After partying it up with some ladies Friday night, I awoke Saturday morning with not nearly enough sleep, but excited about the day that lay ahead. First up, I headed down to the lobby and picked up a delicious croissant and then headed to Trisha's room to meet everyone for the morning.
We all got on a bus sponsored by Community Coffee and headed out on a roughly hour ride to the Houmas House Plantation for a tour of the grounds and beautiful mansion there. The tour was provided free of charge by the Houmas House and Global Resort Homes sponsored our lunch at the Plantation. Firefly Vodka provided the most delicious sweet ice tea vodka refreshments after our meal. The whole afternoon was coordinated by the amazing and adorable Shannon Lane from Traveling Mamas, who even shared some of her travel blogging secrets with us throughout the day.

There were not words to describe how utterly great the Houmas House is! The tour was delightful and was led by a true southern belle who was hilarious and extremely knowledgeable. The house is breathtaking both inside and out and you are free to touch and feel the furnishings and objects inside, which is a rarity in tours of homes like this. From a Monet painting to a French Regulator Bussage clock, the furnishings just like the grounds of the home are immaculate. It was truly a great time and our salad and cheesecake for lunch in the cafe were divine as well. I would highly recommend that you put the Houmas House on your list of things to do if visiting Louisiana and there are even tours available from downtown New Orleans to make it easier to get there.

After our ride back to the Prince Conti Hotel, we all had some free time, which I spent shopping down by the waterfront and found the most amazing black and white sundress for under $20! Dinner that night was at Dickie Brennens Steakhouse and was sponsored by the OpenSky Project and Collective Bias. I was seated at a table with some rather remarkable ladies, Rhea from Mommy23Monkeys.com, Jessica from ThatTechChic.com, Kim from AccidentalMommies.com and Elizabeth from PartyPlanningProfessor. I also had the great pleasure of meeting John Andrews from Collective Bias who was seated at our table. We had some very lively conversations and the whole night was fantastic.

The food from Dickie Brennens was astounding and I had the best fish that I have ever eaten in my entire life there. It was perfectly cooked, served over mashed potatoes and had a mouthwatering sauce unlike any other I have tasted. The cheesecake was awesome and how jealous are all of you that I got to eat cheesecake twice in one day? LOL.

Once dinner was finished, we staggered back to the hotel and enjoyed a hilarious presentation of some Passion Party items from Lynsey Jones. Lynsey had the whole room cracking up and even gave us a very interesting buzzing parting gift! After we recovered from our fits of laughter, we all headed out into the downpour of rain and ran down Bourbon St.to the Cat's Meow for some drinks and dancing.

On Sunday morning, I headed to Cafe Du Monde, the original French Market Coffee Stand and had some Beignets and my signature Diet Coke (my veins are permanently filled with this stuff.) The service here was a bit shoddy, but the beignets were delicious, so all is forgiven! I snapped a few more shots, including one on Pirate Alley and another in front of the famously haunted Muriels and then headed to get my van and head home.





Overall, I had the time of my life and I am forever grateful to Trisha from MomDot and Leah from Mamvation for putting this amazing event together. I also want to thank all of our awesome sponsors who made the entire trip cost effective and simply remarkable.

Are you all interested to know what was in the two giant swag bags I brought back from Bloggers on Bourbon? You know you are! I will put up a separate swag/sponsor post in just a few minutes. Yes, there really was that much great stuff!