Author: Kevin Fodness

  • Homemade French Vanilla Ice Cream

    Homemade French Vanilla Ice Cream

    Homemade French Vanilla Ice Cream This recipe is intended to be made with the Kitchen Aid stand mixer and the Kitchen Aid ice cream maker attachment, but it could be made in a conventional ice cream maker as well.

  • The Great Garage Swap

    The Great Garage Swap

    Yesterday, we did what we call The Great Garage Swap, which is where we unload all of our winter gear from the storage shed (nicknamed “the barn”), load it back up with all of our summer stuff (bikes, scooters, etc) and then get all of our winter gear organized in the garage. We were under […]

  • Pumpkin Carving

    Pumpkin Carving

    This year, since COVID has impacted our ability to go trick-or-treating and do many of the other fall activities that we typically enjoy, we decided to spend some of the money that we weren’t spending on those other things on some obscenely large pumpkins to turn into jack-o-lanterns. Happy Halloween!

  • See You Later, Dock

    See You Later, Dock

    We have a floating dock that is made from the bottom of a pontoon boat. A few weeks ago, in preparation for winter, we disconnected the gangway, loaded it on top of the floating dock, hooked up an electric trolling motor, and all hopped on the boat for a lazy ride upriver to the boat […]

  • Firewood for Winter

    Firewood for Winter

    Joyous Equinox, everyone! Today is the first day of Autumn, and the weather here has started to turn cold. Our preparations for winter are well under way. Our house has a wood burning insert in the fireplace, which is optimized for producing heat while minimizing the amount of warm air from our house that goes […]

  • Kelsey, the Olympic Triathlete

    Kelsey, the Olympic Triathlete

    Kelsey has been training to do an Ironman Triathlon, which is a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, followed by a 26.2 mile run, for a total distance of 140.6 miles. In order to build up to this, she has been doing self-timed races of smaller distances, beginning with what is […]

  • Taming the Jungle

    Taming the Jungle

    When we bought our house in December, it hadn’t been occupied for about three years. There were several aspects of the house that had fallen into neglect and disrepair. We addressed most of them during the winter and the spring, and spent most of the summer building our dock, improving the waterfront, and generally enjoying […]

  • In Memoriam: Betty Weatherill, 1920-2020

    In Memoriam: Betty Weatherill, 1920-2020

    My maternal grandmother, Betty Weatherill, passed away on Sunday. She was 100. Her obituary, beautifully written my my mother and my aunts, says far more than I could hope to about her life, so I will include it in its entirety at the end of this post. Growing up, Grandma’s house was always warm and […]

  • Catch a Fish, Release a Fish

    Catch a Fish, Release a Fish

    My parents recently visited, and our kids were very excited to go fishing with Pop-Pop. Ainsley caught a fish as big as her head! Grayson did a lot of casting and reeling, but didn’t actually catch anything. Dillon had better luck, though. Dillon was so interested in fishing that he got up at 6am to […]