GEMomsperience Part 3--21C Museum Hotel

I'm finally getting around to writing my third and final post about my trip to Louisville, Kentucky for the GEMomsperience.  Thank you to my loyal photography readers who put up with these three off-topic posts!  If you're lost, my first post was about the GEMomsperience itself, my second post was about the great women and fabulous hats at Churchill Downs, and this is my third post--all about the fabulous 21C Museum Hotel!

Yes, this hotel was so awesome it deserves a post of it's own!  If you are anyone who's anyone (such as Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber) staying in Louisville, KY, you stay at the 21C Museum Hotel.

21C Museum Hotel, as it's name says, it a combo of a hotel and art museum in one.  It's got great, modern, eclectic artwork everywhere you look!

It also has the most comfortable hotel beds I've ever slept in!


Since 21C is a famous, upscale hotel, I thought it was going to be a bit snooty. I was WAY wrong in my assumption!  The staff was super friendly and super fun!  You've got to read Love Feast Table's post about me and Creative Kristi's red penguin prank gone WAY overboard!!  No, seriously--STOP--read the post!  I guarantee you'll laugh your butt off!

Yes, these 21C mascots create a lot of fun for the hotel...

...as does this interactive artwork that you just can't help but play with while you wait for the elevator. It's a poem that rains down on you! You can "catch" words on your limbs and can even make letters bounce up and down. Too much fun not to play with!

Even the public bathrooms have some interesting "art work".  The above left is the men's urinal.  It's a waterfall that you pee into.  While you pee into the waterfall though, you look into the hallway!  Don't worry, it's a one-way mirror so the people in the hall can't watch you pee, but still...kinda weird!  On the right are little screens in the mirrors (of both sex bathrooms).  Those screens have eyeballs that look at you--really creepy!

There you have it, one of the best, most comfortable, most fun hotels I've ever stayed at!  If you are ever in Louisville, KY, you have to check it out!

*Disclaimer* GE Appliances paid for my hotel stay as part of the GEMomsperience.  I was NOT asked to blog about 21C Museum Hotel by GE or by the hotel itself (in fact, 21C doesn't even have a clue I'm writing this post!).  All opinions are my own and are of my own will because I thought the hotel was so cool!

GEMomsperience Part 2--Fun Women, Fabulous Hats!

I had a blast with some amazing women at GE Appliances' GE Momsperience!  We met on Sunday evening over dirty martinis and derby hat making.


Yes, I said derby hat making!  Dee's Crafts (a professional Kentucky Derby hat maker) helped us make our own derby hats in preparation for our trip to Churchill Downs on Monday night.  Did you know a hat like mine can retail for well over $100?!


Crazy!!  (Above photo courtesy of Love Feast Table)

Anyway, like I said earlier, I met some amazing women!  Bloggers from all different niches were at the GE Momsperience, yet we all got along and found a ton of stuff in common!  Only in a group of bloggers can you talk face-to-face and be on Twitter/Facebook at the same time and no one thinks it's rude.  Only in a group of bloggers can you go around taking photos of all kind of weird things (including all the food you eat) and no one thinks you're crazy.  Only in a group of bloggers can you get so many pictures of yourself because everyone is willing to take photos for you!  Only in a group of bloggers can people ask you to take photos for them to be emailed later.  Only in a group of bloggers can you keep up with people who aren't in the same room with you via Twitter.


After a long, yet super fun day at the GE Monogram Experience Center, and some photo ops with the interactive artwork at the 21C Museum Hotel on Monday...

it was time to head to Churchill Downs (hats and all)!


I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see the actual track at Churchill Downs but it was fun anyway.


We ate some amazing food and sipped on Mint Juleps, interacted with some of GE Appliances various managers, and toured the museum.


What a great time to interact with some of the amazing women I met and bounce around ideas with the GE appliances managers!


(Calie from Broccoli Cupcake who's blog I won my trip from, and Kristen from High Heels and a Hammer with Chris Ann from Love Feast Table--my travel buddies.)
 


There you have it, fun women and fabulous hats!

To see the first post I wrote about the GE Momsperience, click HERE. To see a list of all the bloggers that went, click HERE or HERE (I'm too lazy to make my own list).

*Disclaimer* GE Appliances paid for all my expenses related to the GE Momsperience including the stuff to make my derby hat and the trip to Churchill Downs.  I was NOT asked to blog about it.  All opinions are my own and of my own will because I had so much fun! 

GEMomsperience Part 1

I didn't quite know what to expect when I found out I had won a trip to GE Appliances' first ever GE Momsperience from Calie at Broccoli Cupcake.  I kind of thought it was going to be one big sales pitch where we look at the newest GE Appliances, they tell us how great they are, and then GE asks us to blog about them.  Boy was I wrong!  The GE Momsperience went far beyond my expectations!  I had so much fun that I'm going to have to write three posts about the event!

First, and foremost,  GE Appliances brought us to their headquarters to learn from us.  The whole experience was personal, from our names on our lockers, to hand stenciled swag bags.



During our sessions learning about the appliances, we talked just as much, if not more, than they did!



Sure, they gave us small sales pitches about some awesome products (the Advantium oven *drool*) but they also valued our feedback.  I think they were a bit overwhelmed by how much info we gave them about online presence and advertising!



I think Shell from Things I Can't Say summed up my feelings about GE Appliances and the Momsperience pretty well. Please read her post!

Midway through the day of learning about GE Appliances at the GE Monogram Experience Center, we took a break to cook our lunch with top Chefs Joe Castro and Brian Logsdon!


