Most of you may know, we love to gather people around a table! Chris Ann and I decided to plan a blogger’s networking event called BlogLove™. We’ve attended other networking events and met some wonderful people in the process. Truth be told, we just love to have an excuse to have a party! We love to design cards and plan a menu. We like to tablescape and give gifts! Years before we were bloggers we threw many a party together!
We wanted BlogLove Events to be special and unique. We decided that at every BlogLove, we would have a couple of people tell their story, give us a glimpse into their lives and tell us about their passions. We also wanted BlogLove gatherings to be experiential in nature.
For the first BlogLove, we decided to continue with a theme we hold dear to our hearts, coffee! Years ago, when my husband and I owned Jahva House coffee shop, there was a roaster named Thomas that worked for Key Coffee Roasters, the company we bought our beans from.
My husband, at different times in our lives, worked for Key Coffee and he and Thomas became friends. Thomas has since opened his own roastery, Zeke’s Coffee here in Baltimore. His coffee quickly grew in popularity and has spread all over the Baltimore area! Then just last winter, he and his wife Amy opened their own coffee shop, Zeke’s.
This first BlogLove was going to be extra special, because, little did our guests know, we were gathering them to do an espresso tasting to determine which blend we would use for a LoveFeast Brew. You see, on the back end here at LoveFeast, we are working on developing an online boutique that features items that reflect our journey. Our first line will reflect our coffee roots. But, more on that later!
So, we set a date and sent out an evite! But, being old school, we asked for snail mail addresses so we could send out a handmade invite as well.
We gathered some fabulous swag from generous business owners. The Vintage Pearl made these beauties for us! We almost cried when we opened the package! They were beautiful!
Urban Halo Comfort Couture, filled an envelope full of their very chic headbands. Not one was alike!
The Melting Pot in Washington, DC donated a $50 gift certificate to give as a door prize.
And one of Zeke’s vendors, HEALing Fields Whole Body Care ([email protected]), let us set up a table full of their soap samples! One of which is made with Zeke’s beans.
Chris Ann and I got our swag on and made these fork magnets to embellish the bags.
And Chris Ann painted these babies to put on the Table!
Because food is the center of all we do, we created a menu that would surprise our guests! The first hour of the event we would be tasting 5 different espressos. We decided to place cake stands on the tables with little nibbles of biscotti, cherries and almonds.
The second half of the night, after a tour of the roastery, our guests would come back only to find we had laid out a spread of crepes with fillings of strawberry rhubarb compote, wild mushrooms with sherry, apple and pear compote and spicy, gingered shrimp…all prepared by Devon.
The bottles of wine would be open and we would gather to network and share a bit about what we were doing with LoveFeast Table. We contacted Mary at Sweet Mary’s to see if she would bake up some of her delicious biscotti (she teaches biscotti making classes) to add to the Table. She quickly accepted and also said she’d make the crepes and throw in a few bar cookies as a finale! Our guests were in for quite a delicious evening!
We had gotten our swag on!!
