It’s hard, sometimes, to ignore the way that society pushes us to idealise a picture-perfect life in which we’ve achieved all our grandest goals and thereafter spend our days simply counting our golden riches, basking in the opaque glory of our rise to unmarred excellence.
The truth is that there’s rarely any joy in pinning our hopes on such an end-point. After all, to do so is to risk missing the myriad little moments that make life worth living.
Like putting sprinkles on your morning bowl of porridge.
Or making a secret pact with your brother on the phone one night, a pact that takes some of the fear out of your respective futures.
Like when a dear friend shows up at your work with a tin full of just-baked-still-warm Milo shortbread, decadently rich and buttery and crumbly and divine and tasting of love, compassion, and friendship.
Or putting sprinkles on top of your peanut butter toast.
Like realising that overseas travel is finally, finally, a very real possibility again, and using this realisation as your own private talisman.
Or having a chest to lean into and arms around your waist.
Like finally breaking out your beloved Vita-Mix, for the first time in months, to make a thick, creamy, frosty, sweet, simple-yet-perfect Pineappleberry Smoothie on a hot flower-laden Spring afternoon.
And then putting sprinkles on it.
Pineappleberry Smoothie
As I’m currently devoid of measuring implements, I measured this smoothie by weight, but I’ll do my best to guesstimate the other measurements for you.
Serves 1, generously.
- 3/4 cup (110g) frozen pineapple
- 3/4 cup (110g) frozen blueberries
- 1 very generous scoop (25g) Vanilla Sunwarrior Protein Powder
- 1 cup soy milk (or nut milk)
- water or more soy/nut milk, as needed
- sprinkles, optional
- Place all ingredients in a blender and blend away. I started with a half cup of milk but this was far too little to get the mixture blending, so I added rather a lot more as well as extra ice-cold water. I like my smoothies really thick and spoon-able, but if you like yours more liquid-y, then add more milk/water to your heart’s desire.
- Garnish with sprinkles, if you feel like smiling.
- Oh, and if you’re like me, serve in a bowl with a spoon instead of in a glass with a straw.
I’m sending this smoothie through to Ricki for her Wellness Weekend event and Lisa’s Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love.
Question Time: What little happiness has led you to smile today?
{ 98 comments… read them below or add one }
mwah
love you and your words and photos
Thank you my darling; I needed that today xo
Pineapple and blueberry is such a delicious combo. The color is gorgeous too!
Sprinkle are total happiness. So far today… mine was been cinnamon and nutmeg-laced coffee.
It’s interesting how beautiful smoothies can be when you don’t combine spinach and berries
Oh, I love that! I’ve been obsessed with cardmom lately. Must add it to my coffee a la you!
Your friend’s shortbread sounds awesome. Also, your smoothie is so vibrant! Very excellent choices of fruit, yum and yum.
I forgot to say that I very much agree with your wisdom – there is much to appreciate in lovely little moments. P.S. it sounds like you are seeing someone? Tell tell!
I’m just sayin’, I reckon that would be nice
Thank you! Yes, smoothies can be so pretty as long as you don’t add anything green to one involving berries
I have so much frozen pineapple in my freezer from when bananas cost too much; I’ll have to make this smoothie quite a few more times, I think!
I would be instantly happier eating that besprinkled smoothie too! Can’t wait to hear about this travel talk you’re alluding to.
Thank you Alayna! Nothing will be definite for a long while yet, so I wouldn’t hold your breath for details
But I will say this: it involves your country.
ooh, her country is my country!
*bursting out into rendition of ‘this land is your land’*
*counters with “you say tomayto, I say tomahto”*
Sprinkles for life!
Amen, sister!
Sprinkles? YOU just made me smile.
It’s very early in the morning here, but I did smile and wave at Snacks, my goldfish, full of hope that one day she might return the salutations.
Would you like three more goldfish, Laura? Their names are Cummerbund, Kinako, and Poppet, and you’re more than welcome to them. If our fish are anything like us, they’ll get along like a happy house on fire
xoxo
What a wonderful way to wake up, but with sprinkles on my morning porridge! Love this Hannah. Such a cute way to make someone, or myself smile xo
That means so much, Leah! I just utterly love the thought of helping you smile too xo
well you did Hannah, right when I needed it too. Thanks lovely xoxo
*hugs* I’m always here, darling! An email or tweet away
Hear hear, well said and beautifully written. It really is the little things in life that make it all worthwhile, and really, perfection is just a myth. I love your sprinkles here, they are so cheerful, I just can’t help but smile.
