Hello dear friends! I must say that being in NYC is nothing less than energizing as my head is spinning with ideas and I feel very excited about the road ahead of me since I've been able to build out some ideas since coming here last week. I'm in New York until Sunday night, tomorrow I begin working with Debi Treloar, but for the first half of my trip I was with Leslie Shewring working on our class called the Blogging Your Way Road Trip.

For those of you familiar with Blogging Your Way, it is a class I founded three years ago online as a virtual workshop that takes place a few times each year and it is where I teach, along with my friend and biz partner Leslie, about taking a creative approach to blogging, photography, styling and many other topics that relate to all of that. Our goal is that once you learn the technical aspects of blogging in those dummies guides, you'll come to us to learn the creative and fun stuff. Of course, we teach some nuts and bolts too about copyright law, how to deal with copycats and template ideas but over all our approach is that if blogging is looked upon as less of an exercise of writing and more as a creative pursuit, your time online will count more and you'll reach more people. I believe strongly in using your blog as a catalyst to live your best life, meaning let the blog motivate you to do things that you love so you can then turn around and share them with your readers. Your blog should be a motivator, not a chore.

When I thought about teaching this class offline I wondered often how it would translate but after this weekend I can tell that it translated quite well! I felt very honored to be among so many talented and creative woman on both Saturday and Sunday, some flew in as far as London for our workshop and others from Seattle, Kentucky, Ohio, Boston, D.C., it was quite amazing really. Leslie, who taught the class too, was amazing in her execution of her materials previously taught online through our class. Taking all of that material offline to teach hands-on was exciting for me to see her do so effortlessly and very well. She rocked it and if you were at the class I am sure you will agree with me. Saturday was more of an intense learning session and Sunday was more about interacting and moving around the room - working hands on.

Overall, I felt the class gave students something very special in a small learning environment that just isn't offered that often out there - most classes as huge or part of conferences and while those are great - many of our students commented that they preferred working in and learning with smaller more "niche" groups and this is exactly what Leslie and I were shooting for  - to provide our students with a very special learning environment where they could work closely with us and one another.

I've been teaching and lecturing for 15 years and same with Leslie, but this was a very special weekend and we enjoyed taking BYW offline and hope our students did too. We really bonded with loads of our students and want to thank Melissa de la Fuente, Michelle Verdugo and Julie Cove for helping us stay organized - these ladies were so critical to our success - and also to thank the very dear, dear Alex at Divine Studio for the gorgeous light studio where we taught. I also must thank Paul Lowe from Sweet Paul for being an inspirational drop-in guest on Sunday - his message was, "Just keep blogging, you never know where it can take you". With his online magazine about to become a print version sold exclusively at Anthropologie stores, he is a stellar example of someone talented who was able to find their voice and audience through blogging. I must also thank my publisher, Chronicle Books (Peter and Lorraine!!!) for supplying our students with lovely notebooks from Jill Bliss, Rifle Paper and for sending out the French General books for our students on Sunday.

THANK YOU STUDENTS for coming out to meet us and spend time learning together - we hope so much that you enjoyed it and will forever remember this road trip - it was wonderful!!!!!

xo, Holly

(images: those watermarked: mirror mirror and in out blogger audrey smit, all others by holly becker)