(Did you know that Chef Joe Castro won over Chef Bobby Flay in the Food Network's show Throwdown?  That's HUGE!) I learned so much while cooking with the chefs and made an awesome meal at the same time! (Reminder to self: put it in the pan and LEAVE IT ALONE!)



While eating our fabulous, and most delicious lunch, the President and CEO of GE Appliances, James Campbell, along with the Mayor of Louisville, Greg Fischer, made a surprise visit!  I don't even think the people who put on our event knew they were coming!  I also don't think the CEO and Mayor were prepared for a bunch of women bloggers begging for photo opps!



Rumor has it that they enjoyed the "celebdom" though :)

After lunch, we enjoyed sharing our laundry secrets/confessions which we wrote out the night before over dirty martinis!



I have SO MUCH more to tell you about this AWESOME event from eclectic artwork and red penguins at the fabulous 21C Museum Hotel, to derby hats at Churchill Downs, to the awesome women I met!  Look for my next two posts coming up later this week!

Love Feast Table is doing a link-up of posts about the GE Momsperience event.  If you want to check out what other people have to say about it, check out their site!

*Disclaimer*  GE Appliances paid for ALL my expenses related to this event however I was NOT asked to write a post about it!  All opinions are strictly my own and of my own will because I truly thought the event was awesome!

Blogging/Facebook/Twitter Etiquette...Or Not...

Blame the cold, rainy weather, the bad day I'm having, or just that I'm now becoming more social media mature, but I have to rant for a bit about blogging, Facebook, and Twitter etiquette.  I know this is off-topic from my usual photography stuff, but this post has been weighing on me for a week or more and I finally need to get it off my chest.  Here goes my rant about my top three annoyances when it comes to blogging, Facebook, and Twitter (at the risk of losing some of my followers)...

1) I think this is my biggest pet peeve--follow for a follow.  I admit, I did it when I first started blogging but I completely regret it now!  I would rather have 10 real followers than 200 who only "follow" me so I will return the favor.  I want my followers to follow me because they enjoy my blog content and really want to read it.  So no, I will not follow you back because you asked me to.  I will only follow you if I am actually interested in reading your blog.  I will be cleaning up my blog reading list and will be weeding out the blogs I am no longer interested in.

2)  This one is to people who do giveaways on their blogs and is in direct relation to #1 above.  Those people who say "you must be a follower of me in order to enter this giveaway" turn me off.  Really???  You are that shallow about your followers?  You'd rather have a high number than followers who actually care about your blog?  Sure, I'll go ahead and follow you for the giveaway but you bet that as soon as I don't win (and even if I do win) I'm going to un-follow you!  If your giveaway is cool but something I can live without, I just might not enter at all because of that requirement.  Like I said above, I only follow people I actually follow.  I will never make it a requirement that you follow me in order to enter giveaways on my blog!

3)  I think that says it all.  Those people who tweet whole tweets of hashtags annoy me.  If you do it over and over and over again, I will un-follow you (especially if that's all you tweet).  Sorry.  I just can't handle it.  Same can be said for those Follow Friday tweets.  It's ok if you do one or two @s but if it's a whole, entire tweet of @s, and more than one in a row, it's super annoying and a complete turn off.  I'm glad you like to share the love, but I really don't care who you follow and I don't want to see your entire follow list in tweets.  Again, I follow who I want.

Phew!  I feel better now that I got those top three blogging, Facebook, and Twitter annoyances off my chest!  What are your thoughts on these?  Do you have other annoyances?

*Go ahead, you can un-follow me now.  I won't take any offense. 
  

Do-it-myself Makeover!

I am giving myself a life makeover.  It started in October when I joined a gym.  Though I have yet to lose any weight (I'll get back to that in a minute), I feel a whole lot better and have more energy.

Next, if you haven't noticed from my lack of interaction in social networking forums in the last two weeks and my lack of commenting on others' blogs over the last month, I'm now starting to tune out of the computer and into my family.  This is something I've been struggling with for a while now.  I need to learn to balance my online life with my real life and let the majority of the weight sway toward my real life.  It is super easy to get sucked into all the social networking out there!  No offense to my online friends, but I won't be paying as much attention to you as I used to.

Third comes myfitnesspal.com.  I now know why, even though I've been working out 2-3 times a week since October, I haven't noticed any real changes!  My Fitness Pal is a free online tool that helps you keep track of diet and exercise.  There's a ton of support and more that goes with it but I'm not going to get involved with it.  I simply want to track my diet.  Wow, do I eat bad!  With the help of this tool I will now be learning to change my eating habits into more healthy ones.
(I am not associated with My Fitness Pal in any way and am not being compensated for telling you about it.  I simply think My Fitness Pal is a super cool tool that I found is really helpful for myself)

Last, but not least, is my real makeover!  On Monday I took a leap and decided to start "fresh" with how I look.  I went to the hair dresser and chopped my hair.  I then came home and colored it myself.  Last, I bought some new make-up as a treat.  I'm so happy to have a change!  Unfortunately the hair color did not turn out as dramatic as I had hoped but I guess that's a good thing since it's been well over 8-10 years since I've dyed my hair.  My new hair is about a shade lighter and a shade redder than my real hair color.

Before: (it's the best current picture I could find)



After:



What do you think?

Mama M's Date of the Week!

I got chosen to be Mama M's Date of the Week over on her Personals page!  Head on over there and check out my interview!  While you're at it, check out her real blog My Little Life and "meet" one of the funniest nurse bloggers I know (and have met IRL!).

Don't know what Mama M's Personals is?  It's a great and fun way to find new and interesting blogs.  Get your blog listed there and increase your traffic too!