What I Ate Wednesday | Holiday Eats

I'm still in sunny Spain so this weeks eats are holiday eats.

Breakfast

I love to have freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast and some fruit. Today I had delicious, juicy watermelon, followed by muesli and a chopped banana.

Lunch

A group of 18 of us went out for a lazy, boozy lunch which included lots of wine and to eat - just a huge salad. Being a veggie I struggle to find anything I can eat in Spanish restaurants - they don't really cater for veggies in Spain!

We went out for lunch at our local beach restaurant at 1:30pm and arrived home at around 9pm - like I said a lazy , long and boozy lunch with friends. Perfect.

Tea

A quick snack for tea to soak up all lunchtimes vino. A tortilla sandwich, a nectarine and a paraguay.

Espana | Day 1 | Water Park

Happy Friday everyone.

 

I'm enjoying Day 1 of my holiday in Spain today. 

We arrived yesterday lunchtime at Barcelona and made the 2 and a half hour car journey to our family villa.

 First on the list of things to do was to meet up with friends. We come every year and have a fab group of friends that we meet up with, drink vino and just relax.  

All the children play together and we have such a wonderful time.

We have what we call 'The 5 o clock Club.' What that means is wine time! There's around 6 families and we take it in turns to bring jugs of Bellinis or a bottle of wine to the pool, have a gossip and watch the children playing.

After our little drink me and Mini Greenoid headed out for a pizza across the road. They're Mini Greenoids favourite thing to eat in the world and he's been looking forward to it for weeks.

I had a delicious goats cheese salad and a vegetarian pizza. It was yum!

It's our first full day today and a group of 16 of us have come to the waterpark.

I'm gonna go find a water slide to go on. 

Hasta Luego

What I Ate Wednesday | Using Up The Fridge

Well, Wednesday's swung round again fast hasn't it?  Can someone just slow down time a little bit please? - it's going far too fast for me at the moment.

 

I had a very colourful, fruity day for this #WIAW.  The reason was, not to be healthy, but I'm on holiday tomorrow (have I mentioned how frickin excited I am?!) so todays eats (or should I say drinks) were all about using up the food I've got in.  It just so happened it was mainly fruit so that could only mean one thing for me lately - trying out new recipes with my new Breville Blend-Active.

Breakfast

The first smoothie of the day was a yummy concoction of

• 2 bananas
• 3 plums
• a handful of strawberries
• pure squeezed orange juice
• a handful of ice cubes

I loved this one.  I thought it was going to be a bit odd with mixing bananas with the orange juice but it was delicious and very filling.

 

Lunch

 

 

In the morning I was checking over my greenhouse and found quite a few tomatoes that were ready for eating so I picked them and decided to use them in my lunch.  I couldn't think of anything majorly exciting to do with them but I had a seeded bagel or two left over, bit of cheese in my fridge so I made pizzas.  My love for pizzas is never ending!

 

Snack

 

Honestly, this was one of the most revolting things I've ever tasted and I only managed to drink half of it.  I found the recipe on Breville Creative Kitchen which has some tasty looking recipes for the blender.  It was one of the only recipes that I had all the ingredients for so I thought I'd give it a go. 

 

When I follow a recipe I never pay attention to quantities.  I always just add what I think.  On this occasion, I think I messed up the quantities.  I'll try making this smoothie again following the instructions but this time it was just all wrong.

 

Tea

I was not put off by my smoothie snack and stuck to another smoothie for tea.  This one was

• 2 nectarines
• 3 plums
• 3 tablespoons of greek yoghurt
• squirt of honey to taste

This one was delicious.  I didn't add the honey at first but after tasting it without I decided it needed a little something to sweeten it slightly. 

 

My fruit bowl is now almost empty and I'm pleased that I used most of it up before my holiday.  I hate wasting food.

 

I was surprised that I wasn't at all hungry throughout the day.  I've never tried a smoothie/juice detox before as I felt it would be impossible for me but I really enjoyed making the smoothies and might look into these detox things a bit more.

 

 

What do you do with your fruit / fridge contents before a holiday?  Do you make weird and wonderful dishes to use it up?

 

Have you tried a juice cleanse?

