Dessert Party + Blogger Meetup + TNT Update

Guess who I met up with at my dessert party?


Why it's Diana from The Chic Life!

This past Saturday Matt and I headed down to Charlotte for my TNT dessert party that my mom was hosting.

We had tons of desserts that were donated to us by various bakeries, and my mom and I also made up her famous blueberry pound cake. I had gathered tons of giveaway items from local companies and I was hopeful that the event would be well attended and get me closer to my $3,500 fundraising goal.

I won't say that the entire party was a failure, but it definitely wasn't what I had hoped for. Not many people came. The good part? I raised $225! Better than nothing, right? Another good part? I got to meet Diana and her hubby!

After Kelsey posted about my event last week, Diana contacted me about it since she lives in Charlotte. I love meeting other bloggers because we always have stuff to talk about! Although The Chic Life is more of a food blog and she's not a runner, it was cool to chat about whole foods + healthy living with her. It was also nice that our boys could chat over some beers + cake + sports :) I hope we can all meet up again sometime when we're in Charlotte or they come to Charleston. (Thanks for supporting my cause guys!)

Diana was kind enough to let me steal her pictures, because if the above pic is any example, my point and click Nikon had nothing on her DSLR. You can read her recap of the night here!


All for a cause!!


The spread! Her pictures make it look much more chic than it was :) I guess that's her specialty though, right? I need to take some tips on that...

We had a beautiful flower arrangement donated by Willow. If you live in the Charlotte area and need flowers, this place is amazing. It's run by Tricia whose tag line is "organically inspired designs." We picked this up at her studio, which is run out of her gorgeous house in the Baxter Village area of Ft. Mill right off of I-77. Thanks Tricia for the fab arrangement!


We had two cheesecakes, this one is a chocolate cinnamon flavor. It was so-so.

This was strange indeed, some sort of frozen strawberry treat. It was actually pretty good. We dubbed this one the "ham and cheese" dessert. I've never seen or tasted anything quite like it.

YUM. My mom's blueberry pound cake. We had a little mishap making this. My mom was mixing everything up and we got flustered and distracted by some visitors and she forgot to add the sugar!


We had it all ready to go and were about to add the blueberries when we were like, hmmm this doesn't look right. We had to throw it out and start again. I guess there really is a method to the madness of adding ingredients in the stages that recipes call them to be added. But the second time was a charm as this was definitely the star of the evening.


And it's safe to say that this lemon topped carrot cake came in second. Delish!


The second cheesecake was a Bailey's flavored Irish Creme cake. Yuck!! I love Bailey's but this was nasty.

These were little chocolate marshmellow pies. Looked weird, but tasted great! Reminded me of chocolate Moon Pie's or Mallowmars but 100 times better. (I hate Moon Pies too.)

All in all this was a fun and relaxing evening, and although I didn't raise over $500 like I was hoping to, it was nice to see my family and of course to meet The Chic Life + Chic hubby!

..and I might have a giveaway of sorts in the cards as well. Some of the items I gathered for door prizes I still have, so stay tuned!

Team in Training Update
My running fundraising total for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is $2,612. Which means I only have $888 left to raise to meet my goal! If you can donate anything I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks to the following bloggers/online buddies for donating to my cause even though we've never met in person!

• Ross K (my first donor and largest donor to date)
• Anthony L (third highest donor!)
• JennieBinSC
• Nicole B (Running Bebe)
  
• JoyRuN
• MaytonH
• Jennifer B
• Meredith (Balance for Mere)
  
• Eugene M
  
• NY Wolve (**Updated to add...inadvertently missed this donor! Hard to keep the real names and the blog names together when looking at my donation sheet :)
  

I missed the group run this weekend unfortunately, and didn't have a chance to make up the 14 miles on my own. We are moving this Friday so this week is pretty slam packed but I did a nice 6 mile run last night and plan on doing a few two a days this week to get ready for the madness that is going to be WWR NEXT WEEKEND!