I again quite enjoyed. An afternoon panel on niche blogging featured Caitlin Van Horne of Roost, but I went instead to a branding workshop presented in part by the ever-delightful Virginia Willis. "Blogging About Restaurants," a talk by a former restaurant critic rounded out the afternoon. That was fun!

By far, the whole reason I was really there, was Helene and Tami's Food Styling and Photography demo. Of course the room was packed and of course they knocked it out of the park! These two women are used to working together and they clearly have a lot of fun. I stood in the back and it was hard to see, but I still learned a lot. I always do when Helene is around, and I always end up leaving inspired. More on that tomorrow. Promise.

The Keynote was a great talk by Kenji Alt-Lopez, who writes The Food Lab for Serious Eats. He was awesome as he dissected the science behind blogging. Have you ever seen this post? It actually made it onto In-N-Out's Wikipedia's page, and Kenji talked us through the whole post from conception through publication. Pretty cool stuff.

The after party was held at a great brewery in Birmingham (see #16) and afterwards, I tagged along with Helene and some other new friends for a late-night dinner. Definitely the high point for me, along with making some lovely new friends and meeting the super-charming Taylor Mathis (I would LOVE to hightail it to Charlotte to follow him around on a photoshoot or eleven, and I'm definitely buying his book when it comes out!) and it was totally worth staying up past my bedtime. Coming home was easy and happy and totally lovely to find my happy boy, Neel's special Beer-Butt Chicken and three (!) wagging tails waiting for me. It was a good trip, and I'd do it again with much less trepidation (and hopefully less worry) next time! But it left me with a lot to think about too, and I guess that's a good thing. I'll say a bit more about that tomorrow, if you'll indulge me. (wink) I hope you all had great weekends, my dears. I have a ton to catch up on (grocery store, blog, emails!), and I missed you all. Time to hunker down, but that's okay.

Weekend-Gram Recap, February 4 Edition

Weekend-Gram Recap, FoodBlogSouth Edition