blog better boston Archives - 2 Sisters 2 Cities

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on October 24, 2012

Swag Bag Giveaway

As I mentioned in my last post, I am doing a giveaway of some of the contents in my swag bag that I got at the Blog Better Boston Food Summit. I felt guilty keeping it all to myself so I wanted to share the love with our 2S2C readers! This swag bag giveaway includes the following items:

Chef’n Veggichop hand-powered vegetable chopper
Collection of 6 Mara-Mi Oscar Wilde Bottle tags
4oz. jar of Stonewall Kitchen Holiday Jam
4oz. jar of Stonewall Kitchen Maine Maple Champagne Mustard (this item was not actually part of the swag bag, but I purchased it at the Stonewall Kitchen store…I love to use it in recipes as an alternative to dijon mustard.)
8oz. bottle Wyman’s Wild Blueberry 100% Juice, complete with laminated recipe card with recipes for 14 blueberry drinks (laminated card not shown in above picture)

These items have a combined retail value of approximately $50. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Rules: U.S. residents only. No entries will be accepted after October 31, 2012. Entries that do not follow the entry requirements will not be considered. One winner will be chosen at random and announced on November 1, 2012. The chosen winners will then have 30 days to respond by e-mail to claim their prize. While these products were given to 2sisters2cities.com for free, this giveaway is not associated with Chef’n, Mara-Mi, Stonewall Kitchen, or Wyman’s. Void where prohibited. See additional rules and terms in the Rafflecopter widget.

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Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on October 22, 2012

My husband, baby T, and I traveled up to Maine this weekend to visit some family and friends and so that I could attend the Blog Better Boston Food Summit at Stonewall Kitchen. Stonewall Kitchen’s headquarters in York, ME include a food production plant, their corporate offices, a cooking school, and a huge store with SK products. I’ve always driven by their headquarters on many other trips to Maine and have always wanted to check it out. When I found out that the lovely ladies behind Blog Better Boston were organizing a food summit at Stonewall Kitchen, I knew I had to attend!

We started off with a delicious breakfast provided by Au Bon Pain. Next, we toured the Stonewall Kitchen facilities. It was very cool to check out the production line.

Stonewall Kitchen Production Facility

I also loved the office spaces and conference rooms- what a beautiful space to work in!

Stonewall Kitchen Offices

We had four sessions throughout the day: Restaurant Reviews, Food Photography, Recipe Development, and Photo Editing. They were all great sessions and I learned so much information. I was really inspired by the Food Photography session hosted by Stonewall Kitchen’s product photographer, Michael Cabelin. He provided so many great photography tips that I am hoping to implement soon! I was blown away by their props collection- check out all the plates and bowls! They also had an entire tool cabinet of different size spoons and forks. How funny would it be if I took out all my husband’s tools out of his tool chest and put in blogging props instead?

Stonewall Kitchen Props

For our lunch break, we got to attend Stonewall Kitchen’s Cooking School. Culinary instructor Patty Roche walked us through the delicious lunch menu. We started off with a butternut squash soup with ginger. The entrée consisted of prosciutto-wrapped chicken with ricotta and sage topped with a lemon roasted garlic beurre blanc and side of roasted pumpkin & vegetable medley with creamy polenta. We topped off the meal with a pear and fig cobbler dessert. (Check out the 2S2C facebook page for photos of all 3 dishes!) It was a wonderful fall meal and the class itself was very entertaining. It was like being on the set of a cooking show! Patty also shared many great cooking tips throughout the class.

Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School

Before we left, we were treated with a pretty awesome swag bag. Some of my favorite items included the Stonewall Kitchen Holiday Jam, coasters from Chilewich, and the Lake Champlain organic cherry peruvian dark chocolate bar. My favorite item overall has to be the Kitchen Aid 3-Speed Immersion Blender from Wayfair…I can’t wait to try it out on some recipes later this week. Be sure to check in to 2S2C later this week- I am planning a giveaway with some of the swag I received! (And speaking of giveaways, have you entered our Kitchen Aid Mixer Giveaway yet?!?)

blog better boston food summit swag

This was actually the third conference of the year that I have attended (see here and here for recaps from the first two.) I really enjoyed this conference since it solely focused on food blogging. I definitely hope to attend more food blogging conferences in the future!

So tell me, do you have a particular favorite Stonewall Kitchen product? Share in the comments…

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Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on May 4, 2012

Baby T and I were upstairs in his playroom this afternoon and we noticed a blue and white van heading down our driveway. It was official- the 3-month supply of Pretzel Crisps I won at the Blog Better Boston conference had arrived! I am now the proud owner of 36 bags of Pretzel Crisps and all seven of their Deli Style flavors- Original (Baby T’s go to flavor), Everything, Garlic Parmesan (which I can’t stop eating), Chipotle Cheddar, Jalapeño Jack, Buffalo Wing, and Sesame. I also won a featured post at the Pretzel Crisps blog so I need to come up with a Pretzel Crisp-related recipe. Can’t wait to start taste-testing various recipes and all seven flavors!