And that is all, all, and everything I could ask for
Thank you, Hannah! ‘Course, if sprinkles make me smile, it’s inevitable that they’ll make you smile too. I like us. 
1. sprinkles are never optional when they are available. I actually think your sprinkles are the first thing that made me smile today… and it’s nearly 4 PM here. This smoothie looks so dessert like… I think I even have all of the ingredients (minus the protein powder) in my possession. Hope things stay on the up + up for you Hannah!
Oh Shannon, it makes me feel like goldenness to know this brought you a smile, and I only curse the time difference gods for not enabling you to smile first thing in the morning! It was a very dessert-like and sweet smoothie! Just between you and me, I actually found myself longing a little for spinach to tone down the sweet. But, you know, instead I added sprinkles
ahhh sprinkles
Just delightful!
Your smoothie look so pretty. Everything is better with sprinkles.
That’s my motto in life!
so poetic on a Wednesday morning
Beautiful post. Putting coconut oil on my smoothie this morning made me smile. I am so pleased that travel is a possibility! Where would you be dreaming of first?
Heidi xo
Where else but the country of our respective hearts, Heidi?
Not for a long while yet, and still only in the tentative stage. Ah, I should try coconut oil in a smoothie again! I once drizzled it over as a garnish, and got rather horrifying comments in response about what it looked like! *shudders*
This came at the most perfect time for me when I just wrote about feeling meh. Sprinkles make me happy. Sprinkles on smoothies and you have me doing cartwheels!
I’m dreaming of travel as well…Thailand maybe or even feeling the pull to head back to Vietnam…
Darling, I’m so, so grateful to have been able to help pull you away from ‘meh’ and towards cartwheeling! Oh how I wish you and I could both escape right now for a coffee or beer to pull each other away from the doldrums. And dream/plan of travel together! xo
The little happiness that has made me smile today is reading your beautiful and wise words and also the fact that you liked my shortbread! maybe I will have to make you some with sprinkles in next time! xox
Looks like I might have to do some shortbread experiments!!!
And peanut butter! And salted caramel! And popcorn! And warheads!
These are all things I have faith you could turn into shortbread
See this is why you are the food blogger, I hadn’t even thought of any of those ingredients! Pure genius Miss Hannah xox
The lesson I have learnt today: sprinkles make everything better and I do not use them enough. I have a strong desire to leave work and go and make peanut butter fairy bread, which is quite problematic when it is 9.20am in the morning and I haven’t yet been at work for 2 hours.
(Why am I on here when I haven’t been at work for 2 hours? Let’s not ask that question.)
I am also so excited that overseas travel may be on your horizon!!!! I find overseas holidays can provide at least a year of anticipatory build up and planning, so if it’s vaguely possible, that’s time to start reaping the benefits of the lead up stage
PS. I really like your new printable recipes. How did you achieve such wonders?
Kari, thank you!! I’ve been trying to decide if the Print function is valuable for you all (and, if so, I’ll continue going back and updating my old recipes), so it’s reayll great to hear this from you! I simply installed a plug-in
Thank you for this beautiful comment, Kari! Peanut butter fairy bread, or peanut butter fairy toast, is indeed far more important than work… or at least I wish it could be!
Wait, yes, what?! Are you normally at work at 7am? The horror!
And yes, yes, yes. It’s having the possibility of actual travel that is so very important right now, and helps me breathe. I’m so glad you understand
Well, 7.30am, and only some days – and it makes me feel better about reading blogs at work
*laughs* I won’t tell
Love this happiness post.
Travel to the US. We have cheap bananas.
Little happinesses for me are: mid-day naps, carbs for dinner, and snuggles with my puppy in ONE MONTH!
Puppy snuggles!!! They’re the best!
