PW, Shopping & Sugar Cookies

PW (aka Pioneer Woman), shopping and sugar cookies - put all three of these together and you get one fabulous day! This past Saturday Pioneer Woman was headed to Houston for her cookbook tour and Nicole and I are huge fans of her. I'm more of a fan of her witty sense of humor and great photography skills but I'm slowly coming around to her cooking. Nicole introduced me to her blog a few months ago and ever since then I've been hooked. It's no secret that I'm not such a great cook (read here) and that is one of the reasons why PW is so great. She takes pictures along the way while she's cooking which is perfect for me! So we set out this past Saturday to get a chance to meet the great PW from Oklahoma and pick up a copy of this miracle cookbook.

The book signing was originally scheduled to be at Blue Willow Bookshop but had to be moved to Georgia's Market due to the large crowd that was expected. We arrived a little early to make sure we were able to get a book and then to get a ticket for the signing line.

We were able to pick up a few cookbooks but unfortunately did not get very lucky on our tickets. We were at the bottom of the list to actually meet PW and found out that we would have to wait approximately 5 more hours until we could see her! Hmmm. We had shopping plans for that afternoon and waiting 5 more hours wasn't in the itinerary...

While we didn't actually stay for the signing we still had a great time listening to her (from way in the back) and now have an even greater love for PW.

Shopping was next and we headed out to Highland Village and spent a couple of hours walking around since it was such a beautiful afternoon. Both of our husbands were also out of town for the night which can sometimes lead to trouble when no one is there to monitor the credit card card...

I promise it's not as bad as it looks. Really, we didn't buy that much, it's just a ton of bags. Somehow our husbands didn't quite believe us when we tried that on them :)

Next up for the evening was baking. We were inspired by the PW herself and set out to try her recipe for sugar cookies. We stayed in that night, ordered some pizza, put on some Christmas music, pulled out the vino and had a great time!

Look Mom, I'm baking!

And the oh so talented Nicky T with the eggs and her vino. Hmm maybe the reason it took about 5 hours from start to finish to make these cookies was our distraction with the camera. In our defense we had to document the process. PW always takes pictures as she goes. I think her pictures are mostly of the food itself but we thought we'd get a little more creative and add pics of the cute bakers in the process :)

And they're almost done. The frosting part got interesting as it was late at night at this point but for the most part they turned out super yummy! It's not how they look but how they taste, right??