Easy tasty Weight Watchers friendly Fruit Smoothie

Sorry I've been a little MIA recently- work has been CRAZY, and I was on vacation with my mom to a Stampin' Up! getaway (I'll share the projects from that later). In the meantime, I'll show you a recipe of a smoothie I've been loving lately.
I've been trying to get back on the wagon of Weight Watchers to try and loose the holiday weight and get back down to my goal weight. The hardest thing I've always found with Weight Watchers is getting enough fruit in my diet. The other night I was craving a smoothie, so I decided to try to concoct a very fruity smoothie that was Weight Watchers friendly- the lower the points the better.

I  made this smoothie filled with lots of fruit, as to get just the right amount of fruit needed per day. This smoothie is roughly 1 1/2 weight watchers points plus a smoothie (one blender makes 2 smoothies), so if you are really in a smoothie kick, it's only 3 weight watchers points plus for 2!
This past week I think I've had a smoothie everyday after this, as I just can't get enough and it gets me my necessary fruit for the day. ;)
Enjoy this super easy and tasty fruit smoothie!

Mo's Fruity Fun Smoothie

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of ice
• 2 bananas
• 4-6 oz (or 1 snack container) of Light Fit strawberry yogurt
• 1-1 1/2 cups of frozen mangoes
• 1/4 can (or 2.4 fl oz) Goya mango juice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp orange extract

Directions:
Put all ingredients in a blender, blend for ice to be chopped well into smoothie. Pour into glass and tada!

1 blender full makes 2 smoothies at roughly 3 Weight Watchers Points Plus (depending on the yogurt and goya juice you use). It is super easy and tasty!
So I hope you all have a great day! I'm praying for more warm weather, so I can enjoy my smoothies outside. ;)
-M

Tweet

4th of July Banana cake disaster

Ok. So I realized I never shared with ya'll our 4th of July cake. It may be because it ended kind of in disaster, but normally I try to keep things real on this here blog and share the disasters as well as the awesomeness.

So, for our friends' 4th of July BBQ, my hubs made a Banana Pudding cake (banana cake with banana slices in the middle and banana pudding also in the middle, with cream cheese icing). However, he kind of used too much pudding in between the layers and the cake started to slide before I could even put the icing on. So we stuck a dowel rod in the middle and I went to work on the icing. In the end of the "decorations phase" I added some sprinkles, banana slices with sprinkles, and dressed up the dowel rod with 4th of July stars. I'm no professional in cake decorating, but I thought it worked nicely for what I had to work with. Looks cute right?

What you don't see, is what happened next...
It was an EXTREMELY hot summer day and neither of our cars have working air conditioning at the moment. In the 20 minute drive to our friends' house, the icing started to melt. Yes, you read that right- MELT. Then we found out our friends' air conditioning in the house was ALSO busted, and the poor cake just kept melting. By the time it would of been time to eat it, it looked so sad and gross. My hubs and I ate some (and one other friend) out of pity for the poor cake, but overall- it was a melted banana mess.

(One cool thing however did happen- the sprinkles melted into the banana slices on top, making them somewhat candied. How cool is that?!)

So the moral of this story- 
1) Don't use a lot of pudding in a banana cake 
and 
2) Don't serve that cake in non-air conditioned locations.

We can laugh about it now, but it does make me a little sad it didn't stay looking this cute.
Here is what a similar cake we made (but without the pudding) for a friend's Tony Awards Party- It did NOT melt. haha

 Anyone else have any cake disasters?
Hugs all!
-M

Tweet

Work it Wednesday: Going Bananas over Yardwork

Welcome to another Work it Wednesday.
We've been busy working on updating our yard. My mom came to visit this week and helped us out in our little updating outside. We still have to finish painting the edging, but the rest looks good I think.

We added a bush to the left of the front door, pruned the rose tree/bush, mulched the front beds. Also added two potted plants to our yellow buckets. Added some cute little 4th of July signage.

This is what the roses looked like when in full bloom, and way before we pruned the bush/tree.

We also finally put out our homemade signage. It was my first attempt at hand painting lettering. It could be better, but for a first try, I think it works. I might later make the purple swirls yellow instead, as you can't really see them well on the green background.

We are in the process of fixing up our little garden, as well as the backyard that is a total mess right now, if you ask me. I also picked up some cute green and white beads to add to our updated chandelier, so eventually I can finish this (with the help of our electrician friends). The hubs made a super fab banana cake for a party last week (I'll share the recipe later).

All in all, we are doing things little by little, since we both are in shows. It is always fun doing things around the house. Next up is working on fixing parts of the fence:

What are you all working on?

Have a great Wednesday!
-M

Tweet

Pineapple Banana Upside-Down Cake

Sorry this is late posting- My hubs made this a while ago, and it was really tasty!

I love banana and pineapple, so to have the two in cake/bread form- I'm totally game. So here is the recipe for my hubs' Pineapple Banana Upside-Down Cake.

Pineapple Banana Upside-Down Cake

Ingredients:

• 3 bananas 
• 1/4 Cup melted butter
• 1 1/2 cup flour 
• 3/4 cup sugar 
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla 
• 1 tsp baking soda 
• pinch of salt 
• 1 can of pineapples in 100% pineapple juice

Directions:

Place pineapples pieces at bottom of your cake pan. Mix everything else together (including the pineapple juice left from the canned pineapples). Bake at 350 degrees until toothpick comes out clean (roughly 30-40 minutes). Once cooled, flip cake over on plate so pineapples are on top. Tada!

Before flipping over:

After flipping over:

Tada!

Thanks for stopping by! It was a tasty cake, and I hope you enjoy it too. It's more of a banana-bread then a cake, but I imagine with some icing, you could have it for those of you who don't want chocolate.
Enjoy!
-M

Tweet

Banana so-called ice cream

So my hubs and I have been scouring the internet for a healthier alternative to ice cream. We came across a recipe for "banana faux ice cream", aka. 2 ingredient ice cream.
After some trial and error, we came to this recipe for the "So-called Banana ice cream".

This is the strawberry-banana variation. So my hubs enjoyed this so much, that he went out and purchased more bananas to try new flavors. haha

Ingredients:

• 4 bananas (2 sliced and frozen, 2 sliced but NOT frozen)
• 2-4 ounces of your "flavor" (see below)

Flavors variations: 

• strawberry jam
• peanut butter (some honey with the peanut butter probably is a lot better tasting than straight up pb & bananas)
• chocolate syrup
• mangoes (we used the frozen mangoes, and if you use this one, use 8 ounces of frozen mangoes)
• caramel
•  honey

Instructions:
Slice up 2 bananas, then stick them in the freezer. After about an hour or so, slice up 2 more bananas and take the frozen ones out of the freezer. Throw all of the bananas (frozen and not frozen) into the blender. Add your "flavor" to the blender mixer and mix till consistency of a think milkshake. Then freeze for another 1-2 hours (or longer). Now you have the "So-called Banana ice cream."

So far my favorite was the banana/mango- as it was more of a sorbet than an ice cream. Most of these are more of that way, and not really "creamy" like most ice creams are, since there is no real milk involved. However this is a GREAT alternative to ice cream for those who are lactose or who are on Weight Watchers (bananas are zero points all!).
Have a happy day all!
-M

Tweet