Meeting Ree a.k.a The Pioneer Woman

You may {or may not, that's okay} remember my post in March about Rebecca & I attending a book reading/signing for Jodi Picoult. We had such fun and decided to keep our eyes/ears open for any other opportunities to meet our favorite authors. Both of us have been fans of Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman's blog for quite some time. I love that she's an "average" lady who one day started a blog for the heck of it and has now "made it big", if you will. She's a great writer and so funny. Recently she came out with her first cookbook and is currently on tour promoting it. When Rebecca & I found out she was coming to Atlanta, we immediately began making plans to attend.



Originally the event was set to start at 7:30pm. Knowing there would be a huge crowd, we decided to get there very early. Chris was gracious enough to take the day off work so I could meet Rebecca at her office at 12:30. Yes, 7 hours before the signing. ;o) Border's (where the event was held) started handing out wristbands at 9:00am! Thankfully, Rebecca had called them, so we decided to stop by there first to get our bands & then head to lunch. Even though they had moved the signing up to 6:00pm, we had plenty of time. After getting our wristbands we went over to Phipps Plaza for lunch.

Phipps is a very high end mall in Atlanta, so we ate in the food court! ;o) I had never been to Phipps before, so we walked around for a while. I really wanted to go into some of the stores; Versace, Armani Exchange, Jimmy Choo, but I was quite intimidated. First of all, it was obvious I would never be able to afford anything in those stores. And second, it was obvious I'd never be able to WEAR anything in those stores. We were joking that "big girls need clothes too!" LOL Ah well, it's fun to dream.

We made it back to Border's at about 4:00 and were thankfully able to find a place to sit. I think we may have found the last seats as there were a lot of people hanging around for the signing. At about 5:30 they started lining up the first group. We were in the sixth group, and I think there were about 50 people (+/-) in each.

Here's a shot of the crowd while we waited.


Finally they called our group & we lined up. I think it still took almost an hour after that, but we had a good time chatting with everyone around us. Turns out, one of the ladies in front of us used to work with a girl I was best friends with my freshman & sophomore years of high school. Small world!

Here is our picture with Ree. Apparently we're all looking at Rebecca's camera in this shot! LOL She was so sweet {and pretty} in person and seemed genuinely happy to be meeting everyone.


Afterwards we had to have our pictures taken with our newly autographed books. We did the same thing with our Jodi Picoult books. I feel a tradition in the making!


I am so glad that we were able to do this! We're on the lookout now for our next event. Does anyone know of a website or something that keeps a list of authors on tour?

Go check out Rebecca's post on our fun day!