What brand do you ladies own? I desperately want one so DH and I can be uber lazy and just throw things in there in hopes it will come out delish.  Favorite recipes?

Ours is the Crock-Pot brand and for the last 2 years it has been great!  We bought it at Costco!  My mom has a Crock-Pot brand one that she's had for ~30 years ... they don't make things like they used to, but I think that's a good selling feature.

I know Williams-Sonoma sells them, but I'm not sure if the price is worth it when my $50 one is doing a pretty dang good job for now.  :)

Mine is a west bend brand and it has a warming tray and a rectangular pot that sits on top. It is awesome for clean up bc the pot isn't that heavy. It also is easy with leftovers bc I can put the whole pot in the fridge. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't have a timer and a lot of recipes say 6-8 hours on low. We are gone at work longer than 6-8 hours most days so it is hard for us to use ours regularly.

Mine is very cheap, don't remember what brand. It's one of those most basic ones.  I don't even remember when and how I got it.

I strongly recommend getting one that has a timer - you can set when it starts and finishes cooking.  I work full time, and it's impossible to use it during the week since I'm out 10 hours a day.  I only use the crock pot on weekends, which defeats the purpose of having a crock pot.

I've always ignored the 6-8hr thing and just added a little extra liquid so it doesn't dry out before we get home!

We have a Rival crock-pot and I'm actually using it right now making chili.  : )

It's not a very expensive one, but we have had this for a few years and we love it!

We also have a Crock-Pot brand slow cooker. We have a very basic one, but I really want to upgrade :-) Definitely ditto the other girls -- a timer is huge if you want to use it during the week. Luckily I work from home right now, but if I didn't, I would also be out of luck due to the cook time for most recipes :-(

Thanks for the advice ladies!  I'm definitely looking into the programmable ones. :)  It's just so weird because for every good review of the same product, I see negative reviews too.  I feel kind of schizo.  I think the Costco near us carries a Crock-Pot, so maybe we'll just give that one a go first.

I think that ours is crock-pot too, and we have had it for... 3 or 4 years.  Still works great!

We have 2...one has a removable "crock" and the other one sits on a warmer type thing...i think equally as important as the timer is the removable crock part...my mom has one that you can't submerge to clean...that sucks!!!