Its the Small things that make me happy these days...

Nothing majorly exciting is happening in the Cassotto household these days, so I thought I'd share a few of the simple things that are making me super happy lately:  


Am I the only one slightly OBSESSED with all things Shutterfly?

 I got a HUGE Shutterfly book in the mail today!  WOO-HOO! I got 50% off a 12x12 book and I wanted to catch up so I did months 4-6 in one giant book.  It turned out way cuter in real person that I thought it would as I was making it!  I also got a gazillion prints made (got 50 free so then I ended up buying another 50 or so) to give to family members and put into frames.  At one point, my total was just $6 shy of getting free shipping, so I decided I better just go ahead and SPEND that $6 so I ordered really cute return address labels with Red's face on them, super adorable, if I do so say so myself!

 Chocolate Chip Cookies.  For those of you who know the Rasmussons, you know my mom made DELICIOUS Chocolate Chip Cookies (CCC's for short) EVERY Sunday of my life growing up. It was a great tradition. When I was pregnant, I got really addicted to the pre-made dough from Nestle TollHouse.  ShopRite started carrying the FAMILY-size tubs and it was all down-hill from there.  hehe.  But lately, I've been going back to my baking Rasmusson roots and working on perfecting my home-made recipe and I have to say, Nesltle's has nothing on me now!  YUM.  There ain't NOTHING a homemade CCC can't fix!

Home-made Mac N Cheese.  Nuf Said.

Red in his Walker.  This kid can't get enough of the walker - he LOOOVES it!  I'm contemplating putting away the GYNORMOUS and oh-so-tacky Exersaucer because he just loves the walker so much more now....but of course the second I put the Exersaucer away, I'll regret it and end up lugging it all back upstairs and assembling it again....hmm....p.s. you can't really tell but those shoes Red has on in this pictures are totally adorable, little baby shoes are the cutest!  Thank you cousin April for giving us the walker!!!


And last but not least, I'm super excited that tomorrow we'll get Big Love season 4 in the mail.  We were WAITLISTED (ghasp) for it when it first became available on Netflix a few weeks ago and now its MY TURN!!!!!!!!!!!!  I'm just sad its only 3 discs.  


And for real, my LAST thing to tell you I'm so excited about is GLEE.  I never watched it until recently.  I started Season 1 from Netflix while I was waiting for Big Love to become available.   Is it pathetic that I cried during the season 1 finale when Quinn had her baby and they all told Mr.Shoester how Glee changed their lives??!!  I mean, seriously, I cried on 3 separate occasions during the viewing of the Season 1 finale.  And what's even more amazing is that I can now take Season 2 off my queue because the CANTON LIBRARY NOW CARRIES GLEEEEEE!  And they're holding Season 2 for me right now.  Going to pick it up tonight.  OMGoodness.....this post makes me sound like a fat mom who sits around watching movies and eating cookies and macaroni and cheese....


AND I LOVE THAT!

Double-Whammy Banan-y, Kiss the Cook!

Hello blogging world!  I've been thinking of starting a blog for a long time now but wondering if I had anything worth while to say.  I'm up against some steep family blog competition because two of my sister in-laws have really entertaining blogs (as well as some friend's pretty cool blogs).  So now that I have Red and I'm pretty much staying at home (except for a few hours of piano lessons each week), I think I'm ready to commit to the blogging world.  Plus, I think it will be a good way for me to stay connected to family and friends, and give me a way to document our family's life in more words than a FB post allows.

So here goes:  My first post is gonna be about this wonderful new book I purchased called :This is seriously a cool book.  I have been feeding Red "real" food since he was 4 months old, per his Pediatrician's advice.  In retrospect, I wished I waited longer because its hard to balance the introduction of foods while still maintaining interest in nursing.  But whatevah, its done now, right?  So anyway, I've been using my VitaMix like a Maniac Mom to puree up sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, peas, bananas, acorn squash, pears, apples, etc.  But then I figured I better start giving him some meat purees - ewwwwww.  I'm not a big meat-eater, and by that I mean that I mostly just make chicken and turkey burger. I once made Swedish Meatballs using 3 different types of ground meat (hamburger, pork and veal I think) and in the process of making the meatballs, I decided I no longer even wanted to eat the meal I was cooking. Meat just kind of grosses me out sometimes.  Not all the time though because I will let you know that I eat Ribs at Chili's and burgers from Five Guys.  Go figure.

So annnnnyway, I tried putting chicken in the VitaMix and it looked disgusting and I fed it to Red anyway and he hated it.  So I decided to just go ahead and BUY (gasp!) some baby food jars that had meat in them since I don't think I'm going to do a great job with getting Red to eat whatever aweful meat concoctions I conjure up.  Well, let me tell you, that stuff smells like cat food.  And as Randy pointed out to me, "STALE CAT FOOD!"  (I don't know what stale cat food smells like, but you can just imagine!).  I feel like if the parent cannot taste-test the food without gagging, why would you want to give that to your baby?!!!

Back to square one.  I bought this book and have been trying the recipes out - LOVE them.  This morning, we had Double-Whammy Banan-y & Kiss-the-Cook Potato-Pear Puree.  YUM, both were delicious.  What I love about the book is not only the colorful photos of the finished products, but the fact that its broken down month by month on what to feed your baby and there's a checklist in the back of what you've tried and what the baby liked, didn't like, etc.  So anyway, I'll keep you posted on the meat situation when it arises, but for now its back to basics and using these cool combinations of purees and natural foods.  LOVE IT!

And just for fun, here are a few of my favorite pics of Red eating "real" food: