DIY Blogging Conferences are pretty darn sweet. You get to mingle with your fellow favorite bloggers, chat with some pretty awesome sponsors, attend classes that kick your behind into blogging boot camp, and of course, gossip with some like-minded ladies about all things DIY! I mean what more could a DIY lover ask for… ?! Frankly, not too much if you ask these rookies. But there’s more! On top of it all, DIY conferences also come with a “swag bag”. Yup… Swag. Bag.

A swag bag is equivalent to those AMAZING treat bags you used to get on the way out the door of your best friend’s 7th birthday party. Remember when you couldn’t wait to get to the car to rummage through all the new treasures that were stuffed into this bag of heaven?! Ring pops, pixie sticks, bubble gum…. all for me?! And those polka-dotted pencils?! You know those went straight into your backpack to add to Monday morning’s rotation. That’s pretty much the same giddy feeling these bloggers get when we’re handed our swag bags upon check-in. #nerdalert

Paintbrushes, painter’s tape, stain-removers, fabric, a level, stencils… all for ME?! To keep? Are you sure?! Yes. Yes. and YES! Swag bags are treat bags for the DIY lover, and heck, when we get ’em, we can’t wait to run to the hotel room & rummage through all of our new treats while blowing lots of air kisses to the amazing sponsors that made it all possible.

Thanks to all of the amazing sponsors, here’s this year’s Haven Swag Bags:
 … pretty darn awesome, right? Well, as we sifted through all of the treasures in the swag bags this year, we started chatting about how much we loved the brands and products that were in the bag. We then got to chatting about how much we loved the smaller sizes of a lot of the products because, as designed, a consumer could use the product and see if he or she really loved it before they committed to buying that item in stores. GENIUS! Awesome products, small sizes – hmmmmmm……

That’s when we thought, “wow, the contents of this swag bag totally mimic an amazing new homeowner’s survival kit”. How cool would it be to pay-it-forward and give these items away to a newbie homeowner? Someone who would totally appreciate items that they don’t have lying around his or her new home… just yet.

And just like that the idea to transform the Swag Bag into a New Homeowner’s Survival Guide was born.

• A new homeowner has some odds & ends they need to throw in the wash the first few days of moving in but hasn’t gotten around to buying laundry detergent…. we got ’em covered!
• A new homeowner ran out of duck tape from their move… got it!
• A new homeowner needs a catch-all zipper bag for all of those pizza receipts and important paperwork floating around the mess… we have a cute one for them!
• A new homeowner scuffed her wall with a box that was much too heavy for her… no big deal, we got a magic eraser.
• A new homeowner dropped that adorable vase and needs it to see the DIY ER doctor immediately… Gorilla Glue to the rescue!
• Bottom line is that if these new homeowner’s need it, our survival kit has it! #hopefully

To top it all off, we partnered with the ever so fabulous HireAHelper to create some Welcome Home Tags to add to your home kit. (You can download FREE tags here or check out how we styled these tags with a pop of bubbly here).
We hope our swag & all of these practical products, which we love, will make a newbie homeowner’s day a little less stressful and a lot more functional. And if you aren’t a fellow blogger looking to pay it forward with some fabulous swag, you can still re-create this project (without breaking the bank thanks to the mini products!).

Here are a few more scenes from our trip…

We are also sharing even more behind-the-scenes scoop over HERE #seeyouthere