Early Summer Mornings: New Habit Challenge Day 1

Good morning everyone. First, I'd just like to say that I was able to complete day one of habit one. I woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. My puppy had to go potty, so I let her out. Then Maddie and I crawled back into bed until 5:45, when I officially had to be up for my New Habit Challenge.

I found an a copy of Shape magazine from 2004 (back when I was super skinny) and so I've been reading it this morning to keep myself from falling asleep. Then I decided I should blog about my amazing feat to get out of bed. YAY me!

To get a star on my calendar I still need to...

• Exercise for at least 30 min.
• Keep my kitchen sink shiny and free of dishes.

Recap of Yesterday:

This photo is a page from my food journal. I hope to keep it everyday. I apologize for the photo quality.

I am still kind of trying to find my niche as a blogger. For a while there I was doing a photo online food diary. Now it's kind of evolved into my thoughts.

I would still like to food journal, though for health reasons, I need to be able to keep a written one. I still want to take photos of my food, but I don't get paid to blog and it takes up a lot of time. However, I think I will still take photos of food finds or interesting meal or recipe ideas. I also want to blog about other areas in my life in which I fail at perfection: marriage, fashion, house cleaning, etc. Basically anything that I struggle with. So this blog is now officially "a health and wellness blog for body, mind and soul." I think I'll add that to my description!

Anyway, as you can see (if you have good eyesight or awesome glasses) yesterday I consumed 1665 calories. I also burned 518 doing 40 minutes of Billy Blanks' Tae bo Boot Camp. These numbers are according to Sparkpeople.com. I am feeling pretty hopeful that I can continue my New Habit Challenge. I am just going to take it one day at a time.

Creamy Tomatoey Confetti Chicken

I'm really bad at naming the recipes I come up with. This is last night's dinner.

Ingredients:

• Whole Wheat Spaghetti
• Red and Yellow Bell Peppers
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions (the best!)
• Chicken breasts
• Organic Marinara Sauce
• Sour Cream
• Mozzarella Cheese

I didn't really measure out everything precisely. Though I do know used a cup and a half of marinara and about 1/4 of a cup of sour cream. I used two full chicken breasts and two servings of pasta. The bulk of this recipe serves two, though I am the only one who ate the veggies. I only used about a quarter of each of the peppers and a half of a cup of onions. I had only a half of a chicken breast and I ended up eating about a cup and a half of pasta ...oops.

To make this: Cook chicken on low-medium heat until cooked through, drain any excess water. While the chicken is cooking, start to boil the water for the pasta, and chop the veggies. Next saute the veggies over low-medium heat, until tender. Add pasta to water, cook through. Stir the sour cream and marinara together, pour over chicken, and let the sauce heat through. Add the tiniest amount of mozzarella to the top. Toss pasta and veggies together, and serve with chicken and extra sauce on top.

Pretty good. I really liked the creaminess of the marinara sauce.

Next on the agenda:

Breakfast, exercise, cleaning house, and maybe relaxing. ;) Until tonight my faithful seven. Or perhaps it would only be 6 as I am one of those seven.