we made some old fashioned banana pudding homemade ice cream on the 4th of july. somehow we found the time while also watching grey crawl for the first time!

we set up our wooden bucket ice cream maker on the front porch and used a recipe from nutmeg nanny, which turned out amazing! how can you go wrong with nilla wafers and fresh bananas in your ice cream?

you should definitely try this frozen summer treat at home!

– ryan & gub

old fashioned banana pudding homemade ice cream

recipe from nutmeg nanny.

ingredients:
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 milk
3 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3 tbsp instant banana pudding mix
2 small bananas, sliced
1 cup nilla wafers, coarsely chopped

directions:
in the bowl of an electric mixer, mix the whipping cream, milk and eggs. slowly add the sugar, lemon juice and salt. finally, add the instant banana pudding mix and blend well.

using a wooden spoon, add the small banana slices and stir to incorporate.

pour into the freezer bowl of your ice cream maker. turn on and freeze according to the manufactures directions. during the final 10 minutes of freezing, add the coarsely chopped nilla wafers.

remove frozen ice cream. serve immediately or place in a freezer proof ice cream container and serve when ready.

last fall we upgraded our thermostat to a nest, the super smart thermostat from the guy who created the iPod! to say the least, we are quite impressed and love our nest, which sounds weird to say about a thermostat.

the thermostat was super easy to install. it probably took 30 minutes or less. all i had to do was kill the power to the old thermostat, take off the face to see what wires were plugged in (label the wires if not colored), unscrew the wires, remove the old wall plate, install the new wall plate, connect the wires to the nest, put on the new face and turn the power back on.

the longest part of my installation was touching up the paint around the old thermostat since the new one was much smaller. once the nest was powered up, it was a few steps to get the thermostat connected to our wifi and up and running. from there it was a breeze to program, unlike most thermostats. the first week nest built a schedule based on how we used the thermostat. from there we were able to easily tweak all seven days settings on the thermostat, laptop or on our cell phones!

remote access to the thermostat is pretty cool. if you are traveling home from a vacation or a hot day outside, you can easily set your house to be nice and cold right from your phone! plus it actually gets to the requested temperature at the time you set, most thermostats just turn on at the set time.

there are also motion sensors to avoid wasting energy when no one is around. nest will auto-adjust to an efficient temperature when sensing you are gone. during the summer months the thermostat also keeps your fan running after the air turns off to keep air blowing across the cold coils. this helps keep the house cool even without the AC on. it’s little things like this that make this a very energy efficient device.

another cool aspect about a wifi enabled thermostat is the ability to receive firmware updates. that way your device won’t be outdated when new features come along. plus the firmware updates happen automatically in the background so you don’t have to worry about it. the nest also keeps track of your energy history to see how and why you saved energy. you receive a monthly newsletter letting you know how efficient your thermostat usage has been and compares it to other nest users locally and nationally. what a nice treat!

nest claims you can lower your energy bills by 20% using their thermostat and make your money back in energy savings within the first year. we are about to reach our one year anniversary having the thermostat, so we will update you on how our quest for energy efficiency went and if their claims are accurate!

you can watch a nest demo video here!

– ryan

i recently discovered this great blog by australian illustrator james gulliver hancock. hancock set out on the ambitious goal of hand-drawing every building in new york in 2010. he still has a lot of buildings to go, however you can now purchase a book featuring every drawing he’s done so far.

here is a new york times interview with james from a few months ago.

– ryan

as of july 4th, grey is an official crawler! there’s no turning back now. he does more of an army crawl than new york times, but he’s extremely fast getting around

clementine.

ryan & gub

you can see a longer version of the video here.

athica, the athens institute for contemporary art, recently produced athicards, a creative deck of athens art. the project was really cool, they had 54 athens artists create the front of a playing card, resulting in a full deck of playing cards. the original artwork was on display from saturday, may 25th through sunday, june 23rd at the athica gallery and the decks were available for purchase. in case you missed the exhibit, you can order a set of the the cards from their website.

– ryan & gub

we recently went to fort mountain state park for some outdoor family fun.  it was our first camping trip with the two little ones, so we definitely overpacked and were totally nervous.  in the end we encountered a bear, a (potentially) poisonous snake and a torrential rain storm and still somehow walked away wanting to go camping again as soon as possible!

clementine loved the whole outdoor experience. all she can talk about is going camping again.

‘i go camping outside!’ – clem

fort mountain had plenty of nice trails/hiking and a huge 17-acre lake for swimming in addition to camping. it was also a good 10-15 degrees cooler in the canopied mountains than the city. we weren’t expecting it to get so cold at night, we actually had to zip up our sleeping bags to stay warm!

for an outdoor getaway only two hours from atlanta, we totally recommend fort mountain state park.

– ryan & gub

fort mountain state park

181 fort mountain state park road
chatsworth, ga 30705
706-422-1932

click and drag the image to scroll through the various photos from our instagram feed!

– ryan & gub

from our instagram feed!

– ryan & gub

clementine had an awesome second birthday party! she had a morning gathering at bessie branham park, which is right down the road from our house in kirkwood. we went with a krispy kreme doughnut mound instead of a cake, which was quite the hit with the kids. so was the line drawing fabric from ikea! we laid out some fabric markers and the kids had a blast drawing all over it.

– ryan & gub

bessie branham park

2051 delano drive ne
atlanta, georgia 30317

happy mother’s day! grey and clementine have enjoyed lounging in the hammock together this mother’s day! its adorable.

– ryan, clementine & grey