housegifts to buy or d-i-y

As is our nature, we started to deconstruct this strangely beautiful fly swatter, thinking it could easily be made with a piece of hardwood and a bit of leather. Then we thought: why bother? It only costs $12.80 + $5 shipping at Kaufman Mercantile. We figure it would make a great, slightly odd, original and…

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d-i-y asymmetrical plank bench

We love this d-i-y bench posted recently on You Are the River for many reasons: -it has a wonderful simplicity made more compelling by being assymetrical -it is made from only 3 pieces of reclaimed wood and some countersunk bolts -it made us think “we can do that”.

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james dyson on ‘why failure doesn’t suck’

Fast Company recently published Failure Does Not Suck, an interview with Sir James Dyson, who spent 15 years inventing the world’s best-selling vacuum cleaner, among other paradigm-altering housewares. Here’s a potent snippet: You once described the inventor’s life as “one of failure.” How so? I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it…

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zigzag paint floors + the zigzag path of the creative

The harsh reality of white-painted floors like the ones in our ‘laboratory’ is that they are prone to scratching and losing their pristine look FAST. Since our plywood floors were painted a beautiful oyster shell white (THAT story to come in a later post), it has been our personal challenge to GET OVER the fact…

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d-i-y glass and mirror ‘whiteboards’ (write right on ’em)

After we posted about clear white board paint, which would allow you to write/and erase any wood or painted surface, Diary of a Tomato alerted us to the very cool alt-whiteboards spotted at Noma Foodlab, an ambitious restaurant and food “experimentarium” in Copenhagen. In the huge high-design loft space, big slabs of glass are afixed to the walls to display…

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unlikely inspiration: tom sach’s futurist cinder block

We often post ideas on ‘the improvised life’ that we might never make, like the futurist cinder block artist Tom Sachs displayed at recent exhibition Space Program Mars.  There is a simple, practical logic to this: these creations remind us of do-able possibilities that, had we the time or wherewithall, we COULD make ourselves. Sach’s…

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harlem nyc 98 degrees: beating the heat

In Harlem, the response to NYC’s recent heatwave has been highly improvisational; rigged umbrellas are everywhere, lashed to fence posts, tree trunks and baby carriages. Hats of all kinds have been configured, lots of chairs arranged under trees. We saw some folks who set up a giant open air cabana on the street so they…

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tom sach’s plywood fridge + a brilliant lesson in color

After we posted Tom Sach’s wonderful ‘love letter to plywood‘, and mentioned our idea to clad our ancient fridge in plywood, a reader  sent us the results of her hungry search for MORE Tom Sachs. Somewhere along the line she stumbled on Sach’s video COLOR, about the strict paint color code he uses in his studio.…

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