Leaving Las Vegas

I'm linking up with The Elementary Entourage to tell you about my trip to fabulous Las Vegas. Unlike the movie in the title of this post, my experience was nothing but fantastic.

I was so excited to be able to room with my two great friends Farley at Oh, Boy and Daliene at NotJANE. If you don't know these two, go check them out (after you finish reading here.) You will love them. Rooming with these two made the conference just that much better!

We arrived in Vegas on Tuesday and checked into our hotel room (I tried the $20 trick and we got a room with a view!) after a lot of drama with my credit card. Turns out some miscreant ran up a few fraudulent charges while I was busy traveling. After spending about 30 minutes on the phone, we got it straightened out. Or so I thought. More mini-drama came later when we tried to check out. Fear not, though, all is well.

We grabbed some lunch and hit the slots. The Flintstones were good to me, so we celebrated by shopping for shoes!

I had a lunch meetup on Wednesday and then we hit the big blogger meetup that evening.

Oh Mylanta. There were tons of people! I saw some of the people I hoped to say hello to, but missed so many more. Next year I have to have a better strategy to connect with the people I admire so much.

We played in the Go Noodle photo booth....

...and went back to our room excited for the learning to begin.

Thursday, the conference started. It was wonderful to hear from TpT's founder Paul, Adam, the CEO, and Amy, Director of Seller Happiness. Hearing about the steps the company is taking for the future makes me proud to be a part of it.

Rachel Lynnette's fabulous keynote got to me. I love what she said so much, I had to make this.

I can't believe that the presenters were willing to share all their secrets with their competitors. That would not happen in any other industry.

I attended wonderful sessions during the two day conference. These are the three that had the biggest impact on me:

• Thanks so much to Science Penguin, Teaching With a Mountain View, and Blair Turner for making my blog to-do list grow much longer. Your Fix Your Brand session was exactly what I needed to hear.
• Chris from Kesler Science presented a fabulous session, sharing his business knowledge, and made my store to-do list crazy long! The resources he provided are amazing.
• Rachel Lynnette from Minds in Bloom made me think about my niche in the TpT world and got me motivated to get busy on the line of products I've been thinking about lately.

I came away with a renewed determination to work harder at blogging and building my business. I think I have something to share with teachers that can help them as they mold the minds of our country's children.

In order to keep this post from being even more krazy-long, I've left out some meetups, the show we saw (Rock of Ages!), other sessions, lunch with @farleyfarleyfarleysdad, playing in the photobooth with sweet Jen from Hello, Mrs. Sykes, and much much more.

It was so much fun to have this special shirt with my blog button on it to wear. A+ Images provided free shirts for teacher bloggers who attended the conference. Isn't it great? They have fabulous custom shirts at reasonable prices. If you are in the market for shirts for your class, head to their website and check them out!

If you are interested in seeing more about the conference, check out #tptvegas15 on Instagram.