Blend Retreat 2012–Friday

Friday morning started off kind of hairy for me. I received a text message that my 8:47am flight was right on time. “8:47????" The confirmation e-mail said 10:10am! I hopped out of bed, didn’t shower, didn’t get to throw any ‘last minute unnecessary packing items’ in my suitcase, and pulled Joe out of bed to drive me to the airport. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy.

I printed out the confirmation e-mail to show United airlines, because my flight home was different than I had suspected, too. I was on the 1:50pm flight according to the e-mail, but after logging onto Orbitz, it showed 12:33pm, which was not happening considering that checkout was at 11:00am. Anyway, the woman who greeted me as soon as I walked in saw that I already had tears in my eyes and offered to help. She ended up changing my flight on the way back for free ($150 charge normally) which was a blessing in disguise because I didn’t want to have to rush out of there to make the 1:50 (12:33) flight. Are you confused yet? Good.

Anyway, the flight was shorter than documented, which is always a good thing. When I arrived at the airport, I met up with Heather and Ashley and we grabbed a Super Shuttle to the Chautauqua lodge in Boulder, CO. We arrived at Mission’s House, which is where our check-in was and where we were staying. We were greeted by a huge sign welcoming us to Blend Retreat, which was sponsored by Chobani (check out their blog post about Blend)!

The house had a huge common room.

We dropped our stuff off in our bedroom and proceeded to chat in the living room with everyone else who was arriving.

I started to go through my swag bag – I couldn’t help it! Look at all of the amazing stuff we got!

We received swag from:

• Ftimixer
• Bob’s Red Mill
• Cascadian Farms
• Attune Foods
• Lara Bar
• Love Grown
• NuNaturals
• Core Power
• Mix 1
• Pop Chips
• Beanitos
• Nuts about Granola
• Pure Bliss
• & more…. (+ a cool Blend Retreat t-shirt using American Apparel tees!)

Throughout the weekend we picked up samples from Xagave, CheriBundi, Simply Bar and other leftover swag that was laying around the lodge!

Eventually, we got ready to head down to the cocktail hour and dinner.

I started off with a class of Chardonnay.

During cocktail hour, a fruit tray and and crudité were served.

After mingling for a bit, it was time to sit down to dinner. Janetha, Lindsay, & Katie, the organizers of Blend, talked to us a bit before it was time to eat.

We started off with a salad and the main course was chicken with quinoa, broccoli, and caramelized onions.

I enjoyed meeting and speaking with Candice and Jeff from Fitmixer!

The best part, however, was dessert!

We had mini cupcakes from a local Boulder bakery. I tried coffee cinnamon, peanut butter pretzel, and lavendar raspberry (which was surprisingly my favorite). They even offered vegan and gluten free options.

After dinner, we all chatted a bit before heading back to the lodge.

Jessica, Katie, Susan, and I

Everyone was tired from a long day of traveling so we went to bed to get some rest before 7am boot camp. Stay tuned for Saturday and Sunday recaps!

Tagged as: Attune foods, beanitos, blend retreat 2012, Bob's Red Mill, cascadian farms, chautauqua lodge boulder colorado, core power, fitmixer, lara bar, love grown foods, Mix 1 protein shake, nunaturals, nuts about granola, pop chips, pure bliss