Pioneer Woman and Bakerella ROCK!

Disclaimer: I have many blogs that I check frequently -- those of friends and family to stay caught up with what is going on in their lives, and they are all favorites. Please do not take offense if yours is not mentioned here (I know you won't!).

These are blogs of people that I don't know but that I also frequent. As a busy, tired mom I have found myself in a rut when it comes to meals. In the past few weeks of reading their posts, I have developed a renewed interest in cooking and baking. My family is enjoying this -- Hamburger Helper and mac and cheese out of the box get really old after a while. If you don't know about these blogs, check them out.

First, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the Pioneer Woman! Why did I not find her sooner? If you have been living under a rock like I have, and don't know who the Pioneer Woman is, she is Ree Drummond, a city girl turned ranch wife and mom living in Oklahoma.

Her blog features "confessions," cooking, photography, home and garden, and homeschooling posts. She has tutorials on tweaking digital photos, wonderful recipes with step by step photos, and she is a great storyteller. Her cookbook came out last fall (HINT: this would be a great birthday gift!).

She is a very entertaining writer, and I find her posts about her children/breastfeeding especially funny and totally relatable; see this one and this one, as examples. There's a great story about how she kissed James Garner on the elevator once. Her stories about the ranch really make me miss my upbringing and bring back memories of working calves back home.

I've tried two of her recipes so far: Cinnamon Toast (had no idea there was a "right" way to do it and had been doing the "wrong" way for years!). I've made it several times now, and the kids love it. Ranch Style Chicken was a real family pleaser and the marinade makes it.

Another great reason to visit this blog? The Giveaways! This girl is connected -- she has given away, among other things, Candy Apple Red Kitchenaid Mixers (be still my beating heart!) and Le Creuset French Ovens. Of course, it's hard to win -- there were over 30,000 entries in her last contest -- but what can you lose by posting?

My other favorite blog is Bakerella. As the name implies, this girl bakes...and bakes...and bakes! She has lots of great recipes and has even been to visit the Pioneer Woman. I just love when people get along!

I've made a couple of Bakerella recipes. The Congo Bars are awesome. I used to make Nestle Toll House Bars, but with 1 pound of brown sugar, the Congo Bars pretty much left the Toll House Bars in the dust! I love that you can customize with chips and nuts but I have to say the semisweet chips/pecan combination is the best. I tried peanut butter and milk chocolate chips with pecans and they were good, but I like the others better. The bars taste best the day after you make them.

I've also made the Cupcake Pops (a Bakerella signature recipe) -- they are yummy AND cute. Here's Rachael with the first batch I made:

The coolest post Bakerella did was a proposal. This was ALMOST as inventive as my husband's proposal during a live Steel Magnolias production. Love it!

So there you go. Pioneer Woman and Bakerella -- YOU ROCK!