LiveMom.com – Dedicated to building a better village

“Dedicated to building a better village.” One of the ways we try to live up to this mantra at LiveMom is by hosting the annual Austin Bloggin’ Mama Social.

If you attended the event last year, you knew how much fun it would be. Put almost forty moms who blog in an amazing downtown venue, add a hilarious and interesting speaker, an extensive silent auction to benefit a great cause, door prizes, goodie bags, and don’t forget — yummy food, cupcakes and wine — and you have yourself quite a fun night out!

This year, we were lucky to hold the Social at gallery D, a boutique in the Second Street District which has only been open for a year but which has already become a favorite for many Austinites. Special thanks go out to our sponsors: Food on the Table, Palacios ATA Martial Arts and endlessbeauty.com.

Our speaker was Jennifer Newcombe Marine, a local writer who co-authored the bestseller, No One’s the Bitch: The Ten-Step Plan for the Mother and Stepmother Relationship. She shared with us the journey of her ex-husband remarrying and how she and her daughters’ new stepmom wrote the book and created a new and more honest relationship. Jennifer began a blog when the book proposal went out and has maintained it during the book’s appearance on the bestseller list and when Jennifer and Carol (her husband’s wife) appeared together in 2009 on The Dr. Phil show.

Local businesses generously donated items for both the goodie bags and the silent auction, which raised almost $1,000 for Little Helping Hands. Little Helping Hands is an Austin-based charity which is dedicated to providing quality volunteering experiences for young children. As of March of this year, the organization had provided 176 families and 299 children the opportunity to participate in 96 volunteer activities to benefit the Austin community. Thanks to our readers and donating businesses for providing Little Helping Hands with needed funds to reach even more children, families and charities in the coming year.

Did we mention yummy food? Those of us who didn’t have enough during the event itself walked over to Cantina Laredo after the Social was over to try more of their food and enjoy some adult beverages.

For those of you that missed it, there’s always next year! Look for our next Social next February or March. Until then, we hope to see you around!

Posted by nxpana on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 11:57 pm | 6 Comments » You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.