Best. Find. Ever.

For those of you that just want to see cute pictures of the new addition to our little family, we took this before church yesterday:


But this post isn't about her. All she does right now is sleep, poop, and eat (not necessarily in that order).

Saturday we had a mission. In the ongoing effort to transform our multi-purpose room into a legit nursery, we have given away our TV, sold the IKEA TV stand, sold our futon, bought a secretary's desk that is in use as a dresser, set up the crib, and painted. The missing piece was a rocking chair. Being the frugal parents that we are, we checked three thrift stores in two states, and found a great rocking chair that looks great in the nursery. Now all we need to complete the room is some custom art for the walls. Luckily, we know a guy that can do that for us, if he can find the time.

Our new rocking chair was a good find. But it wasn't the best. find. ever. That was found at our first stop, a thrift store in downtown Lee's Summit on 3rd Street. We were looking for a chair, and then I suggested we check out their lamps as well. And then, on our way out of the store I saw this:


Sitting on a shelf, totally not by the rest of the small appliances, was this slightly-dated KitchenAid food processor. It was big—11-cups. It was sturdy. It was clean. And, it was something I've wanted for a very, very long time. I've been pricing food processors forever. For over six years we've been making due with the 1-1/2 cup mini-choppers. I think we've gone through three of them in that span. Each time a motor on one would burn out, we couldn't quite justify the cost for a nice big adult food processor, so we'd buy another mini-chopper for under $20.

I didn't see a price on the machine. I picked it up and looked at it from every angle. Still no price. I also noticed that there wasn't a blade. But, I thought, the blades aren't too expensive. For the right price, I might buy this and buy new blades separately.

Turns out, I had been blinded by the sight of such a fine piece of culinary appliance—the full set of blades were sitting right next to it in a large plastic container. Written in red wax pencil on the outside of the container was the price. Guess what it said.

$25.92

That's when I really started to get excited. $25 bucks for the kitchen appliance I've dreamed of ever since I was a child (okay—that's probably overstating the fact). And then Brookie gave me the really good news: the sign at the front of the store read STOREWIDE—EVERYTHING 50% OFF. Oh my goodness. I almost fainted.

I grabbed the food processor, tucking it under my arm. The base was white, but to me it was gold. There was, however, one deal-breaker; one hurdle left between me and homemade hummus, pesto, and instantly grated mozzarella cheese: I had to plug it in and make sure that it worked. After all, I couldn't imagine someone just donating a perfectly good food processor of that quality.

I sneaked back to the area of the store where they sell TVs because I knew I could find an outlet there. Elation barely begins to describe what I was feeling when I plugged in the food processor and it purred. Every attachment was there. The price was more than right. And it worked.

I came back out to the front of the store where Brookie and Savannah were waiting for me, told them it worked, and I grabbed the attachments and stood in line for the cashier. She punched in the price, applied the discount and sales tax and charged me $13.41.

We used it to grate cheese for pizza that night, and again to help with dinner on Sunday.

Best. Find. Ever.

Go to the board!