Today I needed to make Elizabeth’s birthday dessert (she chose yellow cupcakes with strawberry frosting) (I love that “yellow” is an actual flavor of cake), so it seemed like the perfect moment to stop being shy with the new mixer.
I wouldn’t say I was sorry to see the old mixer go…but I’ve had it a lonnnnng time, so it’s a little poignant. My first husband and I bought it with money we got for our wedding, so that makes it about 17 years old. Please don’t say, “Oh, I was in third grade when you bought your mixer!” No, it’s not any better if it’s fourth grade. Really, that sort of remark never works out well.
After that marriage ended and I graduated from college, I got a job in a bakery, working with the big mixers the countertop ones are smaller versions of. Part of the reason I got that job is that I knew how to use a Kitchenaid mixer: the big ones are the same, you just have to put your arms all the way around the bowl to get it off the stand, and then lift with your legs. I’ve never quite understood how to make “lift with your legs” work, so I always had an ouchie back with that job. Also, I picked up some habits that work well in a bakery but not so well at home, such as just FLINGING flour across a counter to evenly flour it before working with dough. (Bakery: There’s flour all over the place anyway, and someone else comes in after to clean the floors. Home: Tag, you’re it.)
When Edward was about three years old, he was climbing on the counter (NOT ALLOWED) and started to fall. He grabbed the mixer to steady himself, and he and the mixer both went down. We were very lucky they fell in different directions. The noise the mixer made when it hit the floor, combined with Edward’s shrieks (which turned out to be panic rather than pain) had me re-evaluating what a “good outcome” was.
Edward was just shaken and scared, but the mixer hasn’t been right since then. The back of it has to be held on with duct tape, and it’s still very loud and vibratey unless you put pressure on the wound. The beater doesn’t quite line up with the bowl anymore, so there are missed spots and scraped spots. And the knob that lets you change speeds got bent straight down; in order to change speeds, you have to sort of TWIST it as you move it—and it can slip suddenly. Going from speed 1 to speed 8 all at once is…not good for most things you might have in a mixer.
Paul and I agreed it needed to be replaced, but it still worked okay so there was no rush. I couldn’t decide on a color. Pink was my long-standing favorite.
(photo from Amazon.com)
But over the years the attitudes of some other women toward the color pink had made me feel self-conscious about liking it. It’s rare to hear someone express dislike of, say, green, in the spit-on-the-floor way they might express dislike of pink. And that made me second-guess my like of it, which then made me mad because the whole “girls have to like a certain color because other people say so” is exactly the kind of principle the hate-pinkers are generally AGAINST. And also, mad because spitting on what other people like is mean, and pointless, and poor for the development of one’s character. And also because, what about Ice?
(photo from Amazon.com)
And what about Green Apple? I LOVE green. I SAY pink is my favorite color, but when I’m choosing stuff I more often choose green.
(photo from Amazon.com)
And what about Buttercup? I love that shade of yellow.
(photo from Amazon.com)
But then pink went on one of those one-hour deals, for the best price I’ve ever seen it (and I’ve been watching it for YEARS). That made the decision for me, and I bought it. (I’m glad I didn’t realize that Ice was going on the same deal an hour later.)
So here is my old mixer, with its subtle and barely-visible duct tape repair:
And here is my new:
I’m second-guessing it, of course (maybe I should have gotten the green! no, the yellow! no, the green! no, the blue! no, the green!), but it’s good to have the decision made (and the cupcakes too).
I have a pink kitchen aid mixer, too! I got it in 2003 as a christmas gift from my husband–I asked for a mixer and he bought me pink! I LOVE IT. It looks so happy on my counter–I get a lot of comments on it. My husband will ask me about once a week…when is pinky mixing up more cookies?
—Melissa
I love the pink! and the blue and the green but mostly the pink!
Oooh! *cringe!!* The image of poor Edward and the HEAVY mixer falling is *CRINGE!* making me shake my hands and go, Eoooo! And *Cringe* every time I picture it!! alllhhh! Unsee! Unsee!! Poor baby! Glad he was/is okay.
I do like the new pink one! I bet that strawberry frosting will look amazing inside its bowl. :)
I just got the ice. I was a mixer virgin until about 4 weeks ago. LOVE. I like the pink too though. My dilemma was between the green apple, ice and candy apple red. And as for how old I was when you bought your first mixer? Well, my 17th anniversary is coming up in August and my oldest will be 17 in December. So I’m OLDER than you (and most dirt).
Sigh. It’s seriously one of my biggest life regrets that I didn’t open Twitter earlier on the day you posted this gold box deal. But I’m happy for you! (SOB!)
