Looking to explore? Drop by this small, charming city in the middle of the Sunshine State when…read moreyou're driving through the interstates or national highways of Central Florida. Wildwood has something in store for everyone who visits...dozens of shops, festivals, cafes, restaurants, entertainment, antique collections and galleries. If it's outdoor adventure you seek...this pocket city in Sumter County is home to two wildlife management areas...where visitors can fish, hunt, camp, hike, bike, enjoy some of the finest birding in the area or just relax in a rural, natural oasis. With its beautiful landscape, outdoor activities and friendly people... it's no wonder so many people choose to call Wildwood home. The small town atmosphere gives you an opportunity to get to know your neighbors and have a sense of community...the real Florida.

5 Stars for a highly-anticipated craft market that delivers year after year!…read more This is my third time going to the annual Grandma Party Bazaar and as usual I was not disappointed! The Grandma Party Bazaar (GPB) is essentially a local artisan market. It is held at the Stardust Cafe parking lot (where the Audubon Park farmers' market is held on Mondays) and is comprised of tents under which are fabulous decorations, jewelry, vintage clothes, and other oddities. They also have a stage where local bands perform throughout the day. Not only was the bazaar a great place for me to finish some local holiday shopping but it was also a gathering place for Orlandoans on a lovely December day! I ran into tons of Yelpers and local personalities. I can't give this bazaar anything lower than 5 stars. I always feel inspired when I leave and I keep going back year after year!

5 stars to the 2015 Grandma Party Bazaar! Stardust is hopping with amazing local vendors for final…read moreholiday gifts (or something for you!). We stopped into Stardust and got iced coffees before beginning our walk around the vendors. They also had a special food menu for the Grandma Party (with a vegan option, woohoo!). They have really great vendors this year with lots of jewelry, ceramics, plants, clothing, paper goods, and specialty items. One of my favorite stops was Lure where they had a pile of misprints for $10. Lots of really neat concert and movie posters for local shows with very, very minimal scratches and dents (we couldn't even tell). My other favorite was the Crystal Lake Lawn Club with neat plants and succulents for sale. I came home with a big pencil plant and named him Aziz. Awesome music, dog-friendly, and great weather today made this a great morning stroll and shop!

Love the park but the sprinklers came on just about noon time…read moreWish they would reset it too turn on when no one is there My mom is in her 70s and got soaked for our mile walk home

5 Stars for one of Orlando's most beloved Main Streets (National award-winning, in fact) that marks…read morethe convergence of Downtown Orlando, Winter Park, and Baldwin Park. Audubon Park is the perfect buffer between Mills 50 (rough around the edges and legit) and Baldwin Park (highly-planned and bougie). It's your granola-making, Birkenstock-clad aunt. You know, the one with the long tunics and butterfly garden, who also keeps beer and kombucha batches brewing at all times. What differentiates this Main Street to the point that it won a National Main Street Award a few years back as America's best Main Street? I'd say it's all about the people and businesses. It's certainly not about the looks. But what this Main Street lacks in curbside appeal (looking at you, Virginia Drive), it makes up for in best-of level businesses. I'm talking best beer bar in the country (or at least known among the best-- Redlight Redlight), best local farmers market (big ups, Monday night Audubon Park Market), best sushi in Central Florida (Kadence, not to be missed), best homemade ice cream (Kelly's), best record shop in town (Park Ave CDs), best indoor market (East End Market), best quintessentially hipster coffee shop in that the baristas will shoot you dirty looks while serving you chai and a salad (Stardust Cafe), etc. I could seriously go on and on about the incredible spots in this little 'hood. Suffice to say, it ain't much to look at, but you're going to want to spend a Saturday hopping from biz to biz for the most epic day date ever.

Let me start out by saying that I literally had zero plans for Halloween this year. I only decided…read moreto go to this party because of a complimentary VIP ticket and I threw my entire ensemble together in 2 hours! Even though everything leading up to this party was so last minute, I have to say that this was one of the best halloween parties I have ever been to. The free food was great, the band was great, and the people watching was even better. I saw some really crazy and unique costumes! The one negative thing I have is the lack of bathrooms. I ended up waiting in a huge line inside one of the bars for about 30 minutes. It kind of brings the mood down a bit, but it's not the end of the world. This really, truly is a great party and I most likely will be back.

Great night for a block party!! Beautiful weather, beautiful costume! Great set up with food and…read moredrinks! Yelp did a great job for promoting VIP area The whole block party was a great success! Very packed and a lot awesome costume

5 stars because Orlando Soup is a great way help different community projects in Orlando. For a…read moredonation of $10 you receive bread, salad and a bowl of soup. How it works, you listen to 4 different presentations about things happening in and around the Orlando area and how hey will use the funds for their projects if the win the final vote. That evening we had the pleasure of listening to 4 great projects: - Game changer: helping kids break out of their shells through gaming and educational curriculum - the dinner party project:bringing people from Orlando from different backgrounds around the dinner table for great conversations - source codeb46 foundation: building children self confidence through software coding and story telling - explore theater and dance company: allowing community members to participate in the creative production process. The presentations were not very long giving us the audience a chance to ask questions on what they will do with the donation. It was very moving to see how every presenter was passionate about their project. After listening to the presentation we cast a vote on the project we think can benefit from the donation. Basically, a percentage of your $10.00 will go to the project that gets the most votes. This was an overall very inspiring evening and would urge people of Orlando to attend Orlando Soup so they can find out what is going on in our community.

