Smoothie Bowls - What are they? + How to create one

Ahhh, the smoothie bowl. When I say that you either think of beautiful, pink coloured, fruit adorned, Instagram smoothie bowls that you probably couldn't practically eat. Or you simply have no idea what I'm talking about and putting a smoothie in bowl seems like a crazy idea. You probably have questions, and I'm going to answer them.

Well firstly, what is a smoothie bowl? A smoothie bowl isn't just a smoothie in a bowl. It's a thicker version, created with frozen fruits, especially banana. It's sweet and icy and cold and amazing. This is what you would call the base. So on top goes other yummy food. Toppings! (yay). You can put lots of different food. Some of my favourites are granola (homemade of course), healthy(ish) cereals, oats, fruit, lots more fruit and puffed rice. Play around with different stuff to find the flavours you like.

When you make a smoothie bowl, you have to use frozen fruit. You can use anything you like, but to get a thicker texture, it's really important you use a fruit that blends thick and creamy. The most popular for this seems to be banana. If you don't use this and just use frozen berries, your smoothie bowl won't have the correct texture for eating with a spoon and you'll end up slurping it like soup (not good).

Steps to the perfect smoothie bowl

The first thing to do is to decide your ingredients. Usually I will use frozen banana, frozen mixed berries and almond milk. You need to make sure you have your base ingredient (ie. banana), a liquid (ie. almond milk) and lots of your favourite fruit. If you want you can add other things like chia seeds and yoghurt.
For amounts I would say use the same amount of all your main ingredients. I'm not a very big person so I use about half a cup of the three ingredients I use. I find it makes a great smoothie bowl.
Then chuck it into a blender and blend it all together until there are no lumps of fruit left.
Now put it into a bowl and adorn with toppings (yay)!

Eat the glouriousness (is that a word?).

And that's it. Expect to see some recipes very soon.
Horah for smoothie bowls!

How to Make Fantastic Fabric Coasters

Last Christmas I was given a sewing machine. I have made some lovely things on it and I wanted to make a fabric coaster.I did, and it has been very useful, but the only problem is that they stain easily and mine has an ugly orange juice stain already. If you're careful though, you can wash them. Here I'm going to give you a tutorial on these wonderful coasters.

You need:

• 2 4.5" pieces of fabric
• 1 4" piece of felt
• Sewing machine
• Scissors

Steps:

1. Firstly take the fabric and place the pieces with right sides together. Then, put the piece of felt on top of them and pin them all together

2. Now, using the felt as a guide, sew around the edge of the fabric. Make sure to leave a gap in between where you are sewing and the felt. Before you get to the end, leave about a 2" gap so that you can turn it.

3. Next, very carefully clip the corners.

4. Now you need to turn the the coaster so the patterned side of the fabric is on the outside. You can turn it with the felt on top or turn it and then try to get the felt inside. I personally do the second option because I find the first to bulky to handle.

5. Once you have turned it, take the raw edge of the hole and turn it in and pin. Have a look at the picture below to see what I mean.

6. You now need to do and edge stitch around the whole coaster making sure you catch the the raw edge.

7. Once it's all sewn you can press it and you've made yourself a coaster!