Intrigued by a brief mention on her website of her renovated log cabin in Montana, we wrote designer Laura Handler to ask if we could see some pictures of the place. We not only got pictures with charming, haiku-like notations, but the wonderful story behind the cabin:
Fourteen years ago, my mother died and left me a Toyota Corolla with 15 thousand miles on it, and I decided to learn how to drive. As soon as I got my license, I took off a year to drive across the country. By the end of my voyage, I had bought a log cabin and 20 acres in Pray, Montana. No one was more surprised than I.
I wanted the perfect “weekend” getaway from New York City where – excepting for a few years in Milan – I had lived for my entire adult life.
Its resulting design has evolved – as I have – to become an stew of indigenous influences, incongruous cultures, and things that I love.
Inspired by Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation that I visited on my drive, I added a austere and minimalist 1000 square foot cedar plank deck to the cabin.I cut through the log walls in the bedroom and studio, and added large sliding glass doors to the deck. I had all of the old wall to wall carpeting and linoleum ripped up, the particle board subflooring sanded smooth, and the entire floor epoxied bright white.
It feels more like a log apartment than a cabin. Or a log loft. A Gloft?
Handler’s notations, room-by-room, give an idea of her sensibility, process, and resourcefulness: read more…
One of the things we love the most here at The Improvised Life is the sense of community we feel with our readers. We get some amazing feedback, and what we hear more often than not is that you love to wake up to the little tidbits of inspiration we post here bright and early each morning. We also frequently hear that you love the lack of eyesores–err, ads–on the site. The site itself requires upkeep, the creation of fresh new content requires time and effort, and all of that is a full-time (and wholly rewarding) job. In short, we still need to eat.
One of the things we’re doing to circumvent advertising on the site is our Friends With Benefits program. In short, for as little as $5 a month via PayPal, you can support The Improvised Life and get a link on our site to your own website or that of your favorite charity. So, what do you say? Wanna be a pal?
Side note: Using the fun iPhone app Hipstamatic (loaded with and using variations on the Dali Museum GoodPak), we took a pair of tenner$ and riffed on the one and only Alexander Hamilton. read more…
In summer, we sometimes find ourselves spending time in the badly-equipped kitchens of rented or borrowed summer houses that can be a great challenge to cook in. So we apply the concept of makeshift: When you find you don’t have a particular piece of equipment you need, improvise a substitute or “shift” the dish you are making to accommodate it.
When it comes to equipment, makeshift is an antidote to the inhibiting, very modern reliance on matching sets of pots and stylishly outfitted kitchens. It cuts to the heart of the matter: rather than letting a piece of equipment stand in the way, you come up with a makeshift solution, as resourceful people have for eons, so you can still make the delicious dish you were planning. Use a label-less wine bottle to roll out pastry dough, a coffee cup for a ladle and get by just fine with one good sharp knife (we often travel with a folding Opinel picnic knife). We heard of a woman who pulled out her ironing board when she needed more counter space.
We’ve come up with an array of makeshift solutions over the years. The example below (with a couple of recipe) will give you a sense of possibility for devising your own makeshift equipment when you need it. There’s only one rule: whatever works. read more…
The other day walking in a nearby park early one morning, we came upon a line of swings – big kid’s swings – in a playground. So we thought ‘Why not?‘ and did what we hadn’t done in many many years: swung HIGH looking at up at trees and sky.
When I was looking for an affordable space to buy in New York City, I devised strategies for envisioning how I might tailor the various spaces I was considering. I ended up teaching these strategies to several friends who were “stuck” when trying to design a new kitchen, study — any room at all; these simple approaches helped them unplug the creative flow of ideas, and ultimately find solutions to their design dilemmas.
The first thing is to figure out all the things you need a space to do or have, and make a list. read more…
Makes us think about: What bridge are we crossing right now…
….and are we crossing it wholeheartedly?
Then we remembered the poem we read this morning, by Ryōkan:
Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
Sometimes you can cross a bridge without doing a thing.
There’s one week left to enter our giveaway, Mindy Fox’s Salads: Beyond the Bowl. Summer is the perfect season for this book, though there’s a ton of ideas for all year (think Shaved Brussel Sprouts, Olive Oil, Lemon and Peppered Sheep’s Milk Cheese, or Shredded Celery Root, Manchego and Pistachios…).
To enter the giveaway, leave us a comment telling us what goes into your favorite salad. On Tuesday, July 17th, we’ll randomly pick a winner to receive this beautiful book.
