Mornings are a stressful thing for me. Take a non-morning person and pair her with her non-morning person child who has to get to school on time and you can imagine the delightful, loving, bonding moments that occur in the early morning hours.

Add in some strong opinions on fashion and we are lucky we survive.

My secret is a little method I stumbled upon back when Lily was in preschool (moment of silence for how long ago that was). It gives me main control over their clothing choices but gives them the illusion of control as well and has reduced 90% of our battles in the morning over clothes. I mean, nothing is 100% right?

Every Sunday night, we put five outfits in each compartment of a sweater organizer. I include underwear, socks, belts, everything needed to get dressed in the morning. I occasionally solicit input from the kids about their outfits but most of the time I put in what I would like them to wear.

While I get to pick the outfits, my kids get to choose when they wear them. No morning fits allowed. On the weekends they can wear what they want. And I would never take away a girl’s need to accessorize.

Nowadays I just use this method with Hannah. Silas doesn’t seem to care yet what I put him in and Lily is old enough that I let her do her own thing. She is a budding fashionista and I don’t want to cramp her style. She is independent enough in the morning that the battles over clothing have pretty much stopped. The battles over combing hair not so much. Who has a method for that one?

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Disclosure: Compensation was provided by Sprint via Glam Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Sprint. This post will be linked up to Works For Me Wednesday at We Are That Family.

For the FOURTH year in a row I am heading off to Blissdom. And I am so ready for it. I swear every year everything goes wrong around here right before I leave for conferences. It is like I am supposed to feel NO guilt about running off and leave it all behind.

Ryan leaned over to last night and snuggled up and said, “I am going to miss you so much.” I looked him straight in the eye and said, “I am not going to miss you at all.” Ok so that isn’t completely true, but this mama needs a weekend away with “her people.”

And that is what Blissdom is for me. It is where I find my people. Part conference, part party and BIG part girl’s getaway- I will say it again. This mama needs her people!

So as I cross things of my long to do list I thought I would revisit a post from a few years back about how to stalk your favorite celebrity blogger. We are going to ignore the fact that the particular blogger I happened to stalk back at Blissdom ‘10 stopped blogging shortly after. I am 40% sure it is just a coincidence.

If you have been reading blogs for more than 5 minutes, you have bloggers you idolize. They are your must reads. The ones you tell your friends about. The ones where when you comment and they respond, you squeal, show your hubby the email and save it in a folder marked awesome so you can pull it out and look at it on days when your traffic is low. No? You don’t do that? Yeah……me neither…..

Blogging conferences are the perfect venue for “in real life” blog stalking. But you TOTALLY don’t want to seem like the nerdy band geek (no offense to any band geeks, I was in show choir) going up to the head cheerleader and making a fool of yourself. You have to play it cool and act like it is totally natural to be meeting the first blogger you ever read who gets like 2 million hits a day.

The nice thing about Blissdom being my third blogging conference is that I knew a lot of people going in. So I was a teensy tiny bit less nervous this year about hanging with the big dogs. A little less. I even knew some of them before they were celebrities.

Here is what you must remember. Celebrity bloggers put their pants on one leg at a time. In the case of Scribbit, my new bloggy BFF, she puts her very, very long legged pants on one leg at a time. Oh and when you see your bloggity idol, you should avoid saying things like, “Wow, your really tall.” Um, yeah.

Look for an in. A better in than “OMG, I totally have read your blog forever and I am so excited to meet you!!!!” as you run and tackle them. I prefer a tweet:

I like a bit of subtlety. Keeps them guessing. Good thing is, my subtlety worked. I totally got to hang with Scribbit. And she was delightful. And gracious. And humble. Which made me love her more. And I didn’t make a fool out of myself. Much. Hopefully.

What blogger are you DYING to meet in real life?

I am really excited to be a Community Leader this year for the Parenting Niche. So if you are at Blissdom make sure to look for me and join my table!! Will you be at Blissdom this year?

This post will be linked up to Works For Me Wednesday at We Are That Family.