Glowing Skin Smoothie

I cheated this week and made my smoothies for next week early. With Easter being today, I knew I'd be too busy to get it done (and I was right) so I went ahead and made them Friday since I was off of work! I know this smoothie doesn't look any different than last week's, but trust me, it is! I traded out the coconut almond milk for coconut water, added avocado and strawberries, and cut out the peanut butter and pineapple, but it still has that great tropical taste thanks to the coconut water and mango. And, with the addition of strawberries, I just might like this one even more!

I adapted this recipe from Sally over at Sally's Baking Addiction and she does a great job breaking down what each of these ingredients does for your skin. Coconut water and avocados are hydrating, the carotenoids in mango helps your skin glow, and the nutrients in the kale or spinach help remove toxins from our bodies. I decided to add strawberries to this smoothie to change it up even more from last week's. Strawberries have anti-inflammatory properties and are also rich in vitamin C. Literally everything in this smoothie is great for you. So why aren't you in your kitchen making it yet?!

Glowing Skin Smoothie

(Makes 2 Servings)

Ingredients

1/2 cup plain coconut water
2 frozen, ripe bananas
1 cup frozen strawberries
1 cup frozen mango
2 cups spinach or kale
1/2 of an avocado
1 tablespoon chia seeds (optional)

Directions

Throw everything into your blender and blend until smooth! Drink and enjoy or do like I did and a make servings for the week and freeze. Again, moving from the freezer to the refrigerator the night before you plan on drinking it.

*The recipe says frozen fruits, but since I'm freezing my smoothies anyway, I mainly use fresh (except for the mango b/c I buy it in bulk). If I was planning on drinking this immediately after making it, I'd definitely suggest using frozen fruit. Also, I add chia seeds to just about any smoothie. They're such an easy addition with a huge impact.

I hope everyone had a great Easter with their family and friends! 

xoxo

Tropical Green Smoothie

Ever since I hit the big 3-0 a few months ago, I've been obsessed with coming up with a better skin care regimen. I've never really had a set regimen per say, in fact, I've always hated washing my face. I know, I know. It's terrible to go to bed with makeup on. But it's just SO messy! Water splashing all over the sink is just too much for me. To compromise, I started using face wipes. Still not great, but better than nothing. Nothing gives you a kick in the butt quite like turning thirty, so lately I've been trying to come up with the perfect combination of moisturizes, exfoliators, and masks all while not breaking my face the bank. I'm loving the products I'm currently using, and I'll share those with you eventually, but I wanted to add a little something extra to my new regimen. You can use all the best products in the world and they will do nothing if you're not eating the right way or taking in plenty of water (I've been super guilty of this). So while I've been making sure I drink at least 84 ounces of water each day over the last few weeks, I've now added a daily green smoothie into my diet to give my skin that extra boost. Not to mention how yummy it is!

So I give you this week's Sunday Smoothie!

Tropical Green Smoothie

Ingredients

3/4 cup coconut almond milk
1 handfull of spinach
1/2 banana
1 cup pineapple
1 cup frozen mango
1 tablespoon peanut butter (any nut butter will do)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon chia seeds (optional)

Directions 

Put all the ingredients into your blender and blend until smooth! That's it!

But here's the kick, every Sunday, do that 5-7 times. Yes, 5-7. (Unless you have a crazy blender that can handle making that many servings at once) Fill up 5-7 Mason jars and put them all in the freezer. Each night, place one in the refrigerator and take it out the next morning while you're getting ready. Then drink and enjoy! It's so much easier than making a smoothie every morning. You only have to clean up the mess once and you're much less likely to grab something unhealthy when you don't have time to throw a smoothie together. Also, it guarantees none of your fresh produce spoils before you have the chance to use it, something I'm sure we're all guilty of letting happen.

This smoothie is SO good. The coconut almond milk, pineapple, and mango give it such a great tropical taste. And I promise you can't taste the spinach. I won't lie to you and tell you this smoothie fills me up until lunch because it doesn't. I also don't eat lunch until 2:30 most days so that's my own fault. I just throw a Greek yogurt in my lunch box and have that as a snack and I'm good to go!

If you're a smoothie person, I can't recommend this one enough! I've made this one two weeks in a row now because I just couldn't stand the idea of not having it! And if you're not a smoothie person, this one just might change you.

If you have any good green smoothie recipes, I'd love to hear them!

xoxo

Stud(ly) First Floor

We have walls!!!

March 15, 2016

Well, as my husband so kindly corrected me, we have a frame. Yep, what you're looking at here are the bones of our first floor! We went on an ice cream run drove out Tuesday night with mom and grandma (this was their first time seeing our lot) and were surprised when we turned the corner and saw this! This whole process has been very surreal. I don't feel like it's ours (yet), but here I am snapping pictures of it every chance I get. This all started back in December and it is so exciting finally seeing our future house actually begin to look like a house and not a giant (Georgia red) mud pit. With the gorgeous weather we've had this week, I imagine there's even more done now. There are currently five other houses going up and if two of those are any indication, we'll have a roof on ours in no time! And if you're ever planning on coming in for a visit, that front left corner will be your room! And oh do I have plans for that little guest room. And every other room for that matter. I can't wait to make this house our HOME!

Ready For A Foundation

To some, it may seem like our house is going up super quickly. To us, it's going up at a snail's pace. We are so excited and so ready to be living in our house, to see every decision we've made come to fruition, to start making memories and to eventually start a family here.

We make weekly trips to see the progress, but lately we've had so much rain that it's made it impossible for them to get much done. We also had a little misunderstanding/miscommunication with the layout. We drove out one night before dinner (our new date night routine) after the footings had been poured and our garage was on the right side of the house instead of the left side as we had imagined. This means everything in the house is flipped. All it took was a call to our builder who explained that he always puts the garage on the higher side of the lot to prevent water from draining into the garage. We hadn't even considered this because we specifically picked our lot based off of the fact that we should never have any water issues (thanks to my dad for helping us make that decision!). We sit at the top of a hill and the lot slopes away from the house on all sides. I think our builder even said, "If your house ever floods, we should all probably be building an ark!" Like I said though, it was just a miscommunication and he thought he'd explained it all to us before, but that's all water under the bridge (see what I did there?) now. We're all on the same page now and we have the footings poured, the utility runs have been fitted (those would be the pipes and wires sticking out of the ground), and as far as we can tell, the foundation is ready to be poured!

March 9, 2016

Maybe by the next update we'll have a foundation...and if we're really lucky, some framing will have started!!