The Pioneer Woman Book Signing

Last night Becky and I went to go see, Ree Drummond, AKA The Pioneer Woman! Her blog is full of goodies! I particularly like her recipes. Girlfriend loves herself some butter! But you definitely couldn't tell by looking at her. She's a cute and stylish little thang!

Back to the book signing...

She's quite the rockstar in the blogosphere. (She gets about 30,000 comments on her giveaway posts!) Her signing was advertised to start at 7:30. Becky and I knew that it would be packed so we got there at 6:00. To our surprise, they had changed the whole format and the thing started at 6:00?!

Come again???

We were no longer early and ended up being right on time. Come to find out, it actually worked out better. We were given wristbands to wear. There were different colors and letters. Orange was the first group and each color group was divided into letters A through I. We were green (the second color group) and letter B. Not too shabby...or so we thought.

We probably waited about 3 1/2 hours to finally get up to see her. But we had fun in the mean time.

Besides Ree, one thing I was excited about was the possibility of meeting Bakerella! If you've not checked her blog out, she is uber creative in all things baking. So much so that Martha Stewart took notice and had her on her show! I was excited because Bakerella had tweeted earlier that day she was having dinner with Ree so I thought there was a good chance that she'd be at the book signing.

She was!


And I went right up to her and told her how much I loved her and I followed her on Twitter and her blog. (I'm pretty sure I sounded like a babling idiot!)

She's so cute and stylish! I just want to hang out with her and make cake pops all day :)

To pass the time, I had brought my laptop. Yeah, that was fun to lug around. With thousands (yep, there had to be about a thousand people there) the internet was not quite lightning speed so that didn't last long. Bummer. So between tweeting, taking pics of ourselves and shopping there was some great people watching.



And, how crazy is this, we ran into a lady, Lynn, who we hung out with at our last book signing! Small world.

They finally called our color and letter and we got so excited! We got to get in the official line where you had to stand single file and it zig-zagged like a real line. Up until then we were just all jumbled all over the store waiting for the glorious sound of our color and letter. We also got a post-it note where we had to write our name so Ree could easily sign our books. All night, we tried to think of something clever and cute to say that would stand out other than the typical "I love your blog!".


As we got to the front of the line, we really became starstruck! There she is...right in front of us!

Our turn! She was so nice and very personable. I asked her if she was going to be at
Blissdom. She wasn't sure, sounded like she was still working things out. How great would that be?

After Ree, we got to also meet her sister, Betsy and friend, Hyacinth.

They were so cute and just full of personality. Hyacinth commented on my earrings and took a picture of them! Here's hoping I'll end up on the blog!

All in all, it was a really fun night!

Look who's joined the party!

This is what my Nativity set looked like last week.


This is what it looks like now.

Friday at work, a student handed me a bag and said it was from Santa. I didn't really think anything of it because we're collecting gifts for our Adopt-A-Family project. I peeked into the bag and quickly realized it wasn't for our family...it was for me! I chased down the student and asked her who it was from and she wouldn't tell me.

Oh, you wanna know what was inside?


The three wisemen for my nativity set! A co-worker had overheard me talking at lunch one day about how I was collecting the Willow Tree Nativity set. Are you believing that?! These things aren't cheap. I mean, it's not like picking up a candy bar in the check out line or something.

So thank you "Santa"! You have no idea how much that means to me. I truly appreciate you :)

A Fancy Yancy Christmas!

Looking for some really great Christmas music? Maybe something along the lines of a mixture of traditional Christmas carols and contemporary favorites, but all performed in a very fun and modern way? Then this is the CD for you!

Yancy takes the old stand-bys and puts a rockin' twist on them. It's a great way to ring in the Christmas season. You'll definitely want this when all the radio stations are playing the old, traditional songs and you're wanting to spice things up a bit.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Yancy's voice! I love how simplistic and pure it is. She doesn't have to complicate a song with runs and trills everywhere...it's just her. And, boy, can she sing! Three of the songs are Yancy originals. One of my favorites that she wrote is "The Greatest Gift". It beautifully describes the ultimate gift of love as God gave us His son to save us. We all need that reminder this time of year.

Check out the other songs on the CD:
1. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
2. Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas
3. Wonderful Christmastime
4. Joy To The World
5. Christmastime
6. The First Noel
7. Medley: Jingle Bells, Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree, Feliz Navidad, We Wish You A Merry Christmas
8. Angels We Have Heard On High
9. O Come All Ye Faithful
10. The Greatest Gift

You can buy it on Amazon, iTunes, or Yancy's website.

BUT...one of my lucky readers will WIN one for free! Leave me a comment telling me what your favorite Christmas song is and you'll be entered. Please make sure to leave an email address.

Want extra entries? Tweet this giveaway for an extra entry, facebook it for another, or blog about it for another! Please let me know if you've done so in your comment and link all back to this post.

Giveaway ends Friday, December 11 at 12:00 AM. Winner will be chosen the following day and notified by email.

Thanks for joining and hope you have "A Fancy Yancy Christmas"!!

Christmas Tour

Welcome to my little corner of the world. I luh-ove decorating for Christmas! I actually had all mine up about a week before Thanksgiving. So make yourself at home and take a look:




















And moving upstairs to my bedroom:




Yes, I have a tree in my bedroom :)

Thank you for stopping by. Take a handful of M&M's on your way out:

Things that Made me Happy Today!

50% off of all Christmas decor here:


These little grocery carts. I just love them! They're the perfect size in between the regular cart and the basket. Genius!


I also love that the holidays bring out special, once a year food treats!



What made you happy today?

November's NEW

For my new for November, I attended a book signing!

If you know me, you know that I'm definitely not quite the book type. I love children's books and board books, but that's about it. I have recently found a new affection for cookbooks so I guess you could say that I am broadening my horizons! But don't hold your breath...I probably won't be cracking open Twilight any time soon.

I've been following a really fun blog called Cake Wrecks. You really have to go check it out. She basically makes fun of professional cakes. Go check out the site before you pass judgement...it's really hysterical! Here's a couple to whet your appetite:



Remember, these are PROFESSIONAL cakes! Someone paid money for these!! Yikes!

OK, on to the book signing.

My friend, Becky and I got there about 45 minutes early.

Just in time to grab the last few chairs. Good thing. The funniest part was the people watching!

This was the only one I got but trust me, there were puh-lenty of other characters there. The best was the husband who was sitting on the floor in front of us...popping zits on her back! Yep, you read that right. Disgusting.

After a little shpeal from Jen Yates and her husband John, we waited in line to get her to sign and get a picture.


At each of her signings, she has a contest where people replicate some of their favorite wrecks. Here were some that showed up last night.




But one of the best parts was the good cake! She also invites local bakers to come and bring some of their best work to share with everyone. So while we waited in line, we feasted on some yummy cake!



Afterwards, we were starving! This is where we ended up:


It was a lot of fun! Now, we can't wait for the next book signing!!