So, who wants to invite me to their party this weekend? I’ll bring the Pretzel Crisps!

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on March 25, 2012

I wanted to follow-up from my earlier post this morning with more details of the Blog Better Boston Conference that was held yesterday. It was held at Boston’s Google headquarters, which was very exciting to check out! The day was broken out into five panels/workshops with breaks in between to get an opportunity to meet with other bloggers and brands.

Here are my key takeaways I took away from each session I attended:

Monetize Your Blog

-This panel seemed more geared for fashion bloggers (and wow, there were a lot of fashion bloggers there yesterday.) However, I did take some notes on a number of things. One of the things Lea from Found with Love said was to set 3-4 goals every few months. The goals you set should be ones you feel you can achieve so that you are actually able to carry them out.
-A few websites that were highlighted during the panel were:

ProBlogger– This website provides tips to help you make money blogging. I am actually in process of reading Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger book right now.
Crazy Egg Web Analytics– shows you a heatmap of your blog to show you were your readers are clicking
RescueTime– A time management tool that tracks your time. May be a good place to see what aspect of your blog is eating away at your time and could be outsourced to someone else.
Blog with Integrity– Covers ethical issues faced by bloggers.

Food Photography

-This panel was hosted by food photographer Kristin Teig. She provided a great handout with tons of helpful tips:

She provided several tips for shooting meals at night (which happens a lot to food bloggers because by the time you finish preparing the food you are about to shoot, it’s dark out!) Consider investing in a Westcott Spiderlites or a Britek light with a fluorescent day light balance bulb. A detailed tutorial for shooting in articial light can be found at Wrightfood.
For natural light, you need to diffuse or reflect the light depending on lighting conditions. You can diffuse light with vellum paper on your window or a wooden frame. Sometimes you can even use a window shade. To reflect light, Kristin showed how she had scored a piece of foam board in half…that’s a great photography trick for very little money!
For photo props, check out the Todd Farm Flea Market in Rowley, MA and the SOWA vintage market.
Kristen recommended checking out Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots by Nicole S. Young for a more detailed tutorial on food photography.

Google Analytics

-This workshop was hosted by Ramesh Kumar from The Papa Post. He posted his whole presentation to his blog and I definitely recommend stopping over and checking it out!

Ramesh’s 5 takeaways were: creativity over keywords, content format matters, metadata (Did you know there is a Google recipe search? If you have a food blog, you should think about installing a recipe SEO plugin), stickiness, and more content leads to more SEO.
Don’t just look at your top 10 keywords in Google Analytics…this rarely changes. Instead, pick 2 date ranges and sort them by absolute change to see what keywords are rising and falling.
Check out blekko to compare your SEO to another site

Traffic & Community

-Lots of great tips at this session:

Engage in an off-line community and interact with other bloggers.
Don’t be afraid to self-promote.
Don’t react to negative comments.
Find the one thing you are passionate about and read everything you can about that specific topic.
Connect with other blogs- leave thoughtful comments, tweet, and be personal and authentic.

Photo Editing

–Kristyn Ulanday led this workshop. She had lots of great editing tips

For composition, always remember the human eye likes three’s (ex: 3 people, 3 depths, rule of thirds, etc.)
To create collages or combine two pictures into one file, use Picasa.
Gimp is another great free photo editing tool.

I loved swapping business cards and finally getting a chance to meet some other bloggers in person. Here are just a few of the bloggers I got a chance to meet:

-Sara from Forever and a Recipe– I have followed Sara’s blog for a while so it was great to meet her in person!
-Kristen from the imperfect home
-Lindsay from Lindsay’s Look
-Emily from What Emily Cooks
-Jen from Losing the Shadow Behind Me
-Emily from so anthro
-Erin from OneTwoSummer

There was also a DIY table to decorate the swag bags. I had so much fun decorating mine with the DecoArt SoSoft fabric paint. Up until this point in my life, I have really only attended Finance & Accounting-related conferences. I touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate the point that this is not something that typically done at those types of conferences (although maybe they should!) I’ll post more later this week on what was actually in those swag bags, as well as more on the rest of the conference sponsors!

Did you attend the conference? What were some of your key takeaways?

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on March 25, 2012

Just wanted to post a quick blurb about what an amazing time I had yesterday at the Blog Better Boston conference yesterday. It was so great to meet so many bloggers in person and to get so many fantastic blogging tips. I also enjoyed all the sponsors and swag bag- you definitely don’t get things like that at Finance conferences! My head is still spinning from all the great information and I hope to write a much longer post summarizing it later today.

It was the longest I had ever been away from Baby T, but it sounds like he had a great day with his DaDa. It was very cute to come home and see him get as excited about my return as he normally does for my husband’s arrival home. There is nothing like coming home to a big hug and kiss from the little guy!