As a cooking/baking challenged single 41 year old, I'd been eyeballing this bad boy for a while. While I haven't had too much time to play around with it yet this is one solid piece of equipment. It's also quite heavy so make sure you have a permanent, accessible spot for it in you kitchen (my undersized kitchen needed to be rearranged to give my Kitchenaid the spot it needed). I'm still nervous about converting certain recipes I used to do by spoon/spatula to stand mixer for fear of over mixing but the mini cookbook included gives you good tips (I also recommend Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here For (More) Food" as he tell you up front a Kitchenaid Professional is what he's using for most recipes made with a mixer)
With Holidays ahead I hope to really put this baby through the works. Amazon had such a great deal and really, it's as solid investment as you'll make on a small kitchen applianceGet more detail about KitchenAid KSM150PSER Artisan Series 5-Quart Mixer, Empire Red.