One of things I love about Mexico is the country’s embrace of the make-shift; people are great at rigging what they need with whatever they have access to. Inventive solutions to all kinds of problems and needs are everywhere, as I discovered on a recent vacation in Sayulita, Mexico, a fishing village-cum-surfer-paradise about 35 miles…
Read Morerule for living: apologize every day
My friend Holton Rower, who is an amazing artist, created this sign on his studio door using colored tape. It’s a really great reminder that instantly shifts your perspective: about being more mindful of the potential to hurt someone’s feelings, including your own, maybe especially your own. Just about everybody I know judges themselves harshly, with unspoken words…
Read Morecatalogue your storage with snapshots
A picture of some gorgeous ceramic paper plates by designer Virginia Sin sent me to her website, an odd mix of her advertising and art works, and practical inventions. My favorite, filed under “Passionately Curious” is her system for cataloguing her shoes by pasting a polaroid image of the shoe right on the box.…
Read Moreblank-canvas furniture
A while back, the N.Y. Times reported on a stylish mom whose muslin-covered John Derian sofa became a canvas for her daughter and her seventh grade class to decorate with markers. The article didn’t say whether she’d intended the white muslin sofa to be painted on or whether the blank canvas she’d meant only to…
Read Moreawesome music made from you-tube videos
Out of clips of musicians downloaded from YouTube, Israeli musician Kutiman (Ophir Kutiel) cut and mixed more than a hundred performances into original music. As Sasha Frere-Jones put it: “total strangers collaborating on what sound like live songs”. Hear the album and watch the videos (with attribution) at thru-you.com.
Read Morea mantle as furniture (no hearth)
Many years ago, I bought an amazing yellow mantle, salvaged from an old house in Maine, to surround the fireplace in an apartment I thought I’d live in forever. Then things changed (life’s operating principle) and I had to leave that beautiful space, and make a new home amidst the the harsh realities of…
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