Travel to the US? You might just be on the money there
And I’ll have you know our bananas are now down to $6 a kilo. Which is still daylight robbery, but better than $14…
As you know, I’m all about the little happinesses. They are vital to every day. Today’s include:
~ having a mini sleep in
~ getting 3 gorgeous mangos for $5
~ eating strawberries
~ wearing a top that hasn’t been worn since last summer
and I’m sure there are many more to come!
Oh, I love your positivity about more gloriousness in the future! Thank you; I needed to hear that
Milo shortbread? Yes please!
Sprinkles are so cute, but I hate the taste
If I want rainbow… you know where I’m headed (towards a Paddlepop hehe)
Hooray for lovely exciting travel possibilities for you, that’s amazing!
Little happiness would be watching my Misty toddle around a playground, obviously so STOKED that he is walking, hugest grin, ear to ear, screeching and singing…. just lovely
If only I hadn’t eaten all the shortbread already!
I’m intrigued by your comment about sprinkles, because these taste just like sugar. Like caster sugar. But often the line-type sprinkles do taste a bit funny?
Oh! Your little happiness is doubly good beacuse it’s truly a little [person's] happiness!
hehe, I don’t like sugar! Not the white nasty stuff anyway – I just don’t eat much of it at all so my taste buds are super sensitive to it. I find they taste like chemicals, but maybe I’m just a bit coo coo
or cuckoo.
Oh, they probably do then
If I ever see sprinkles made of maple syrup or agave, I’ll let you know 
I am jealous of your vita-mixing powers.
Whats making me smile? It’s been a bit overshadowed by final exams but I just scored two job interviews which I’m a bit thrilled about. woop!
Casey, that’s magnificent!! I’m so happy for you
Fingers crossed for you, though I’m sure you’ll ace both interviews 
Sprinkles makes everything better. It’s the magic of rainbows!!!
Amen, sister! I’ve progressed to simply mixing peanut butter with sprinkles in a bowl and eating it with a spoon. This may be why I feel slightly nauseous right now, actually.
Phew, so you don’t make pink porridge and your peanut butter isn’t pink! I was starting to wonder what planet you’d come from.
Planet Your Uterus?
Holy smokes, I actually said that out loud.
(Said/published.)
You did and you lost me!
Oh that was a very serious first paragraph miss Hannah!
I know, right? I’m like the deep-and-meaningful ninja. I’m all laughter and cartwheels and nincompoop-talk and then…. BAM. Serious metaphorical faux-existential evaluate yo’ life IN DA HOUSE.
Spay lady strikes again!
YOU CAN’T SEE ME I’M A STATUE!
One little happiness came when the internet at uni stopped working at 3pm, making me unable to download any more essays to mark, meaning I had to go home
Now that, my dear, is a beautiful, beautiful gift of failed technology. Good woman.
What made me smile today? Your blog post and photos of this very colourful smoothie; Ms NQN’s post of Bistro Guillaume, and me unwittingly being responsible for something that once I knew about it was firstly insanely embarrassing and then crazy funny, so funny I then laughed all day ab0ut being a complete idiot! Or, is that ‘nincompoop’?!
Definitely nincompoop! It’s the fantasticamical and loveable kind of idiocy
I’m so touched that my post was a part of your smiles today! And to be classed alongside the wonderful Lorraine? Even better! 
But please, please do tell what this funny “something” of yours was!
Maybe I need to put sprinkles on my smoothies to convince Sylvia they are yummy – she loves sprinkles but wont drink smoothies – glad the vitamix is in action again – smoothies are happiness in a glass!
I say yes, yes, yes to every part of this comment, Johanna! Best part is there’s no way Sylvia could pick the sprinkles out without also eating at least a little smoothie
Everything is better with sprinkles!!
If I had a motto, that would be it. Or part of it. There’s also have to be something about peanut butter and puppies and cuddles, but definitely sprinkles in there somewhere.
Oh heavens I’m a little delirious.
You’re turning mushy again.. how fares thee in thy dating world? YOU haven’t.. i repeat HAVE NOT.. updated me on that at all :O
Mushy like peas! Sometimes I need to write these things to help me get through days
And no, I haven’t. I haven’t at all. Because you haven’t bought me a ticket to Melbourne so we can have a sleepover on your couch
Hee hee hee… I love EVERYTHING about this, Han!! From the name, to the colour, to the flavour and esp the little touch of happiness from the rainbow sprinkles. I can’t see how this would NOT make any one happy. Can’t! Thanks for sharing with us your creativity and also a side of your bubbly personality through the recipe. Though, I think a lot of ppl can identify with what you say about society can demand of us. Least you sort of turned things around starting with this great recipe! =D
Aw, thank you Winston! Your comment is even better than sprinkles for creating happiness
In fact, it’s such an awesome comment I’m going to go back and read it again… 
Secret packs are always a great idea!
As long as you keep them secret
I am craving a smoothie now! That one looks soo yummy! I love how you added sprinkles on top!
Thank you Shannon!
I enjoyed waking up to my crying cat, gettin all up in my face and pawing and clawing and loving me up and showing her appreciation, for the first time in over a week this morning:) Of course, I ignored her and went back to sleep, but I loved it nonetheless. In my sleepy state of mind, her voice and the alarm merged, creating an impatient, surround-sound alarm that led to one thing – the snooze button.
When I woke up later she had calmed down, crawled under a portion of the quilt, and was laying cutely next to my legs. I love her so much!
Extra happiness has come from being home, and being able to cook my own food (I love travel, but hate shelling out cash for every meal). I look forward to seeing you in Ammerrrrrrrricaaaaaaa; please come visit. You won’t get any sleep because the cat will paw you and cry at your face, but rest assured you won’t shell out food-cash!
Psychic Cat is now also psychically linked to your alarm? By heavens, that animal will be running the universe soon! I’m not sure whether I’m going to be ready for that day or not.
Also, note to self: When visiting Emma, make sure to wake her up by sitting on her and poking her face. Emma will take this as a sign of love.
Bahaha! I just kept reading your comment (I respond as I read), and it seems that Psychic Cat and I will have to compete for who wakes up first and gets to be the Wake Up Fairy for everyone else. Also…. squeeeee! Fingers crossed, fingers crossed!
I realize I should be focused on the smoothie but really, the Milo shortbread has captured my attention. I’ve never heard of it before! It looks delicious.
Many would agree with you that the Milo shortbread is more enticing than the smoothie, I’m sure
I am most interested in:
1. “…realising that overseas travel is finally, finally, a very real possibility again, and using this realisation as your own private talisman” because I’m clutching that talisman of yours right along with you!
2. “…having a chest to lean into and arms around your waist.” TELL ME MORE of this.
1. I’m now imagining this talisman as one of those paired heart-shaped Be Fri/St Ends necklaces
Let’s never let it go, babe!
2. Just sayin’.
Oh, I need a dear friend like that. Definitely.
Pineapple and blueberries. Brilliant. I’m going to do that this week
Oh, Alisa, how I long to be able to send you a delicious baked creation this very minute! Darn our lack of food teleportation devices!
WOW… that smoothie is epic!!!!!!
I need to get some sprinkles ASAP!
Thank you! And yeah you do!
Hey, this looks like another pretty and healthy concoction! I want a fruit blender too!
Thank you! But please don’t ever, ever ask me how much I paid for that blender. Please.
Thanks for sharing! Visit me at http://raisingdieter.blogspot.com/ for recipes and a giveaway!
I love frozen smoothies that are so thick you have to eat them with a spoon from a bowl!
The pact with your brother sounds mysterious and promising, I’m excited for you!
Me too! The thicker the better, and now that I can finally afford bananas again, I foresee more thick smoothies in my future
And thank you! It’s a very comforting pact
You know I’m going to have to say, hmmmmm? Whilst I do admire the beautiful purple colour of your “pineapple” smoothie. But I can’t go with the sprinkles on everything. Whilst I admire your youthful enthusiasm for all things sprinkly, I just couldn’t face them at breakfast. Or on my smoothie. Whilst I will try nut butter or nutella on my porridge one day, I think I’ll leave the sprinkles off…
But, Louise, do you add sweetener of any kind to your porridge? Because if you do, that’s the equivalent of sprinkles. My sprinkles are just pretty much sugar, wheeeeee! Which is like nutella without the chocolate part. Yes. Oh lord, I’m exhausted.
Oh, I nearly forgot, Milo Shortbread looks most excellent! What a lovely friend.
She truly is magnificent
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