check out these beautiful quince flowers!

– ryan & gub

happy valentines day!

– ryan & gub

our new bedding from orla kiely finally arrived! both the packaging and fabric are amazing, we are so excited! it came in these beautiful little boxes that were the same design as our bedding with a note to re-use them. how thoughtful? the new duvet and pillow cases definitely brighten up our bedroom!

orla kiely is a great designer from ireland who makes all sorts of bags, clothing, bedding, towels, paper products and much more. she did a line for target last year and her products went quickly here in atlanta. we really like her designs and were excited to find her bedding available. gub also has an orla purse that she loves!

– ryan & gub

broken social scene was amazing at the buckhead theatre on thursday! after a recent dull evening seeing yo la tengo, i was ready for one of my favorite bands to rock it out, and they did. for over two hours broken social scene played a perfect mix of hits from forgiveness rocks (their most recent), you forgot it in people and their s/t. they even played a song from kevin drew’s solo effort sprit if! my highlights were kc accidental, anthem for a 17 year-old, and ibi dreams of pavement. here’s the setlist.

in case you haven’t seen them before, broken social scene is a band you should definitely check out in concert. i think they are better live than on album, and i love their albums. they tour with a large group of rotating musicians, including numerous people on guitars, percussion, drums, horns, keyboard and more. that many live instruments creates their unique anthem-rock sound that is quite amazing in concert, and hard to mimic on an album. it’s a similar experience to a live arcade fire show.

another note, even though the big-named female singers (see feist, emily haines/metric, amy millan/stars) don’t tour with broken social scene anymore, their shows are still totally fun and worth checking out! go see them if you can.

– ryan

we woke up to a little bit of snow today!

– ryan

we went to the georgia aquarium for the first time recently. we had a great time exploring the various sea creatures. i’m sure we will be back a lot more when we the little one arrives.

check out our youtube page for other videos as well.

– ryan

the highs can be high, but the lows can also be low at a yo la tengo show. in case you haven’t been to a recent concert of theirs, they bring out a wheel featuring different options for them to play. an audience member spins the wheel and whatever it lands on is the bands first set. the options include: songs that start with s, the name game (songs with names in the title), freewheeling (their vh1 storytellers type setup), as well as sets from their alter ego bands and the score to the sounds of the sounds of science. after an intermission, they play a second set of their hits.

all sounds great on paper.

after first landing on spin again, the lucky atlanta contestant landed on spinner’s choice at the recent variety playhouse concert. i totally thought i was in for a classic yo la tengo show, i mean, how could this go wrong? well, this particular fan chose the second half of the sounds of the sounds of science and things got boring quickly. i couldn’t believe when given the option of hearing a set of classic yo la tengo songs, someone would pick the second half of a score to an underwater science documentary. don’t get me wrong, the score is great, but such drony instrumental music has its time and place.

after 45 minutes of the film score and another 40-minute intermission, i was not very pumped about the show anymore. although they did open up the second set with autumn sweater and let’s save tony orlando’s house, waiting that long to hear actual yo la tengo songs was definitely an evening spoiler.

i will think twice about going to another concert where a wheel determines my potential for fun.

– ryan

have any growlers from a brewpub or other large bottles sitting around your house? try filling them with various vinegars or cleaning products like bleach to get more use out of them! we had a few empty ones taking up space in our kitchen so we decided to find another purpose for these cool bottles. our growlers were just collecting dust anyways since georgia doesn’t allow brewpubs to refill them. lame.

– ryan & gub

happy groundhog day! looks like punxsutawney phil didn’t see his shadow, so we can look forward to an early spring! in celebration, i woke up early and watched groundhog day, which is one of my favorites!

– ryan