When we were kids, we loved advent calendars, those big cards with little pop-out windows offering a surprise for each day before Christmas. We were wishing we had one of those, and then we stumbled on something better: The Big Picture’s Hubble Space Telescope Digital Advent Calendar. Each day reveals a new awe-inspiring photo from Hubble, from…
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A friend sent us these photos of the drawings her young artist/fashion-design-o-phile daughter made on her desktop, with this note: ” My daughter artist drawing on her brand new desk… When we moved into our new home w her NEW desk, she needed to make it her own. I was blown away when I saw…
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Although it’s not really our style, we’ve culled quite a few ideas from 1st Dib’s excerpt of All-American: The Exuberant Style of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta. We never knew about reverse painting glass: painting glass or plexiglass (which comes in 4-x-8-foot sheets) on the “back” side so that the color shows through on the front, making…
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One of our favorite blogs these days is Made by Joel, the toy and craft projects that artist Joel Henriques makes for his kids. He manages to make A LOT out of ‘nothing’: dollhouses out of Cheerios boxes, puppets from paper clips and cardboard, cities from paper. The thing that we love is how Joel’s…
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‘the improvised life’ is proud to be part of the second annual NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, a collaborative holiday guide by “the city’s coolest bloggers”*. It is the brilliant idea of Charlie at Manhattan User’s Guide: bring together an amazing community of bloggers who are wildly passionate, dedicated and SMART, to give their take…
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Alert !!: ‘the improvised life is THRILLED to be part a very cool group post called NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, the ultimate holiday guide by New York’s best bloggers, from unique gifts to the most celebratory libations, to Christmas with Andy Warhol. Be sure to check out it; it’s on the Home Page now,…
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We LOVE this simple bed on a base of this rough-cut timbers, one longer than the other to extend beyond the bed to make a built-in side table. This bedroom is part of an exhibition at The Villa Noailles, an arts center located in the hills above Hyères, in the Var, in southeastern France. The…
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Want a place to read Design/Interiors/Home/D-I-Y blogs all in one place? Check out Remodelista’s Design Newsstand, which brings their great, curated selection of blogs together, organized by general categories, like Fabulous Femmes, Hipster & Minimalist, Exotica, Design Magazines Online… Like a great newsstand, it invites browsing (it’s in beta, and is a bit wonky on…
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d-i-y stick notes, d-i-y post-its, restickable glue, Desk-It notes, office tools
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Here’s a video treat for this lazy day after Thanksgiving… Related post: danny macaskill’s bike lesson (setbacks + difficulties + perseverance = mastery) via Kottke
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When we stumbled on this two-part video of the Macedonia Youth Sanctuary Choir in Winston-Salem, North Carolina singing “Everyday is a Day of Thanksgiving”, we were knocked out by how the choir just LEAPED into that song, singing Leonard Burks’ wondrous hymn full out. That, in itself seemed amazing until, near the end of the Part One…
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On an “ordinary” day, we found this photo in our Inbox, with a note: “A big fat sign and reminder of what’s important on a beautiful fall day.” And soon after, we found this post by Anne Herbert at Peace and Love and Noticing the Details: “I’m thankful that the morning sky is skidding across…
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Just in case you’re scrambling for last minute recipes, here are a few favorites from past posts that work perfectly in the Thanksgiving palette. We’ve also included our recipe for quick, practically foolproof, freeform tarts made with fall fruit such as apples, pears or plums (plays on Tart-O-Matic: Improvising Fresh Fruit Tarts that we posted last…
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This unusual cranberry conserve is immensely satisfying, tart and sweet, with a chunky texture from an abundance of nuts and raisins. It’s adapted from a recipe by Mrs. Fannie Wought of Cullom, Illinois that was published many years ago in the wonderful, out-of-print-but-findable Mennonite Community Cookbook by Mary Emma Showalter. The conserve is delicious with…
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We love this swell makeshift seat from Ikea’s Christmas blog (in Swedish): a stack of oversized books with a pillow on top. It’s comes close in simple brilliance to our favorite from last year: the chair bench, made from a few chairs and a long board…
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Last year, we were invited to the collective Thanksgiving dinner of several families. One person oversaw the wines, turkey and stuffing; others made desserts and side dishes. Another improvised the huge 16-foot-long table that would seat 18 hungry grown-ups and children. It was not until we were helping deconstruct the table at the end of…
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Years ago a friend devised an interesting table top to use for big dinner parties. She had two half-circles cut from two 4’x 8′ sheets of plywood. Then she hinged them together at the straight sides with a piano hinge. It opened up like a book to become an round 8-foot-diameter table top which she placed,…
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Mary Oliver‘s poem “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness” appeared in the New York Times last Sunday, while we were visiting a friend who had recently made the decision to forego treatment of a deadly cancer, and live out her life, eyes wide open. Every year we have been witness to it: how the world…
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Cerre of 2 or 3 Things We Know posted this video by her film maker/correspondent father. He is making a series of short films (with an accompanying blog to come) about aging baby boomers who have reinvented their careers and personal lives. It’s inspiring no matter what age you are. We LOVE the shift that…
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In Lookbook 54, artists Emily Larned and Roxane Zargham created 54 different improvisations on one XL white t-shirt, using common household supplies (binder clips, safety pins, duct tape) as styling aids. They set serious constraints for themselves: The shirt is never cut or permanently altered, and all the accessories serve a function. In their singular work, they seek to…
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