Glimpse of Our Apt & Banana Bread!

So I snuck this photo in this post too... This restaurant is in Southlake, a city in between Fort Worth and Dallas. This particular area is specifically called Southlake Town Square, it's very quaint with lots of unique restaurants, shops, and places for dessert - a great area for a date! Kind of like a bigger, higher end version of Valley Junction for you Des Moiners ;) There is a good mixture of the places you'll see in high end malls with places you (at least I) hadn't heard of before. We went this weekend for our first time and really liked it!

So this is our deck and view. It's great.

Here's our Gardenia plant (given to us by Nick's family for our 1 year anniv!) soaking up the warm Texas sun. It loves it. This is the best smelling plant ever; each time a new bud opens up, the whole room gains the great fragrance!

Here's my "garden" (wide) bathtub/shower. Yes, I say "my" because Nick uses the other, smaller bathroom :) What a gentleman.

The corner decor in my bathroom, keeping everything looking neat (at least attempting to!)

The window nook in my bathroom. With 3 cute cacti from Pier 1 - I'm digging out my inner Texan ;)

Banana Bread

Ingredients:
2/3 Cup Sugar (I used brown)
1/3 Cup butter (or applesauce if you have any... I didn't)
2 Cups whole wheat flour
2 Tsp Baking Powder
1/4 Tsp Baking Soda
1/4 Tsp Salt
3/4 Tbsp (or so) Cinnamon
1 Tbsp Vanilla
3 Ripe Bananas, mashed
2 heaping Tbsp Yogurt added in the end to improve consistency - milk could be used too

In a bowl, cream together the butter (I melted mine to make it easier), sugar, and vanilla.

In a bigger bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and soda, salt, and cinnamon.

Here are my mixed dry and wet ingredient bowls

Next, pour the wet bowl of ingredients into the dry, mixing well.

Add one mashed banana at a time, watching to get the desired dough-like consistency. I used 3 mashed bananas. To add a bit more liquid (I didn't want it to be too dry), I added about 2 heaping Tbsp of yogurt (mine was raspberry - I didn't have eggs or milk so I improvised :)).

Once everything is mixed well, pour into a greased 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 mins (mine took 40) or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Once removed from the oven, let cool in the pan for 10 mins then remove the pan and let cool on a wire rack:

So good. Dense and sweet... Husband approved :) Enjoy!