 

 

BEAUTY | Montagne Jeunesse | Banana Foot Treatment

Before I go on my summer holidays I like to make sure my feet are in tip top condition for being shown off in strappy, summer sandals. I've tried a few of the Montagne Jeunesse face masks but I'd never seen this 2 part Montagne Jeunesse Cool Banana Buffer and Hot Banana Butter before. I found it in Home Bargains (a bargain store in the UK) and they were 3 for £2. A real bargain! So, I piled my basket full of different ones to try.

I was excited to try this foot treatment.  It's in two parts.  You first use the Cool Banana Buffer to exfoliate, then the Hot Banana Butter to moisturize.

Before using the Cool Banana Buffer I placed the Hot Banana Butter in a small bowl of hot water to heat up as per the instructions. The buffer has exfoliating apricot grains.  It smells divine. 

As you can see, I had a little helper in my 2 year old niece who wanted to join in the fun so my sachet was shared between one and a half pairs of feet and there was more than enough to go round.

I tried to take photos of the buffer and the cream but with a very boisterous and enthusiastic 2 year old in tow it just wasn't happening I'm afraid. 

After exfoliating for a few minutes with the banana buffer I rinsed it off and dried my feet. I then applied the hot banana butter.  It smelled delicious and almost good enough to eat.  I love the fruity smell of bananas so this was an ideal product for me.  There was an awful lot of moisturizer in the sachet.  At first it was an odd sensation for me rubbing warm cream on my feet but I soon got used to it and absolutely loved it.  It has the calming effects of aloe vera and shea butter. It didn't feel in any way greasy and was absorbed into my skin quickly. 

It's been a few days since I used this pack and my feet are definitely smoother and that horrible dry skin around my heel has pretty much vanished.  I'm amazed at how well this product has worked and I'll definitely be purchasing it again.  I would really recommend it to anyone whether you have particularly dry feet or not.

Have you tried Montagne Jeunesse?

What's your favourite mask?

Awesome Bloggers | August

Oh. My. Goodness. Where do I start?  Last month seems to have been filled with so many fabulously, amazingly awesome new blogs to explore. 

I love discovering a new blog and spending time ages and ages trailing through it, looking at all the photos and finding out little bits about the blogger.  I become an almost mini stalker for a short time.  Don't judge me - I know you do it too!

Some blogs I discover are nice just to look through once, others I find, I know I'll be reading their future posts for at least the next few months, and that's what this little space is for - a look back on the blogs I've recently discovered that I'd love to share with you.

 

Rosy over at A Joyful Kind Of Life has a wonderful little lifestyle blog that I simply adore.  My favourite feature on her blog has to be Sunday's Letters.  In fact I'm thinking of pinching the idea for over here on Gemzicle Sprinkles (hope you don't mind Rosy). There's a bit of everything on Rosy's blog so if you're like me and enjoy cooking, crafts, bits of fashion I'm sure you'll love Rosy's blog.  There's also some fab links to lots of blog hop parties if you have a blog you'd like to try and grow using parties.

Formerly Army Ever After, Elizabeth Loves is a place where Elizabeth shares so many aspects of her life with us.  She's a military wife living in Hawaii.  I literally drool when I see her photos in her recipe posts.  I love the way she writes and  I find myself grinning to myself as I'm reading as I feel like she's really talking to me.

Papervein

Papervein is the works of the lovely, self confessed crazy cat girl Amanda.  Any girl who is a crazy cat girl is a winner in my book as I'm kinda one myself.  She shares her thoughts and experiences on many different topics.  I've realised that this is what I like in a blog.  I love it when there's a variety of posts as it keeps my short attention span focused.

 

Kitchen Meets Girl is, as the name would suggest, a foodie blog.  Written by Ashley, a married mother of one who didn't always love to cook.  Her recipes are simply delightful with something for everyone including breakfast ideas, slow cooker delights and healthier option ideas.  But, the thing I love the most about this blog is that if you fancy making one of the recipes you can create your own shopping list.  It's cool. You'll have to go and check it out.

The Official Blog Guide is different from the others as you can probably tell from the title and only really of use if you're a blogger.  As a relatively new blogger there's so much for me still to learn about the technical side of blogging.  I find this blog really informative on lots of different aspects of blogging, it has daily link up parties which are growing in popularity and it really visually appeals to me.

Linky time

An InLinkz Link-up