I am very excited to announce that I will be attending the International Food Blogger Conference in Seattle in September! I’ve been wanting to go to a conference for a while now but have not been close enough to one to attend. There are a couple of Canadian ones but they all take place in the Toronto area, which is quite the distance for someone on the west coast to travel. Plus it’s so expensive to fly within Canada. It’s really quite ridiculous. We can sometimes find cheaper flights to Europe and it’s always cheaper to fly to the States. But I digress.

I have been doing a lot of research on conferences and they help a blogger out in so many ways, including:

• Learning new blogging skills such as writing, photography, editing, food research and and culinary skills.
• Inspiration and tips from experienced bloggers.
• Meeting with food brands and the possibility of hosting giveaways in the future.
• Meeting fellow food bloggers, making new friends and develop partnership/relationships with fellow food bloggers.
• A renewed passion for my hobby.
• A chance to taste some fabulous food and be even more inspired.

I am incredibly excited to be going to my first ever blogger conference and hope to be able to attend more in the future! There is one catch though. IFBC has a reduced rate for bloggers who are willing to write 3-4 posts about the conference. This is totally fine by me as I was going to do that regardless. The catch is that I still have to get off this island that I live on, and I still have to stay at a hotel. All that adds up to roughly $800, which is very pricey for someone with a small blog that is really just a hobby (although I wouldn’t mind if it was more than that someday).

So I have thought a lot about this and I have decided to ask for donations. This actually makes me kind of uncomfortable but I feel like it’s important. I’m only going to do this once, but there will be a Sponsor tab at the top of my website if you would like to help out later. What do you get out of sponsoring me? In short, you get to see your favourite food blog become even better. If I can’t find ways to lower my costs, I may have to back out at the last minute and I really don’t want to have to do that. To donate, just click here and click on the donate button. You can use Paypal or any major credit card. It’s that easy! And guys, you don’t need to donate much (or at all if you don’t want to. Seriously though, it’s fine if you can’t.). Even $5 would help.

For more information on the conference, you can visit the IFBC website here. It’s hosted by Foodista.