I love customizable recipes, as you know, and smoothie bags are pro at being customizable to what you’ve got going on. They can be seasonal (right now I’m all about cantaloupe and citrus) or they can be totally out-of-season, since they’re frozen.

Busy mornings are much more manageable when you’ve got make-ahead smoothie bags stashed in the freezer!

I first got hooked on make-ahead smoothies when I was pregnant with my youngest (more on how they saved me is below).

Few things brighten up a gray, cold, dreary morning than a smoothie of bright summer fruits. They’re a bright spot in the morning rush with kids!

Here’s how mornings usually tend to go in my apartment:

-First, my daughter climbs into bed with my husband and I and wakes me up by stealing my pillow.

-Coffee is made, I do my meditation and journaling and catch up on emails before my 3 year old wakes,

-Breakfast for the kids. I wash any dishes left from last night, pack lunches if needed. NPR on the radio, toys scattered across the living room that I JUST PICKED UP LAST NIGHT.

-Fight with my daughter that she can’t wear a bikini and a skirt to school today.

-Chase my son down and wrestle him into socks.

-Send the kids into my bedroom to say goodbye to their sleeping Daddy (who likely got home from work around midnight).

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-Zip coats, pop lunches in backpacks, tie shoes, switch out a shirt when my son uses the sleeve to wipe his runny nose.

-Pop the 18-month old up onto my back in the baby carrier, tell my daughter for the thousandth time that no, she can’t bring a tub of Legos to the nanny’s house.

-Collecting an ever-growing armful of sticks and stones the kids have found along the walk to school.

Notice anything missing there? MY BREAKFAST. I always have high hopes for sitting down and eating breakfast with my kids and every morning, it gets pushed by the wayside.

Enter a make-ahead smoothie bag. It makes my life so much easier, healthier, and I can drink it in the mornings on the go.

Likely, I’ll be guzzling it down in between wrestling a kindergartener into a pair of tights and slicing kiwifruit for yogurts.

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I can create make-ahead smoothie bags from fruit I’ve got that’s starting to go bad, frozen fruits on sale at the grocery store, fruit that’s in season.

Sometimes I’ll make it so all I have to do is dump the bag in the blender and away we go – the rest of the time (most of the time), I make the ‘bones’ of a smoothie and then add almond milk or yogurt to the blender to combine.

Below I’ve got three variations on my favorite make-ahead smoothie bags this time of year! I tend to switch it up depending on the season, and I don’t go out of season if I can help it.

One more thing before I share the smoothie recipes- these little babies SAVED me during my last postpartum period. Granted, I had my son in late May so the weather was much warmer than it is now, but they were a godsend.

Not only did an icy smoothie cool me down in the mornings (postpartum sweats are real, yo) but they were grabbable, easy, and – this is the best part- I could pour them into a large cup with a straw and drink one with one hand while I held a breastfeeding baby with the other.

Each make-ahead smoothie bag I had premade before the baby came was like a little fist bump from my pregnant self to my postpartum self. They’d make a great gift for the pregnant moms you know!

Ok- on to the combinations!

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