#LLBlogEvent

So a few weeks ago I went to a blog event hosted by JJ Miller of LoveLondon.co.uk in aid of Trinity Hospice which I would have posted on sooner but I was waiting for the official images from Ever Photography.   I also had to prioritise my collaboration with Emilie's Silver and the 20% discount code on my blog, but now we are rockin' and rollin' so I can tell you all about the evening held at Le Peep Boutique.

I went along with Emma of 100daysNoTV and Lauren from LoloLovett.  I researched the host, train times and where to go when we got there however oddly not the venue.  I don't know why but in my naivety I thought it was going to be a cute girly shop.   I expected pink stuff, shoes, some feathers maybe so when I saw a ridonkulous metal door with no sign and one of those slide back eye thingys you get at clandestine places I was a tad nervous.  Are we all to be sold into the write slave labour forced to create content for pantyliners or worse UKIP propaganda!  Luckily not, however the venue was a tad risque, case in point? the peep hole from the ladies to the gents - I kid you not! I wondered and then decided its best not to spend too much time thinking about what may have occurred on the leather seats in the bar.

Mirror on our side

And up close - view to boys loo!

But I digress...After our obligatory cup cake and free Lychee Collins we settled down to listen to those wiser than ourselves. You may think that hearing from people better at writing than I am, funnier than I am and making a living doing what I am would be depressing.  However ever confident in my ability to improve I was encouraged and inspired by the evening and this wasn't just because I'd had a couple glasses of wine beforehand.  First off was London Beauty Queen.

LBQ is so obviously a beauty blogger as she had that snow feckin' white perfect skin thing going on.  She suggested ways to grow our blog and with over 33,000 twitter followers she should know.  She also said that being sarcastic and blunt were her go to styles so hoorah, we're in good company.

She bangs!

Next up was Bangs And a Bun who suggested we should be posting approximately 5 times a week (gulp!).  BAAB had that cool "I'm so not British" vibe (she's Canadian) a dog called Stringer Bell - it doesn't get any cooler than that - and killer nails.  True she also runs marathons but we all have our vices eh? She spoke about building a brand and adding pictures of yourself to your blog.  How not to feel like a mahoosive twat bag when doing this is a workshop I'd love to attend!.   We've had a couple of tweet chats since the event and I firmly believe her kick Monday in the goolies blog post should be taped to everyone's head each Sunday night.

Rebecca Brown from Bloggers Lounge followed and I was genuinely surprised to see her looking much more youthful and less stern than portrayed in her Twitter image.  She spoke of mailing lists and engagement - something I so agree with her on, you may have 21,000 followers but if 20k of them don't interact with you they don't really count now do they?  She also made me think more about my images and suggested editing them across different social media channels.  All the speakers talked about being yourself,  however 'myself' has been called a harsh critic in the past... and that was from my own sister.  I realise now that comment made me tone my sarcastic self down a bit.  Unfortunately when I tone down my inner critic I also stop writing anything even vaguely interesting, I just don't have pleasant kind girl things bashing around inside my head and am terrible at faking it.  Those that have made a living from writing blogs say not to do this anyway so its no more Mr Nice Ally!

Daylight (or is it nightime robbery!)

OK grandma here has a couple of gripes.  Firstly I know we're in London but £4 for a tiny bottle of Schweppes lemonade is 'beyond the pale' (as I never say)! In part this is down to the 'discretionary service charge' but seriously? If I made minimum 50p every time I got someone a drink I''d be a darn sight more chipper than the bar staff seemed. Secondly whilst I met some lovely ladies there, trying to hear what they were saying was impossible due to the noise.  There's only so many times you can say pardon in a club before you give in and simply go "yeah".  Obviously then you start praying the person you were speaking with hadn't just asked you a question you'd regret answering possitively to like "so are you heavily into S and M then"? This really sucked as from what I did hear I met some lovely girls that night like Carly CCxx and PoppyAnd Bees.

Finally I heard that some girls didn't get a goody bag, which is odd as when we left there were tons still there.  The contents were like the good, the bad and the weird - Make up brushes? Good, cucumber water?  Bad... Sandwich box? A wooden spoon! eh? don't you give that to loser types?

I had expected a few brands to be there for us to chat to about collaborations, however all in all it was a good event and I've got some great connections from it.  I'm off to see if I can find any of your blogs on the #LLBlogEvent - if you wrote one do leave the link below.  Failing that I'll probably check out what BangsAndABun is harping on about this week.