So cute. I would smile every time I looked at it. I used to not like pink but then started loving it in college and I am happy to say I still do. The ice one is awesome too.
I like all of the colors you do. I was amazed when we bought ours with how many colors KitchenAid has. Of course, my husband wanted black. So we compromised and got black with metallic sparkles. And part of the compromise (in my mind, at least) is that I have bought all other small kitchen appliances without his input in raucous colors.
Ummmmm I don’t know how to use a mixer, never even seen one in real life but since we’re commenting on colors I’ll throw out that I love the pink. Ice would have been my second choice. But I’m one of those people who needs everything in the kitchen to match so I would have had to find a black one, which is boring, I know.
Also, is this like a way awesomer version of a hand mixer thing? I’m assuming you need to be a major cooker/baker to justify this right? If I can home with a mixer would my husband be like, “Why the hell you need that?” since I’m not all kitcheny?
I bought the candy-apple red one, but seeing all the colors like that in your post had me second-guessing that as well. I STILL love the buttercup! And the green! Sigh.
The pink is lovely, though; I hope you too have many happy years together!
Love it! I’m still waiting for the orange to go on sale. I’ve wanted one for years now.
I was in graduate school when you got your first mixer! (Is that better?)
I have cornflower blue. I thought about the other colors, but really, we like what we like.
For example, I like cupcakes.
You know, I don’t really like pink all that well (the green is way cool), but this mixer would look awesome in my kitchen! However, I stopped baking around the time you started (I don’t cook much either). But this mixer could almost tempt me again!
ALL of the colors are nice, but pink is the nicest. As the mother of a boy who loves pink (now his fingernails are pink too), I say pink haters be damned! Also, I totally would have given you my barely-ever-used (boring white) kitchenaid mixer if you lived in Seattle and I could look up “swistle” in the phone book to send it to you. If, you know, phone books still existed.
Oh, fun! PINK! I love it. I also love the blue, but the pink is adorable and makes me smile.
I love the pink SO MUCH!
*Sigh*
The picture of the new mixer makes me so happy. It’s dreamy. You made a good decision.
I am generally not a pink person, but I do still own some pink things. And I think that mixer is really cute. I think the pink in your photo looks really pretty.
I’m so glad you took advantage of the deal!
Gorgeous! You picked the perfect color. (Ours is boring black. Which fingerprints EASILY.)
Oh, it’s gorgeous! Yay!
If I may ask… how did you manage to catch the one you wanted on one-hour sale? I too have been eyeing the KA stand mixers for YEARS and would love to know how you pulled that off!
Love it! Mine is boring white. My husband likes things in white or black only, no colors. Whenever I pick something with color options, he’s always shocked when I pick a color (red! orange! pink! green!). We’ve been married six years, and he’s still shocked? Yes. He bought me the white mixer as a (very generous and surprising) gift, so no complaining here, but I would swoon over one of the pretty colors you posted.
We have the exact same pink kitchenaid! I didn’t choose the color – it was a birthday present for my 21st birthday from my parents, which tell you what kind of rollicking party lifestyle *I* had in college, but I absolutely love it and think it is the very best color of them all! We’ve received nothing but compliments on it whenever someone enters our kitchen.
I have green apple, which I love, but wow. Ice? Really like that and the buttercup one. I like pink too. They are all so pretty. I got mine as a gift, I probably still wouldn’t have one if I had to decide!!
shygirl- Pure dumb luck: I happened to look at Amazon’s “Today’s Deals” section (which I usually do once a day if I remember) during the hour the mixer was available.
My vote would have gone to the Buttercup! I wanted a KitchenAid mixer when we bought ours, but $200 just wasn’t happening, so I got a much less expensive mixer that works really well. Someday, I will upgrade. My mom has had hers at least 30 years and it’s still chugging along as good as new.
My mom got me a red KitchenAid for my 25th birthday and it is still my favorite kitchen appliance.
I have a cobalt blue one, which I got the year I was married, which is the same year you got your first one. (Not third grade!) It’s getting a little rattly if I use it for bread dough, but is still working fine. Take that as a metaphor for the marriage.
Oh, and p.s. I have always wished I had flames on mine, like Alton Brown has on his.
Green Apple is my favorite, followed by Pear. I, however, have the same color as a previous commenter, Caviar (black with metallic sparkles). Best investment I have EVER made!
I totally want a KA mixer – I’ve been using a handheld since I learned to bake, but I’m kind of over that.
We do have a food processor with a dough hook, but that doesn’t work for a lot of batter-oriented recipes.
