I haven't posted recently because I've been busy playing with my new toy. I unexpectedly got a Kitchenaid mixer and have been making all kinds of stuff with it. I say that it was unexpected because Jerry and I had talked about getting one for Christmas but we both agreed it was too expensive right now and we would wait, but then Kitchen Collection had the kind that I wanted for $100.00 off, plus a $30.00 mail-in rebate on top of that, so we talked ourselves into believing that we really shouldn't pass this up! It's amazing what your mind can talk you into. Actually, it's kind of funny because over the past several days as I was getting back into tightwad gear, I had intended to write a sidebar item about my tightwaddery, but I never got around to that and instead played with something new that I (*gasp*) bought!

This mixer is a beast. I had no idea from looking at the pictures how large it really was. We got the Professional 600 because it was the biggest that they make and can handle bread dough. I have been researching these for over a year now and had been debating between a Bosch and a Kitchenaid, but finally the sale on the Kitchenaid made my decision for me. This thing is so big that sitting on my counter, there is only one inch between the top of the mixer and the underside of the cabinets over the counter. The flat beater that is shown in the picture is bigger than Jerry's hand. I had a recipe in my Mennonite cookbook that made four loaves of bread (something I never would have attempted with my old mixer), so I tried that. We set the timer, and using the dough hook the dough for four loaves of bread was done in four minutes. That's it. When I get around to writing about my tightwaddery, I'll explain about the breadmaking. Now I want to buy the grain mill attachment for it, so I've listed some things on eBay for my fundraising for that.

I decided to try out a new program that eBay offers (well, new to me anyway) called Turbolister, where you can write the descriptions and get pictures of your items all offline and they just stay in a file on your computer until you're ready to sell your stuff, then you can upload it all at one time and start your auctions. I used that for the first time yesterday but when I uploaded my stuff and started my auctions, the format hadn't stayed the same as when I wrote it in Turbolister, and my counters for page visits were missing. Right after the auctions went live I went in to fix these things and as I was making my way down my list of items putting counters on all of them, I noticed that one of my items was missing. I had listed five things, now only four were showing up. I thought that somehow one listing hadn't made it to the auction so I went back to check, and then saw that one of the books had sold in the three minutes that the auction had been live. That's why it wasn't showing up when I went back to add a counter! Someone had bought the book and paid for it and the money was in my account in Paypal all in five minutes' time. I can hear the grain mill grinding away now!

Also, just in case anyone's wondering, I decided that my schedule didn't need tweaking. It needs a major overhaul!