Food Bloggers of Canada Conference

Over a month ago now, I attended the Food Bloggers of Canada Conference, which took place in Ottawa this year, at the Delta Hotel. I signed up nearly a year ago when tickets were first released. I had been wanting to go for a few years, but with travel and accommodations, it would have been quite expensive. When I saw it was in Ottawa, I jumped at the chance.

I had been travelling out East to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland for work all week. I got home late Friday afternoon, dropped my luggage at home and headed straight to the conference. I got there just in time to admire the view from the penthouse level (Caesar in hand no less!)

What ensued was a fun-filled weekend, with delicious food, great sessions, and inspiring people. It was truly an experience to have so much beautiful, well presented food and be surrounded by like-minded people who are all snapping photos and posting on instagram/snapchat/facebook/twitter..

It took me a few weeks after the conference to go through all the business cards of the people I met and check out everyone's blogs, but I now have so many new blogs to follow. I'll share some of my favourites in a separate post.

Here are a few highlights of the weekend:

1. The swag bag- by far best swag bag, EVER

2. Elizabeth Baird as Keynote Speaker

3. Great Speakers and Sessions

On branding by Sam Turnbull of Fuss Free Vegan

On community building by Deb of Sugared Tea Cup

On Overhead video production 

4. These amazing cakes from Holland Cake and Shake

5. My anniversary surprise.. fine this one wasn't part of the conference, but it was definitely a highlight of my weekend so I couldn't leave it out. Saturday was a year and half anniversary with Stefan (fine I guess that makes it more a month-aversary, but a significant one non-the-less). I had warned Stefan that I would be gone from 8 am till 10pm (sorry babe) but he was so sweet and made me a scavenger hunt with balloons and photos and messages..so sweet and thoughtful!

All in all a great weekend. Many thanks to all the generous sponsors and to Ethan and Mellisa from Food Bloggers of Canada for organizing everything.

I have since made great recipes from the cookbooks I got in the swag bag and will be sharing them soon. Stay tuned as we head into holiday madness.