I have one cookie recipe I want to try that requires beating eggs for an HOUR. I am so not doing that with a handheld.
Out of curiosity, about how much did you pay? I was just curious as to the absolute lowest, watched the sales for years price would be.
Oooh, I LIKE it! I also love that yellow is a flavour of a cake, just like “white”.
I love the pink! I bet it’ll make you feel all warm & fuzzy every time you use it.
I have the Kitchenaid mixer my parents got for their wedding almost 40 years ago. I win!
At my first job after graduating from college, I was chatting with the manufacturing manager when he mentioned it was his birthday. I (without thinking, because I was young) said “Oh, how old are you?” When he told me, I said cheerily “You’re the same age as my dad!”
Oof. I’m glad I learned that lesson early in my career.
Love the mixer.
Ea ipsa- It was $199. I’ve seen the white ones go lower than that, I think—but not the pink one.
That mixer is a thing of beauty. I have a black one, if it makes you feel better – very boring.
if it’s any comfort to you, i will have been married for 16 years in few weeks.
i shrewdly asked to borrow my now MIL’s kitchen-aid mixer so that i could make my wedding cake. instead of loaning me hers, she bought me one. white. it is a great machine. i can’t imagine dropping it on the floor!
Ooohh very sexy! I like the pink! Mine is silver/grey and my family loves it when I drag it out from the pantry…
Love the pink! My sister has the pink one (along with many, MANY of the other pink kitchen things that match– she has a very understanding husband.) Mine is the white one because that’s what was in stock when I went to the store to buy it. I didn’t even think about ordering it online. It’s probably for the best though, I would have been totally indecisive if I’d had all those colors to choose from.
Also, my mom has her kitchen aid from since before she was married I believe so it’s almost 40 years old now. And it’s harvest yellow or some other such color that was super popular in the 60s and 70s and you can’t get anymore.
I love the green one but the pink is cute too. A few years ago my husband bought me a KA mixer for Christmas after a lot of not subtle hinting (begging). I told him I wanted a red one or a blue one or a green one. He got me a white one. What could I even say? I mean, he got me a Kitchen Aide. I couldn’t whine about the color. But when I see other people with cute colored mixers my soul cries a tiny bit. But I’m happy you got your pink mixer!
I have the ‘satin’ copper one and I LOOOOVE it. But I so badly want the candy apple red one that comes with the retro glass bowl….AS WELL! Is having two KAs, just ’cause you love ’em, silly?
Oh pretty! I have that mixer in Candy Apple Red.
Little Bird-I adore the satin copper KA! So beautiful. I have a plain white one, we saved up and bought it at Costco about 10 yrs ago, that is all they had. Is it wrong that I REALLY want to collect KA in different colors? Like, what if all of the sudden I had a huge baking emergency, and needed multiple KA’s to be in action at the same time?? That could happen. Well, maybe not-but I love the different colors, and I think it would make me happy every time I saw a cute colored KA in my kitchen. Congrats on getting the pink one, Swistle, I love it.
one of the (very few) reasons i am itching to get married is so that i can put a kitchenaid mixer on my registry. for reals.
pretty! I was already old 17 years ago, does that help? :) I have the bigger version of that and I love the colors but I’m already invested in this one since it’s my 2nd one, and I have 2 bowls and 2 sets of accessories because I saved them from the old one… and I rather like having 2 bowls. I do wish I could take it to a body shop and have it painted orange or red. It is a light gray color that does nothing for me.. it is neither here nor there, so at least it’s not ugly and it doesn’t piss me off when I see it. But that was the only color they had in stock when they did my warranty replacement, and after several weeks I was ready to have another mixer in the house pronto! It kinda reminds me of a drill press.
I love the pink! And who the heck cares if anyone else likes it. YOU like it and YOU wanted a pink mixer, and I am glad you bought your first choice. My 2nd choice would have been the “Ice” which is a very Swistley blue!
I used to be an “Ewww, pink!” kind of person… it was partly a “All girls say they like pink, so I will HATE it because I am DIFFERENT!” and partly a “Pink is a girly color and I am not a girly girl.” Now I’m over the being-different-just-to-be-different phase, and I realized that you can like a color without conforming to the stereotypes it’s attached to, so now I love it in certain contexts! Like your mixer… adorable! (And also my snazzy earphones that I use at my computer. They are pink and awesome.)
Anyway, because of my history I scoff at the vocal pink-haters (people who would go “Ewww, pink!” at someone else’s choice as opposed to just not getting something pink if they don’t like it), because I figure they just haven’t matured out of it like I have :-)
Ha, I was well out of college and working when you got that mixer, worry not! I love the pink, it looks super jealous. I only got mine when I got married, seven years ago, and I am still hella jella.