This is what community is about and why I adore Orlando so much…read more Ask yourself: What project could you do with $500-800 to make your community better? That is what these presenters answer while you sit back and decide where your donation for the evening should go! How cool? That's right. For a donation of $10, attendees receive soup, salad and bread and then choose where most of their donation goes! So this is not a profit maker for Orlando SOUP, the profits go to feeding everyone during the event and then to the ideas! Even the planning team for the event is donating their time. How cool? What a beautiful concept. I am so happy I got to attend an Orlando SOUP night last evening. It was the 3rd installment of the fabulous series that is based off the successful Detroit SOUP: a micro-granting dinner celebrating and supporting creative community improvement projects for the city. Before dinner is served, attendees will listen to four short community project proposals covering a range of topics such as art, urban agriculture, social justice, social entrepreneurship, education, technology, and more. What is a city improvement project? We last night it consisted of: - Buy Local Orlando: Food Edition - guide that promotes local farmers, local markets, etc. I like the idea of having a highly concentrated guide but in reality, I use Yelp for this - but love the idea and that people want to push local love. - Portable urban food forest (P.U.F.F.) - to assist with the fast traffic along Corrine Dr. in Audubon Park, it's proven that visual distractions automatically make people drive slower. The idea was to fill the back of a trailer bed with a green sanctuary, compost bin, bird feeder, etc. Then, park it in a spot that would be visually appealing and a smart spot to help with a blind spot when exiting one of the shopping centers. ACE Day (achieve a college education day) - To help assist with getting 500 5th graders a chance to tour UCF as their field trip for an interactive day of fun with students, faculty, and campus life. Currently, the higher education trips are non-existent and they go to the local prison during their "field trip" to see where they shouldn't end up. So sad. Ride around the town: Fixit Orlando - With the new bike share program, this group would like to add a self-repair bike station at lake eola. It was so cool to see how everyone presented as they only had 4 minutes and were not allowed to use technology. Some had passionate stories, some had amazing creative visuals. Really inspiring overall. During dinner, attendees cast a vote for their favorite project and, at the end of the night, the project that receives the most votes is funded by a % from each attendees' donation. Winners will appear at future SOUP dinners to report their project's progress. I did appreciate hearing updates from the two previous Orlando SOUP winners. So happy to see so much positive, local, movements happening. Props to everyone who organizes this, presents their ideas, and attends. Such a fabulous cause! Props.

Orlando's first Central Florida Blogger conference was a huge success. Bess from Central Florida…read moreTop 5 put together a fabulous, local conference that held over 100 attendees. Yes, local as in every speaker was local and an astounding representation of social media and bloggers within Central Florida. The event began at 9 am and ran until 4:30 with a happy hour over at Eden Bar. For lunch we had Big Wheel Provisions outside and it was perfectly delicious. It was a great networking and educational event to attend for myself as a blogger and social networker for personal and professional reasons. I learned some great tips, made some great connections and heard from fabulous speakers. There were two tracks: "less advanced" and "more advanced" so you could pick and choose which speakers/topics you wanted to sit in on. I can not wait until next year, this is definitely going to stick around and grow each year so make sure you stay up to date!

Such a great time to learn the ins and outs of social media. Great place to network and just plan…read morefun. My only suggestion would be for lunch. Maybe offer quick box lunches or bring a few options in to make getting lunch go quicker. This year I missed a session to wait on lunch. :\ It was a very long, slow moving line. I will still be back next year! Maybe I'll pack my lunch. :)

5 stars for only THE BEST neighborhood in Orlando! I've lived in the Mills 50 District/Colonialtown…read moreNorth for almost 10 years and I never want to leave (that is if the increasing already sky-high rent prices don't push me out, haha). Not joking though. I can't get enough of this diverse, inclusive family-friendly community that I hope to one day raise my own kids in. I've watched so much growth happen here over the last decade and it's been beautiful to be a part of. So many new restaurants, bars, and businesses have popped up and I'm happy to see them thriving. Mills 50 is also one of the more walkable neighborhood streets in Orlando, and I'm so fortunate that I can easily hop over to some of my favorite local gems like The Strand, Black Rooster Taqueria, Hawkers, Qreate Coffee, Pig Floyd's, House on Lang, The Sunroom, Sampaguita Ice Cream... this list goes on and on! I was also thrilled to learn that Mills 50 was also featured on Yelp's list of the most LGBTQ-friendly neighborhoods in the U.S. this year. It's truly a magical place to live where everyone is welcome and I'm lucky to call it home!

Mills 50 is it neighborhood that is set around the corner of Mills Avenue and East Colonial drive,…read morecommonly known as 50. It is a hip, trendy neighborhood located on the edge of the downtown Orlando, Florida area. There is plenty to do in this area with there being a lot of bars, restaurants, parks and stuff like that. The restaurants are a good mix of cuisines and they also have a lot of little specialty shops where you can go do some shopping. I would definitely recommend coming to visit here or if you are looking to move in, understand that there are a lot of positives to move over here.

Thanks Rachel M for telling me about this unique work of art in downtown Orlando! I think all…read morecrosswalks should be opportunities for artists! This brightly colored Florida crosswalk is awesome! Life is good with public art!

Thanks to Skip from A Pivotal Character Artworks Design for Painting this crosswalk…read more I read this is part of a traffic safety initiative for people to slow down and pay attention to the road. I surely paid attention to this cross walk, & joyfully saw it during a Puerto Rican Street Parade. It's very close to Stemma Coffee Shop. You can follow his artwork on Ig at @seeskipfranchise and @apivotalcharacter I also read there are many crosswalks and art by him on Orange Ave.