I love nutcrackers, as I was a ballerina growing up.

I didn't even know any cowboys growing up. When my friends heard that I was marrying a cattle rancher and moving to the country, they literally could not believe it. They started calling me the Pioneer Woman as a joke.

I've set aside a nice chunk of my advertising revenue each month for giveaways, like a KitchenAid mixer. I like buying them for the audience, because without the audience I wouldn't have the blog or the revenue in the first place.

We used to have skunks that would go under our house and scratch their backs. I remember after I had my first baby, I didn't really have many friends, but I got invited to a dinner with a group of people from town. We all took the same vehicle, and I got in, and someone goes, 'I smell skunk.' I had to fight back tears.

I'm not an anarchist, but I believe that people don't want the royal family - the so-called royal family.

As the daughter of a schoolteacher, I feel very strongly that the most important thing in school takes place right there in that classroom, and the interaction between the teacher and the child.

My mother is brilliant but emotional and very much gregarious and connected to people. My father was brilliant but focused and driven and very narrow-casted.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.