Not your ordinary ice cubes.

Tell me I'm not the only one who finds putting ice into water bottles a bit of a chore.

I'm not talking your normal Nalgene bottle,

I'm talking like your Smart water, Fiji water, or even your Nestle water bottles.

When I attempt to perform such a simple task, I end up making such a mess.

At least that was before I went to Ikea:

You might remember the fun juice ice cubes we made for valentine's day?

Well on that same shopping trip, we found another ice cube tray (the heart tray pictured too!) that is specialized just for people like me---fits right inside the bottle--no shoving and messes necessary.

I decided to be a little creative and throw a little fresh lime juice in the mix,

you know, for a "water with lime" on the go.

Just fill the try with the juice of one lime (that's all you really need) spacing it out as evenly as possible.

Fill the rest with water.

CAREFULLY transfer the tray from the sink to the freezer

(the tray is silicone, so might move around and spill water if you're not careful.)

Freeze.

Fill.

Go.

It's simple and it's brilliant.

What do you think?

Would you use this ice tray?

 What else could you freeze into your new ice trays?

What else can you use the skinny cubes for?

Bites: Spiked Banana Bread

Today's post is a recipe. But not for a drink. I did use whipped cream vodka in the making of the recipe, though, so I figured it still counts. Plus, it is yu-ummy. Like bananas foster in a bread. Yummy.

It all started when I ran out of sour cream. My go-to banana bread recipe has sour cream in it. And I didn't really want to run to the store. So I searched my favorite food blogs- smitten kitchen and how sweet it is. This triple fudge banana bread looked lovely, but I am also out of chocolate chips (who doesn't have chocolate chips on hand? Seriously.). I settled on this jacked-up banana bread recipe.

Since the theme of the post is "But-I-Didn't-Have-Any," of course, I mixed up the bananas, butter, egg, sugar, and vanilla and found that we don't have any bourbon. Are you kidding me? But sitting in the liquor cabinet, right where the bourbon should've been was Pinacle Whipped Cream Vodka. Since I was already committed to the banana bread at this point, why not, right?

And, the result? Sheer loveliness. Foster-y, banana-y glory.

Oh, and here's the recipe (but, like I said, it's adapted from the recipe at Smitten Kitchen)

4 overripe bananas, mashed

1/3 cup melted butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 t vanilla

1 T whipped cream vodka

1 t baking soda

pinch salt

1 t cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

1 1/2 cups flour

Mash the bananas, pour the butter over them. Add the brown sugar, egg, vanilla and vodka. Mix well. Add the baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix well. Add the flour. Mix. Add batter to a greased bread pan. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.

DELICIOUS. Like making-me-hungry-just-looking-at-these delicious. Try it.

Diet Coke Days: a good laugh...

We saw this on Pinterest and had to share :) ... 

...Happy Monday friends!

Can we brag for a sec?

Happy Friday Friends!
Is it just us, or has it been a crazy week?

So thankful for weekly built in breaks...

Anyway...guys, we have exciting news so if you don't mind,
we're going to brag for a second:

Our little Sips blog was featured again on http://www.foodgawker.com/!

( Have you checked them out before? There's lots and lots of yummy recipes and treats! )


Our Mocha Cupcakes made with Via  post from Wednesday made it on their site!

Go see if you can find it!
And hang around, ya know, "gawking" at some of their other great stuff over there.

If you can't tell, we're pretty excited about it :)

Mocha Cupcakes made with Starbucks Via

I wish I could claim this genius idea as my own, but I cannot. Jordan (our sister/sister-in-law), added Starbucks VIA to her cupcake batter and icing a couple of years ago to make the Best. Mocha. Cupcakes on earth. 

And even though it's not my idea, I will sleep better at night once I pass this tip along. Because if you like coffee and chocolate (and cupcakes), you haven't really lived until you've tried one of these.

The whole mocha cupcake recipe is here, but the jist is that you add three packets of VIA to the cupcake batter and two packets of VIA to the frosting. You could use homemade frosting, but the Betty Crocker Buttercream is great in a pinch.

And then, you should probably pack up a platter or two and take them to various coffee-loving friends. If not, you might look at the plate a couple hours later and realize that you've eaten eight cupcakes. Not that that's happened around here or anything.

ps- We served these at the Denver Blogger Meetup and they were quite the hit!