Top O' The Morn

Good morning :) and Happy St. Patty's Day.

I am not wearing green, not baking anything green . . . so I thought I'd post a picture of my favorite salad these days (because at least that's green).

I can't stop making it. It has kale, roasted sweet potatoes, quinoa and craisins. You can find the recipe here. I also like to add sliced bosc pears for some extra awesome.

Today is off to a funny start. I had a rough time going to 5:45am cycle class last week due to the time change, but I went to my favorite class this morning and I feel OK. 

I called into a staff meeting at 7:30, but there was some technical difficulty going on. It just ended up being me and 3 other staff members chatting with one another for about 20 minutes, waiting for the problem to be fixed but it never got resolved. Oh well, what can you do. I am thankful that I like my co-workers, otherwise I wouldn't have found that entertaining :).

So here I am . . . finally writing a new post after a week (yikes!). My goal in blogging is to post 3-4 times a week, but clearly it didn't happen last week. It was just an insane, non-stop, stay at work late and then dream about work kind of week. I haven't had a week like that in a very, very long time. Here's to hoping that this week will be better.

Confession: I don't know how to slow down. Not only was the past week insane, the weekend was busy too. It was filled with good things - the gym, volunteering (but I volunteered so much that I didn't get to attend church), cooking, visiting old friends and family. 

This morning I remembered a sermon that my pastor did several weeks ago where he talked about how busyness can be a problem. We need balance, we need rest, we need time to process and hear from God and meditate on His Word. If we're too busy, we miss out on the most important thing - deepening our relationship with Him. Busyness can become dangerous.

I just need to block out some time this morning to spend with Him in quiet reflection, prayer and reading my Bible. Isn't it refreshing (and humbling) to know that we never get to a place in our lives where we don't need Him daily? The longer I walk with God, the more I am aware of how necessary that daily time is. We never get past needing His grace - and that is a comfort to me.

Here is a brief rundown of some adventures lately:

I saw this cake on a blog and I also remembered it from the Walter Mitty movie (super good, if you haven't already seen it!) . . . clementine cake. I decided to get started on the most time-consuming part of the recipe, boiling clementines for 2 hours (2 hours!). So strange, boiling citrus. I don't know when I will finish making the cake, but I suspect it's gonna be good.

I also decided to make chocolate mousse for a friend . . . for the first time from scratch. It didn't turn out so well on the first attempt. I was almost in tears after the chocolate seized up instead of melting smoothly.

Praise the Lord I had more chocolate and whipping cream on hand, so I started again - this time using a simpler recipe. It turned out really well - good thing, because I was out of chocolate at this point.

I have been wanting to read this book for a while, One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It ties into what I posted last week - changing your perspective, cultivating contentment, having your eyes opened to the thousands of blessings you have even in the daily and mundane. 

However, I didn't realize that the first chapter would be suuuuper emotional because the author starts off, very descriptively, with tragedy that she's had in her life. You. Will. Need. Tissues. 

I am excited to read the book - I can tell it's going to be great. 

Happy Monday!!