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

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

our friends rob & ellen recently sent us a gift box from intelligentsia with a bag of fresh roasted coffee and two mugs! we had never tried intelligentsia before, at least that we are aware of, so we were excited. it was a very tasty, smooth cup of coffee, especially brewed with our chemex. we were quite impressed!

on a related note, we’ve upgraded our coffee brewing setup over the last few months. our electric tea kettle was on the fritz, so we got the new variable temperature kettle from bonavita. it’s the perfect companion for pour-over coffee brewers and tea lovers alike. it has a gooseneck spout for easy pouring and the kettle offers complete temperature control for ideal brewing settings. there is also a hold feature to keep your water hot throughout the brewing process, or if you plan on having another cup of tea. basically, it’s pretty awesome!

for christmas we also upgraded our grinder, which was on its last legs as well. we went with a conical burr style from capresso. it actually grinds the beans instead of chopping them, preserving aroma and flavor. the grinder is also extremely quite and super easy! you just set the fineness (from coarse to turkish fine), turn the knob to the amount of cups you want and it does the rest. for our chemex setup, we stick with a coarse grind, which you can see in the below photo.

– ryan

here are a few photos of our holiday decorations this year!!! clementine helped with the wrapping!

– ryan & gub

check out this great lighted holiday heart we saw in kirkwood!

– ryan & gub

for the second year in a row, we went to kinsey family farms in search of the sterritt family christmas tree! it’s about an hour outside of atlanta and offers some great winter agritourism. besides picking out a tree, there’s plenty of holiday fun to be had! they have tractor rides, a petting zoo, and even hot cocoa & s’mores by a bonfire.

kinsey farms offers lots of christmas tree options as well. there are pre-cut firs, living trees, cut-your-own trees, as well as small charlie brown style ones and various wreaths. we went with a cut-your-own leyland cyprus like last year. clementine was a big help cutting down the tree, as you can see in the photos.

check out our post from last winter when we first discovered kinsey family farms. we are glad we’ve made it an annual family holiday tradition!

– ryan & gub

kinsey family farms

7170 jot-em down road
gainesville, ga 30506
770-887-6028

happy halloween! we had quite the hectic halloween for sure. it was our first full day back from the hospital with grey and we still had to finish costumes and carve our enormous 30 lb pumpkin. gub made clementine a bubble’s costume, which she mainly wanted to pull pieces off of. there was also a short-lived blowing wand to go with the bubble’s costume, we have a blurry photo to prove it. none the less, it was great being home with the kids for halloween!

be sure to check out our spooky jack-o-lantern tv! we bought an old thrift store tv a few years ago and spray painted it pumpkin orange. we just cut out blue painters tape for the mouth and eyes on the screen, which we peeled off after the paint dried. viola, a great reusable halloween decoration for under $10!

you should also check out photos from clementine’s 1st halloween last year!

– gub & ryan

clementine recently got a new desk to draw on in our kitchen! it’s the perfect size for her and she loves it. the table was in gub’s family and her mom repainted it to fit in our bright house!

– ryan & gub