From Peace, Love and Noticing the Details
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impromptu drowned cell phone rescue (+ life lesson)
We got an email from Manny Howard this morning about an improvised save for water-logged digital appliances (and a great general approach to take when the #$%!! is hitting the fan). We know Manny to be prone to minor disasters from his book My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into…
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salvaged-wood bathtub, headboard, island, floor…
Lately, we’ve been seeing planks and bits of salvaged wood being used in bold geometric patterns to enclose bathtubs, and kitchen islands, make headboards and floors… Pieced together like a puzzle, with a good eye, “rustic” changes curiously to modern.
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the origins of the world wide web
We love David Galbraith’s post about his search for EXACTLY where the World Wide Web got started. He spoke to visionary computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee who wrote the original proposal and early coding for “the global hypertext product that would allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext document”. If you enlarge…
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before + after: lydia’s kitchen renovation
A couple of weeks ago, we started posting about Lydia Wills’ former studio apartment in New York City; the 600-square-foot space had so much going on, we had to make it a series… Here’s her renovated kitchen which, when she moved in, was the most generic of New York City apartment galley kitchens (there’s a…
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italy for the gourmet traveler (+how to hack a guidebook)
In 1996, when I was about to take an extended trip to Italy, Fred Plotkin’s Italy for the Gourmet Traveler was my guide. Plotkin, who had been traveling in Italy since 1973, forged the guide from years of passionate traveling, living and eating there – over 700 pages crammed with personal notations and insider views…
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andrea zittel’s investigative living
When we wrote about clipped-together cardboard box shelving a while back, we mentioned wanting to paint the cardboard boxes – coat them with something to change their look (we were thinking rubber paint) – knowing that the cardboard would swell slightly and become….something else: not smooth but sculptural, possibly even stronger once it had dried.…
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new music from the vegetable orchestra
The Vegetable Orchestra in Vienna, Austria performs original music made and inspired by instruments made of vegetables. Cucumberophones, celery bongos and leek violins might seem like something out of a Max Fleischer cartoon, but they are very real. They yield original sounds and music, with an ephemeral quality because of the living – and fleeting…
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4th of july reprise: warm fresh cherries (with leaves)
Since it’s high cherry season, we thought we’d reprise last years recipe for Warm Fresh Cherries (with Leaves), in honor of the Fourth of July. Too lazy to pit and stem some fresh cherries, a friend and I tried quickly sauteeing them as-is with butter and sugar, to discover the the stems and leaves provided unexpected…
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we are 1!
July 3rd a year ago, we decided to take our own advice and “forgo the idea of being ‘done’, ‘ready’, or ‘perfect’: we launched ‘the improvised life’. It is still a work-in-progress, as improvisations can be, one thing leading to another to another…surprising us daily. The best part has been the community that’s grown up…
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‘make your own uncool’
Recently at You Have Been Here Sometime, we found two really great posts (among a lot of good stuff): The first: a post called A Possible Yellow with two paintings and and interior that use various yellows: POSSIBLE yellows to consider for …where? ….a room?….a sign?….a dress…the side of a building….? We love the idea of…
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cookware as pattern breaker (almost)
We’ve long advocated the pleasure that comes from cooking in a well-made pot: one with good balance when lifted or moved it around the stove, made of material that conducts heat evenly, that feels right to whatever your particular style of cooking is. Some pots actually shift the experience of cooking altogether – for us…
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