"C" is for Cockerham: February 2012

Friday, February 24, 2012

"C" is for Competition

Tully's nursery was nominated for "Project of the Week" on a website called ProjectNursery.com. Woo! Help us win by clicking the "Like" button along the top of our entry page using the link below:

http://projectnursery.com/projects/tullys-nursery/

I think "liking" ends Sunday (2/26/12), and if we win the weekly event, we'll be eligible to compete for "Project of the Month" and a $50 gift card.

The other three nominees can been found here, if you'd like to check out the competition!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

"C" is for Cooking - January Edition

New year, new recipes. I got a recipe book from my mom for Christmas, and we've loved almost everything in it so far. It's called "Now Eat This!" by Rocco Dispirito.

"Fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, brownies, and 147 other favorite recipies under 350 calories. In this delectable cookbook, award-winning chef Rocco DiSpirito transforms America’s favorite comfort foods into deliciously healthy dishes—all with zero bad carbs, zero bad fats, zero sugar, and maximum flavor. What’s more, Rocco provides time-saving shortcuts, helpful personal advice, and nutritional breakdowns for each recipe from a board-certified nutritionist. So prepare your favorite foods without the guilt. Finally, a world-class chef has made healthy food taste great!"

Week 1:

Carrot soup with shrimp (Rachael Ray)

Crock pot BBQ pork loin & baked potatoes

Week 2:

Chicken fried steak & salad (Rocco)

Chicken parmigiano & caesar salad (Rocco)

Shrimp scampi with broccoli (Rocco)

Sloppy Joes with sweet potato fries (Rocco)

Week 3:

Pork chops with apples and cheddar (Rocco)

Tuna melt (Rocco)

Crock pot cheesy chicken

Indian beef curry (Rocco)

Week 4:

Chef salad (Rocco)

Burgers with baba ghanoush (Rocco)

Pork & snap pea stir fry with thai-peanut sauce (Rocco)

Penne alla vodka with shrimp (Rocco)

Week 5:

Nanna's spaghetti

Beef tacos

Buffalo and blue cheese chicken tenders (Rocco)

Salmon with green beans & bok choy (Real Simple)

Friday, February 10, 2012

"C" is for Cloud

I recently asked my FB friends if they used Apple's iCloud email and if they liked it. I got two positive responses and one negative. Either no one uses me.com email, or I'm extremely unpopular with my 800+ FB friends.

I tried using my me.com account for a couple weeks. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros

cool @me.com email address (I had my firstname.lastname, which I really liked)
seamless integration with my other Apple products and one less username/password to remember

Cons

In the tabs of my internet browser, it shows the number of messages in my inbox instead of just the number of unread messages in my inbox. Super annoying.
I would need to update all of my other online accounts to send mail to me.com instead of gmail.
Some online accounts use email as the username and don't allow me to change my username. For example, to login to my account for mail order prescriptions I have to use my Gmail account and not my @me.com account because the site doesn't allow me to update my username, so now even though I would be using my @me.com account for communications with medco, I still have to log on using my Gmail address.
Apple doesn't let me change my password to anything I've used previously (in the last year?). (No one has ever compromised any of my accounts. I want to set my password to what I want it to be.)
I couldn't figure out a way to read messages below instead of to the side. Illustrations below.

side view in iCloud. read messages to the right.

Outlook example of reading messages below.

The final verdict? I'll be keeping my Gmail. I am a little miffed about the new Gmail layout though. I've done well with their other aesthetic changes, but I really hate the new look. It's all scrunched up, and the buttons for replying and deleting aren't in good places. Luckily, I am able to keep the old look for the time being.

To end on a positive note, I do love the concept of iCloud. Having all of my Apple devices backed up online and synced wirelessly is a huge plus. Changes I make to my calendar and contacts on my phone show up on my computer and vice versa within seconds, and it's all saved on the cloud too. Another bonus is the ability to find and remotely lock or erase my Mac or iPhone using iCloud from any computer.

So overall I still love Apple...just not their email. Hopefully now that they've launched iCloud instead of MobileMe, they'll make some improvements with email, so I can convert completely.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

"C" is for Cucumbers

Over the weekend we got to visit some of my favorite people on earth in Dallas. I LOVE when we get to go to Dallas. We traveled there about once a month before Tully was born, and now that he's sleeping through the night, it makes the trip easier and enjoyable again. While I was in town, I stopped in at my favorite nail place, Mai-Le Nails on Greenville. It's the most ridiculous hole-in-the-wall looking salon inside, but the girls there do killer pink and white acrylic nails. Thin, smooth, sculpted, and natural-looking. I have yet to find anyone who can replicate the excellent work they do with acrylic there.

There was an hour long wait when we arrived, so we hopped over to The Hawaiian Nail Bar just across the shopping mall for pedicures. I had never been there, but it was really nice. Clean, friendly, and fast. I must say I was a little surprised when I looked down and saw this though...

I didn't think I'd have real cucumbers all over my legs like chicken pox when I asked for the cooling cucumber pedicure. Salad anyone?

Thursday, February 2, 2012

"C" is for Child (cont.)

This week's special? Three for one: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas! Here are Tully's seven, eight, and nine month updates. In all of the holiday madness I missed the eight month photo. Oopsie!

7 months

9 months

Milestones
7 months:
Gaining an entire pound in 10 days. Tully jumped from 45% to the 60% for weight. Helloooo growth spurt!
Crawling. Grammy and PawPaw were at our house to see his first moves!
Pulling up

8 months:
Cruising
Waving bye-bye
Crawling up the stairs

9 months:
Sleeping through the night (woo hoo!)
Crawling up and down the stairs
Standing up and almost walking (soooo close)

New foods: avocados, bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots, oatmeal, broccoli, chicken, pork, beef, squash, scrambled eggs, whole wheat teething cookies, and anything on the floor. Baby-led weaning (solids, no purees) is a success!
Favorite food: acorn squash, butternut squash, any kind of squash
Nursing regularly during the day and before bedtime
Total diapers: 3262
Six teeth: two bottom, four top

With all the new spaces he can explore by crawling and crusing, he is officially into everything. He especially enjoys opening and closing the baskets with our shoes in the entry hall and untying shoestrings. The kitchen cabinets and drawers with plastic-ware are also favorite finds during playtime. Several "toys" have been added to his toy basket too:

Fun-sized Skittles packages leftover from Halloween
Big plastic bowls for handing out Halloween candy
An empty Coca-Cola box
Plastic bottles (spice, water, etc.) filled with some dry pasta

Pretty exciting stuff and a lot cheaper than buying new things at the store.

We spent Halloween bundled up on the porch handing out candy to the local kiddos. No fancy, over-priced costume, no trapsing around the neighborhood. We have plenty of years ahead of us for that.

Thanksgiving was low-key too. Grammy and PawPaw came over, and after Thanksgiving dinner we watched the Aggies lose to the Longhorns. Tully cried and so did Mommy.

We enjoyed Christmas in Texas at my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's new house with the rest of the Cockerham family. They had THE perfect layout (1-story, bedrooms on one side of house, living room on other) for Tully to sleep. Our house has a very open layout which means sound travels. It was so nice to be able to talk, yell, laugh, and make noise without worrying about waking Tully. We spent the entire trip relaxing by the fireplaces, especially when the heater wasn't working! The house was built in the 50's, and the heater was having some issues. Luckily a guy came out who knew what he was doing. I think they'd had several other maintenance men out who weren't able to fix it. So we had plenty of heat by the time the snow arrived for our white Christmas.