This week has already been a little nuts and it's not about to slow down any time soon! Allow me to fill you in:

On Monday, I had to rush straight to a neighborhood board of directors meeting immediately upon getting home from work. On Tuesday, it was a Home Tour committee meeting that I had to hurry to get to. Tonight, I have dinner with my advisory council (I plan tradeshows and work with a group of industry experts to guide the direction of the event). Same thing Thursday. Friday, my fabulous company is renting out a suite at the Mavs game to celebrate a good first quarter (!!). Saturday, I'm planning to participate in the neighborhood garage sale. And, finally, Sunday the hubby and I are headed to our home town to celebrate his lovely mom's birthday.

Phew! I'm exhausted already! (No, really. I could use a nap.)

Peaceful and calm is the opposite of how I feel right now so let's all enjoy some peaceful, calming springtime flowers to start the day.

              

Hands down one of the stupidest things I've ever done:


Publicly declare that I would change my sleep habits in 20 days and start being on time in the mornings.


Ummm... Not so much. Apparently it takes more than a blog challenge to cure chronic lateness.

Though yesterday I was already awake when my alarm went off. But only because I was having trouble sleeping. Again.

I came across this recipe a week or so ago on Real Simple and decided to give it a go. It has yet to be hubby tested and approved but the bestie and I thought it was delish! Exactly as you'd imagine: spinach and artichoke dip with pasta plus a kick. Do it!

Won't we all be glad when this ridiculous experiment is over?

That is all.

It's evident that I'm failing my little self-imposed get-up-earlier challenge. To be quite honest, I'm actually only getting worse at it as I near the end. When these 20 days are over, let's never speak of my laziness, constant whining and excuse making again. Deal? Deal.

Yesterday, I was 12 minutes late in getting up. However, in all fairness, I only got about three total hours of sleep. I was wide awake and out of bed from 2:24 until about 4:45. (I thought that maybe if I got up and did something, I'd get sleepy again. I didn't.) I wasn't back in bed for 30 minutes before KT's alarm started going off. And it went off every nine minutes until mine did at 6:15... Fun times!

This morning was not much different: ridiculously early wakeup (3:30), followed by inability to fall back asleep, and topped off by the hubby's unanswered alarm. 6:25 is just when I thought I was getting up. Do you see that snooze button there? I pushed it. Twice. It was 6:43 when I finally got out of bed. 




I suck at this.

Some time ago, the hubby decided that we should give pescatarianism a shot. For no other reason than he wanted to eat more healthy stuff and less junk and felt he needed some set guidelines to hold himself to it. Now, I love me some fish and I love me some veggies so I was 100% on board with it.

And we did pretty well. For about a week or so. But for whatever reason, I had the hardest time coming up with easy and delicious vegetarian or seafood dishes every. single. day. It felt like we were eating the same meal over and over. And, let's be honest, fish doesn't typically make for great leftovers and we're kind of a leftovers-for-lunch-the-next-day type of family. So I started throwing a little meat back in the mix. Long story short, it wasn't but a minute before we were eating meat with almost all of our meals again.

Anyway, after our failed attempt at pescatarianism, I instituted what I like to call "Meatless Mondays." As the name implies, once a week, we make an effort to eat a vegetarian dinner. (Not quite as lofty as our original goal, but it helps us to eat a bit healthier!) As such, I'm always on the lookout for tasty new vegetarian recipes. The other day I stumbled across this one for Quinoa and Black Beans:

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped 
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped 
1 red bell pepper, chopped
3/4 cup uncooked quinoa
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup frozen corn kernels
2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions
1. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the onion and garlic, and saute until lightly browned.
2. Add bell pepper and saute for a minute more.
2. Mix quinoa into the saucepan and cover with chicken broth. Season with cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes.
3. Stir frozen corn into the saucepan, and continue to simmer about 5 minutes until heated through. Mix in the black beans and cilantro.

I modified it a tiny bit by adding the bell pepper and upping the amount of corn. Next time, I'll probably double the quinoa too.

Serves four.

At what point do I have to stop using the time change as an excuse?