The Pioneer Woman’s Air

I am a huge Pioneer Woman fan! She’s been on my tiny blogroll since the first day of my blog.

I’ve yet to make one of her recipes that we don’t love.

I bought her cookbook and read the entire thing over the Thanksgiving holiday.

I tell everyone to check out her site. (because she depends on PR from me for her little tiny blog venture that hardly anyone knows about.)

Okay, so maybe she doesn’t really need my help.

Seriously, her *little* blog has become what I refer to now as her blog EMPIRE. She has a Midas touch and a seemingly endless stream of brilliant ideas, gorgeous pictures, delicious recipes plus she homeschools 4 kids.

Imagine my excitement when I saw that she was coming to Atlanta on her book tour.

I marked my calendar and realized this weekend that she would be here on Monday and as if she was going to be my personal houseguest, I thought I should bring her a little taste of Georgia.

PhilBillPaul and I braved THE mall on Sunday so I could get a few goodies at River Street Sweets. I always love to give guests a little snack food because when you are traveling it seems like your regular meal time gets a little off schedule.

What better than a praline, a bear claw and some glazed pee-cans?

So at 5:00 pm I double-checked the Borders in Buckhead website that listed her appearance…

Ree Drummond
The Pioneer Woman Cooks is a homespun collection of lush photography, lively rural stories, and scrumptious recipes.

Discussion and Signing December 07, 2009 7:30 PM

I have been following her visits in other cities. I read her last blog post about visiting Dallas and visited all the bloggers who wrote about their amazing time getting to meet her after they were assigned their colored wrist band and place in line. I also discovered that she was there until 2:30 am and signed the cookbook of every person who came.

WOW

That is amazing and authentic and gracious.

This is also when I decided I needed a new plan.

I have an aversion to crowds. And while I am a huge fan, I think there is a fine line between huge fan and hardcore groupie. I could not imagine sitting on the floor at Borders for 4+ hours so I could say hi and get her autograph and a picture.

New plan at 5:30 p.m.

Write a little note to include with River Street Sweets about how much I admire her and thank her for being such an inspiration.

Apologize in the note for not having the fortitude to stay for the personal autograph session.

Have my chauffeur drive me Borders.

Hear her talk.

Um, never mind. Website not updated. Discussion canceled. 🙁

Take pictures of the crowd.

Really low quality pictures because I am not a photographer.

Take a picture of her autographing someone else’s cookbook.

Take bonus picture of husband getting in on photo op. Do not fix red eye in any pictures because this is not a photography blog.

Do not even attempt to get a wrist band.

You know I’m not good at math but if just 20 people were in each group…um, my calculator tells me that would be 1,020 people.

Find someone helping her to give my gift bag to her later.

I bet if I sneak around to the back of their table I can give them the goodies.

Have dinner in one of our special favorite, fine restaurants.

Oh yes, we dined IN.

Come home and blog about how I breathed Pioneer Woman’s air. 🙂

Go to bed.

A few bonus things I did not expect:

Bonus #1 ~ Meeting a fellow mother of fraternal twins who braved the crowds with her adorable 10 month old babies, Emaline & Benjamin.

Did you know that people actually ask if boy/girl twins are identical? It’s a timeless joke among mothers of twins and really scary if you think about it.

Bonus #2 ~ Talking to Pioneer Woman’s sister Betsy and her friend Hyacinth and having them pose for a quick picture.

They were adorable and so friendly and excited when I told them there were snacks in the bag, they said they hadn’t had dinner and were starving and would guard the bag. I told them to go ahead and bust out the glazed pee-cans – she would never know they were missing!

I would have gladly brought them all Zesto chili dogs but I think that might have created a riot at Borders.

Bonus #3 ~ Betsy so kindly gave me an awesome and exclusive Pioneer Woman t-shirt.

Thank you Emaline for modeling the t-shirt.

All in all, it was a super fun night and I am as impressed as ever with all that Pioneer Woman has accomplished as a mom blogger sharing her life with the internet universe!!

Put her cookbook on your Christmas list if you haven’t already bought one! Did anyone else go out and meet her during her book tour?