Smoothie recipe ideas

Out of my Christmas money this year I decided to buy a smoothie maker to encourage me to eat healthier for the new year and I have become obsessed with it. I've had a blender in the past but its just so difficult to clean and it didn't crush ice particularly well, so I wanted something that was easy to clean and had powerful blades. I came across this...

Blend Active Personal Blender

It allows you to blend your smoothie straight into the bottle for quick and on the go healthy goodness! The bottles are completely spill-free and I use the extra one as a water bottle, so its great for that too!

The good thing about this smoothie blender is that it doesn't require much time to completely blend all the ingredients. It may be a little loud but due to the small amount of time it needs to blend everything this is not a problem. 

My top three current favourite smoothie recipes 

1. The breakfast smoothie

    

Ingredients 

• 1 Banana
• Oatmeal of your choice (I either use plain rolled oats or a Special K Red Berries porridge sachet)
• Skimmed milk or almond milk to cover the oatmeal 
• Mango chunks, as many as you like
• Fat free yoghurt (I tend to put half greek yoghurt and half vanilla froyo)

Blend all together and enjoy your yummy healthy smoothie. If the consistency is too thick you can add some ice cubes or water.

2. The brunch smoothie

Ingredients

• Lots of ice
• Brew your regularly cup of coffee (maybe two depending how strong you want this smoothie to be) and allow to cool for a bit (alternatively don't allow the kettle to boil completely, but do make sure the water is hot so the coffee granules dissolve completely)
• 1/2 Bananas, your preference how many
• a tea spoon of honey to make it a bit sweeter
• Low fat frozen yoghurt
• Skimmed milk or almond milk, this will be the base of the smoothie but add as much or as little as you like depending how strong you want the coffee to be. 
• Water if needed

This smoothie is very much like marmite, you either love it or you hate it. In my opinion you need to get the measurements right for your personal taste as not with this smoothie, unlike the other two, will vary drastically in taste depending on the measurements of the ingredients you choose to include.

3. The lunch time smoothie

Ingredients

• 2 Bananas
• Some mango chunks, as many as you like
• Some chunks of pineapple, as many as you like
• A spoonful of frozen yoghurt (I use a low fat vanilla flavour)
• A spoonful of fat free greek yoghurt
• Water

Blend away! The good thing about this particular smoothie is the bottles that the smoothie is directly blended into are completely sealed and will not leak if you seal it up and pop it in your bag, but make sure you hear the click when closing the lid! You have to make sure its closed properly or your bag will become the new smoothie bottle.

When I next go shopping I am going to buy some vegetables to add to some of these smoothies like kale, broccoli and maybe some celery. I have a few ideas on a couple of smoothies that include these veggies so I'll try them out soon and if they're any good I'll do another blog post about it! 

What are your new years resolutions?

UPDATE! I just purchased a small bag of chia seeds to put in these smoothies and my porridges and I really recommend them. You can vary the taste by depending on how much you put in. The only downside is that they do get stuck in your teeth but thats a risk I'm willing to take! Lots of health benefits too apparently.

Do you have any good smoothie recipe ideas?

2 Lush bath bomb reviews!

Happy New Year!! I hope everyone enjoyed themselves seeing in the new year, I sure did. 

For Christmas this year I got two bath bombs from Lush and as we all know they are fab but very pricey so I was glad I got two that I had never used before to try out. 

The first one was called Northern Lights and I would have to say out of all of the bath bombs I have used this one was the prettiest. It changed colours and fizzed around the bath and after it had all dissolved (after about 10 minutes) my bath water was purple. One of my favourite colours. It also smelt lush (see what I did there?)

I recommend this one to all the bath lovers out there.

Unfortunately it is not on the website anymore as it was recently in the sale, but go down to your nearest Lush shop and they might still have it there!

The next bath bomb I got for Christmas came part of a gift box set. I'm not sure of the name of this one as I was too excited to use it and threw the box away. I've tried to look it up on their website and they don't seem to sell this one individually and the set I got is no longer available online. This bath bomb made my skin feel really soft and it smelt so good. The only downside to this one is that right in the centre (when you get to that point) its full of glitter so you and your bath water become covered in sliver glitter. If thats your sort of thing then this ones a good'en. 

I also hit the Boxing Day sales and picked up a couple of Yankee candles that were reduced. These candles go hand in hand with bath time. I would recommend investing in one. My two current favourites are Toasted Marshmallow and Strawberry Buttercream. So good you can almost eat them. 

Do you have any bath bomb recommendations?