“Honey, how many baking sheets did you buy again?” asked Jared just a few minutes ago as he saw the stack I had brought over from his mom’s earlier today.

I have to start this post off with a minor disclaimer…I AM a SHOPPER! I love, love, love, love, love, love, LOVE to shop. And…I love to get a good deal (remember the mixer?). You can probably imagine the thrill I have when I attend an auction and there’s always the possibility of getting a GREAT deal…and you can decide for yourself if that deal is good or not.

During the summer of 2006, Diane, Frank and I attended the Wild Berry Farm auction. Wild Berry was a fabulous eco-tourism place close to our orchard that had to close for personal reasons and everyone was very sad to see this happen. We were all lined up at the door the day of the auction. If I remember correctly, it was hot out (I was also pregnant with Cedi at the time) and there was a lot of stuff to get through. We had our eye on a few things for certain…caramel apple packages, sticks for caramel apples, some of the tractors if the price was right, stainless steel baking sheets for making caramel apple making easier and whatever else seemed like a good deal.

I got myself my very own bid number and was ready to go. Frank also had his number. We split up so we could cover more ground and there were two auctioneers running. I bought a few things (one of my best deals was a super heavy table for only $1 that we still use to hold apples today!), grabbed a hot dog from the food vending cart, and got ready for the inside auction – displays, appliances, and things to make baking easier. We had a couple of smaller stainless steel trays that we used for caramel apple making…but I thought a few big ones would be great. Diane had me prepared on what we paid for our smaller ones and I had a price in my head as to what to bid to.

Once the room filled with people it was a bit difficult to hear what exactly was going on, but I thought I would be okay. Finally…the baking sheets (everything else I thought I wanted was going way too high for me). The bid started out low, I raised my hand…it was mine. No one else was moving…going once, going twice, SOLD! Yeah! I won the bid. Okay, now they have to ask me how many I want…oh wait…they had said that you had to bid on TWENTY of them!?! What am I go to do with TWENTY commercial sized cookie sheets (that’s right…they don’t even fit into a normal oven)? Not only that but the great ‘low’ price I got on the cookie sheets was now times by 20! Time to go home – I was done bidding for the day. I loaded my baking sheets into my car and went home and took a nap.

To answer my husband’s question from earlier, “Twenty…I bought twenty…”