Wrapping things up at BlogHer ’11…

Miss part 1 of this series on BlogHer ’11? Read it here.

Yesterday was another fun day at BlogHer. After more educational sessions throughout the day, another visit to the expo hall was in order. There were a few more things that I wanted to share with you guys that were either interesting, fun, or both…

Gatorade’s booth invited you to get a cooler of Gatorade dumped over your head. (Digitally, of course.)

Twizzlers had American landmarks made out of, well, Twizzlers throughout the expo hall… and as a longtime Twizzlers addict, I thoroughly appreciated the offer of free Twizzlers from the Twizzlers crew when visiting each landmark.

As you walk by, friendly Twizzlers staff call out “Want some free Twizzlers?” I replied, “Does anyone ever say NO?”

Incredibly, one of the Twizzlers staffers replied that they’d dealt with negative comments throughout the show for handing out something “unhealthy.” O-kay. (Hey, don’t take them if you don’t want them…)

Here are some more booths that I thought were interesting at the expo. The Tropicana booth was extremely popular throughout the week, offering manicures, pedicures, and free Trop50 lemonade.

3M’s booth offered lots of freebies, including Post-It Notes and dispensers, Scotch Naturals tape, and the new Scotch-Brite Naturals sponges. I found it interesting that they said using a sponge to clean with has a life equivalent equal to thirty paper towels.

The Kudos booth handed out Kudos bars every day. It too was extremely popular and often had a crowd around it. I’ll let you guess why.

Lowe’s had a great booth that was a house that you could tour, upstairs and downstairs. Up in the kids’ room, they were showing off new paints that were either dry-erasable that you could write on, or paint infused with magnetic particles:

This grey paint is magnetic, and you were invited to move the wall art around however you want. It was like playing with a giant set of refrigerator magnets! I attempted to leave the wall in an “improved” state from which I found it.

Then it was over to Hillshire Farm’s great cafe of delicious free foods… here’s my chicken sausage, gouda and walnut salad, which was fantastic!

I was really trying NOT to pick up too much more stuff (I was up to four shopping bags’ worth of “stuff” already, which is going to be shipped home in a box from the expo hall’s shipping station, because it’s just too much to take on the plane.) But after this walk through the expo hall, I had somehow “acquired” some full-size bottles of Organix haircare products from CVS, several Boiron natural cough syrups and medicines, Dole fruit cups and fruit bites, a Pine-Sol lunch bag and coupons, a live tropical plant from Lowe’s, and some more free Dole coupons (plus a plastic lei and Hawaiian flower.) There was also a message in my room that I had a bottle of wine waiting at the front desk. I was wondering who would have sent me wine (I don’t drink) so I went to check it out.

This wine is called “Mommy Juice.” In talking to the other bloggers picking up identical bottles at the hotel, we surmised that the wine had been provided by BlogHer. Not wanting it to go to waste, I took the bottle over to P&G’s swag-swapping room, where you could drop off anything you -didn’t- want to take home:

The wine was promptly picked up by another swapper.

I headed over to Samsung’s cool booth, which was a combination soft drink bar, charging station for your electronics, and a place where you could try out their new pad and tablet computers. I saw that Rachel from Mashup Mom was engaging in some smart self-promotion by leaving her site on the screen of this tablet! I decided to look for her.

After meeting up with Rachel again, we walked around and noticed that the swag leaving the expo hall was getting larger. It was nearing the end of the day, and many of the booths were getting ready to close and dismantle everything. Many of them were giving all of their “props” away, and we saw people carrying large 6-roll packs of Brawny, full-size bottles of Tide, and other things that would have been difficult to get on the plane.

So, we decided to go rob the CVS booth. (They were our sponsor! Surely they would find it humorous if we just started surreptitiously “stealing” things from the booth at the end of the day, right?)

Fortunately, the CVS booth staff, who are all great, fun people, also found this hilarious and offered to photograph our exploits. With their blessing, we “stole” some CVS paper products and goodies.

At night, the BlogHer parties were in full swing again. I was so surprised to see “The Hangover” star Zach Galafinakis had arrived, sans pants, at this party. (At least he had underwear on!)

I leave later this evening to return home to Chicago, but today I’m going sightseeing & to the beach. I’ll leave you with this fun photo of GoCarTours:

These little go-carts are zipping around the city, ON the streets. You can rent them, wear a helmet (!) and go sightseeing around San Diego. They are GPS equipped, and they “talk” to the driver to tell them where to go. As this one passed me, I overheard it saying “Turn right ahead, as we approach the San Diego Padres ballpark…” (Can you believe these are street legal? So tiny!)

Hope you enjoyed my final BlogHer report!

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CVS/pharmacy is partially sponsoring my trip to BlogHer 2011, though all opinions expressed on JillCataldo.com regarding the event, CVS/pharmacy and products sold in their stores are my own.