An official thank you to my unofficial #BlogHer13 sponsors

If you’ve ever gone to a conference on your own dime, you know that it gets stinkin’ expensive. Between flights, a few nights at a hotel, food and taxis, you could be talking thousands of dollars for what amounts to a long weekend.

After attending my first blog conference last year, I knew that I needed to go to the equivalent of Mecca for bloggers: BlogHer. More than 5,000 bloggers. Two solid days of learning from the best of the best. And a few parties thrown in for good measure, of course.

Because I respect the BlogHer community and organizers, I will be abiding by copyright requests and not thanking unofficial sponsors on Twitter using the #BlogHer13 hashtag. I get it. Dozens of sponsors have paid good money and invested serious time negotiating official conference sponsorships and they deserve to be rewarded during BlogHer ’13 with enthusiastic tweets from any of the bloggers with whom they may interact.

For this reason, every time I tweet using the hashtag “#saidevent,” you’ll know I’m talking about the BlogHer conference.

And I’m only able to attend #saidevent because of generous sponsors. I know this isn’t the reason you read my blog, but because of them, I hope to become a better blogger and, hopefully, that keeps you coming back for years to come.

Maple Leaf Foods

When I won a $1,000 blog conference sponsorship last year from Maple Leaf Foods (@MLFconnects), I chose to use part of it toward a ticket for this year’s BlissDom Canada conference, and the balance to help offset my flight and hotel costs in Chicago, where #saidevent is happening this year. I’m ultra-grateful to MLF for this exceedingly generous contribution. Now, show MLF some love and go buy a few Tenderflake pie crusts to make my favourite Quiche:

• Pre-cook Tenderflake pie crust according to directions on box
• Beat 6-8 eggs and pour into pie crust
• Dice spiral ham slices and spread evenly among egg mixture
• Add sautéed leeks and fennel to mixture
• Top with really old, really sharp white cheddar
• Cook at 350-375 degrees for about half an hour or until the egg stops jiggling
• TIP: Make six and freeze a bunch of them!

Sometimes there are companies with whom your life will intersect over and over again. TELUS is one such company for me. As I mentioned in my recent BlackBerry Q10 review, I was a TELUS customer for the first time in 1998 and remained one any time I lived in Canada – at least until I had an employer-issued device. I even had Big B switch his mobile service to TELUS from a different provider when I started managing our household bills. The TELUS customer service is top-notch. And then there are the people who work for TELUS who are the loveliest – huge shout-out here to Jill Yetman.

Without help from TELUS, I would be racking up insane roaming charges with every tweet about all the awesome things I’m learning and doing at #saidevent, and every phone call home to check on my kids. I’m so appreciative to have an amazing communications sponsor like these guys.

Fleet Limousine & Livery

Although I’m a mom who will happily get down on the grass and roll around with my kids (risking all manner of allergic reactions to basically everything that grows in nature), I’m really quite a princess. In fact, when I taught English in Korea many years ago, my colleagues nicknamed my getting-ready-to-go-out routine “The Princess Dance.”

Fortunately, thanks to Fleet Limousine & Livery car service, I’ll be riding to Pearson Airport in style. Totally up to princess par. It’s pretty much the only thing that’s going to make me happy at 4:45 a.m. when I have to leave to make my flight to get to #saidevent. I just hope my driver will let me stop for coffee.

DISCLAIMER: It probably goes without repeating, but to be clear, none of these companies are official BlogHer sponsors.