You totally needed the pink one.
Very pretty!
I am sooooo glad you got the pink mixer! It makes me think of cupcakes and doris day movies, and it is just all around very pleasing. Feel no regret! You made the right choice! Probably you should also get this apron: http://www.etsy.com/listing/74779500/summer-time-seersucker-full-apron-with?ref=sr_gallery_5&ga_search_submit=&ga_search_query=pale+pink+apron&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade
When I was in high school liking pink was super taboo…my best friend wouldn’t even TOUCH clothes that were pink, and I likewise shunned them. Then, the summer after my freshman year of college I found this really cute shirt, and I really wanted it, but I sighed because it was hot pink so I couldn’t buy it. And then I had a life changing realization. “The shirt is pink. I like the shirt. Therefore, I like pink!” It was very liberating.
17 yrs ago i was 38… not exactly 3rd grade…
Thanks for the tip Swistle! Signed up for the RSS feed… if it ever comes around again, I’m snapping one up. LOVE the pink, it’s so cheerful and pretty!
I wasn’t in 3rd or 4th grade. I was 24 and attending kindergarten orientation with my son. And I really think the PINK is awesome.
Well, I was 24 when you got your first mixer, so no 4th grade comments here.
I got the cobalt blue mixer 12 years ago when I got married and I love that thing. Husband uses it every week to make bread and it’s still going strong. I believe my mother-in-law had hers from when she got married over 40 years ago until quite recently. Those things wear like iron, definitely worth the investment – and I think the pink is cute.
I got the cobalt blue one for a wedding present too, but I let my ex take it when we split – he was making a stink about it and I was just TAKE IT TAKE IT JUST TAKE IT AND LEAVE OMG GO. It is one of the few lingering rage things I have about the split (5+ years ago). That and the salad tongs we agreed I would have and then found out when I unpacked months and months later that he had taken anyways. Salad tongs.
(I used to wonder how people got so worked up about *things* when they split up but oh man, I get it now.)
I love your pink mixer. And I will go on record as loving pink too. Down with anti-pink backlash! *spits on floor*
I love, love, love my KitchenAid mixer. I have the green apple one and it just looks so cheerful sitting on my counter. It was a wedding present from my siblings and I’m very glad that I made sure to tell my sister what color I wanted because I know my brothers would have just gotten a black one.
Continuing in the “making Swistle feel better about the 17 years ago” thing, I was 25, pathologically single, hopelessly broke and totally clueless about cookery 17 years ago…
I’ve still never used a mixer of any kind, let alone a fancy one like this, but perhaps, one day. I’d been really indecisive about the colours: the pink is adorable, but I suspect I’d probably go for the buttercup yellow.
But the point is moot for now: all “mixing” in this house is done with a fork so there’s a way to go yet!
I was already several years into my 2nd marriage 17 years ago. So you are a young babe.
I hope you saved the bowl and beaters so now you have two which can be so handy!
I saved up for the larger one, then what with a sale and a gift card I ended up buying the BIGGEST one bedbath &beyond carries. I love it on days like today: I can make 6 loaves of bread at a time! (or 5 loaves & cinnamon rolls actually) Yay! But it’s so huge it won’t mix up a regular recipe worth of stuff properly. I have to double recipes or even triple. Fine for cookies, and bread Not for cake or whipping cream or frosting. Good thing I still have a handheld mixer too.
Also: ea ipsa. I would really love to see that recipe that has you beating eggs for an hour! Do you know the history of it? I’ve seen pre-electric mixer recipes that require crazy things like that, but even your hand held should get the eggs to the same point in only 10 minutes or so. Years ago, using someone ekes KA I whipped whole eggs, with the yolks, almost to a meringue in about 3 min on high when using an old recipe that had a long beating time for among by hand. If you actually whipped eggs for an hour in the KA, even on low, you’d probably go long past the point the recipe wants.
I’m glad you got the pink one. Always go with your favorite color.
Oh, and I had graduated college when you got your mixer if that makes you feel better.
Aw, I was 30 years old with a 1 year-old when you got your first mixer! And I got the very same exact pink mixer 7 years ago when I was 40 with an 11 year-old! I still love it (and my 18 year-old). ~Laura
I have the ice and I just love love love it
Mine is red. My mom got it for me for Christmas. It is PROBABLY not what I would have picked, but here I didn’t have to pick it or make the decision, so I just get to have the mixer without the decision making process.