Smooooth

I need to go grocery shopping.  As such, I'm lacking breakfast foods in my kitchen.  I did some digging in the back of my cupboard and found...a can of pumpkin.  Not promising - and yet, I recalled this Real Simple smoothie recipe from a few months ago, and low and behold, I had all the ingredients! 

Ta Da!  One Spiced Pumpkin Smoothie.  I liked it!  And I'm not really a smoothie person - they're usually too thick and heavy for me.  This was light and tasty.  I made a few modifications, but it was good enough to have two days in a row!  Probably more, since I have to finish off the pumpkin. 

I hadn't used my magic bullet blender in a while - man do I love that thing!  It pulverized the ice in no time, and made a perfect one serving smoothie for me with minimal dishes to do.  I might have to try one of these other smoothie recipes!


SPICED PUMPKIN SMOOTHIE
adapted from Real Simple, February 2011 - original recipe is here, with a bunch more here.

Serves 1
Hands-On Time: 5m
Total Time: 5m

Ingredients:
1 cup ice
1/2 cup almond milk (recipe calls for whole milk)
1/3 cup pure pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon honey
pinch of cinnamon (recipe calls for nutmeg)

Directions

1.Place the milk, pumpkin, honey, and spice in a blender. 
2. Blend until combined.
3. Add the ice, and blend until smooth and frothy.

I found that when I added everything at once, the honey got cold and didn't incorporate.  Mixing all the ingredients without the ice first made it more uniform.  I added a splenda to make it a little sweeter too. 

Faking It

Fake Flowers that is!  I celebrated Mothers Day yesterday with a whole gang of ladies and had so much fun at Spa Castle!  Seriously, if you are anywhere near Queens NY, you must go there.  Amazing! 

Since we would be out all day, I thought that fresh flowers would be a waste, as we'd have no where to stash them with water.  So, I made some fake ones myself out of fabric scraps, and leftover plastic stems from this craft.  Waste not, want not! 

I made these last year too, based on a tutorial from made.  Seriously, watch out for that glue gun, its deadly!  I worked with the glue gun in droplets and small sections, rather than going the length of the fabric all at once - that was too unwieldy, not to mention painful!  Also, the glue dries up at the end by the time I got there, which was a waste.  I wrapped the bases with ribbon to finish it off. 

The ladies liked them, I think!  They can take them home looking fresh as a daisy - and they will stay that way! 

This is a fun, cheap craft you can make for free, basically, using scraps and leftover materials. 

A good way to get your mind off of whatever is on it too! 

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mothers Day to all the lovely ladies out there - moms, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and the rest!

And a very special happy mothers day to MY mom! 

Here is a little card I made for the occasion.  We're off to Spa Castle today - welcome to paradise indeed!  Hope you all have a lovely day too.