This evening, we’re going to try Mindy’s Blueberries, Feta and Mint recipe, Mindy’s riff on the classic ever-surprising combo, watermelon and feta cheese: read more…
When designer Laura Handler sent us word of her new blog, Interesting Found Objects, we instantly started poking around. We love Unmentionables, her latest post, with a divine, mind-boggling Japanese condom package-design. Then we flew to her website to find out about her. We looked at her designs and was smitten with her stacking, interlocking votive candle holders that could be configured in endless ways.
Such a simple and smart idea. We tried stacking our own votives to realize that executing this clever idea really takes a great deal of thought and consideration: so that the flames don’t touch the neighboring votives and possibly crack them; that they interlock so as not to come crashing down…We were reminded that good design only looks simple, and works really well.
Every morning, a friend calls me, or I call him, with a poem to start the day. This seven-month-old tradition arose out of an ‘improvised life’ post called “What’s NOT wrong?” about NOT jumping out of bed to check email or read the news first thing in the morning. Instead, start with a few minutes of reading something really GREAT…anything that reminds you of possibilities, other ways of thinking, grounds you.
My friend and I discovered that reading – or listening to – a poem or two has the effect of placing us right IN the moment, while casting a great deal of light on things, often bringing Nature right into our apartments. Of all the books of poems we read from – of Mary Oliver and Pablo Neruda and Su Tung-P’o to name a few- we’ve found the most treasures in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. I’m not sure “sacred” describes the selection of poems; were I to see the book in a store, I might pass it by, thinking “sacred” to mean religious. The books editor, Stephen Mitchell, calls them “poems of fulfillment.”
(Video link here.) By now everyone knows we’re smitten with images of people leaping, jumping, flying for all the obvious symbolic meaning they can hold: liberation from old constraints, taking chances, or just grooving along. So, although we haven’t experienced the ‘Tiny Wings ’ app that has become so wildly popular, we love this relaxing little video…perfect for the end of the day.
And we just might download the app, so we can take flight daily, wherever we may be.
You have always dreamed of flying – but your wings are tiny. Luckily the world is full of beautiful hills. Use the hills as jumps – slide down, flap your wings and fly! At least for a moment – until this annoying gravity brings you back down to earth. But the next hill is waiting for you already. Watch out for the night and fly as fast as you can.
Since we started showing friends around our new space, several remarked on our shower hook solution. While our plan originally was to install hooks to hang towels on the bathroom door as we had in our last space, in reality, we couldn’t bear to hang anything on the beautiful 8-foot high-gloss-painted wood door. So where could we hang our towels to dry? Towel bars weren’t an option a) because we find that they take up a lot of space and don’t still dry towels properly and b) we didn’t want to take up so much space in our wonderfully minimalist bathroom. We’d worked hard to make it’s limited space LOOK spacious, and towels-on-walls would just close it in.
Our solution, at first makeshift, now permanent: we hung pot-rack hooks over our shower bar to hang towels on. read more…
My brother is a huge Bill Murray fan so recently having had the “experience” of working with him I asked him if he wouldn’t mind signing a Birthday card for him. Inside he wrote, “grab this day by the neck and kiss it”…my new mantra for life.
WOW!!!! Yeah. Perfect mantra (whether Bill Murray actually said it or not.)
And now here’s the quote we clipped, Murray talking about his teacher Del Close (more WOW!): read more…
The other day, we got a snail mail note from a friend. While snail mail is inself a rare gift these days, there was an added surprise. When we opened the envelope, a cascade of pressed flowers fell out. In addition to bringing a charming blast of ‘garden’ into the apartment, the flowers were like little symbols of care and regard; our friend had taken the time to press the flowers and thoughtfully include them in her note.
We loved it. Pressing flowers (and leaves) is easy: you pick them, dry them, press them sandwiched between clean sheets of paper in a thick heavy book. Time does the rest. (There’s a great visual how-to here.)
But really, this is about the possibilities for enclosing surprises in a note or letter, that give it a totally “other” dimension. read more…
We recently discovered Instagram, one of the hottest photo sharing/social media apps for iPhone and Android. It’s a GREAT way to maintain a visual journal/daily diary on-the-go for the sporadic or time-restrained journaler or, alternately, the more visually-oriented person who wants to document their day-to-day. It’s quick and easy: you snap a picture with your phone and apply filters at will for a retro film “feel”. If you like, include a caption or the location where the image was captured, and share it across various social media platforms. You can also choose to maintain a public or a private feed, and follow your friends’ Instagram feeds. Or just keep the images as a personal journal on your phone or computer.
What we like the best about Instagram is that it’s a great hand-held improvisational tool for creatively exploring the world around you. read more…
(Video link here.) We are always on the lookout for people, books and sites that give an honest view of what it takes to make or do or be something. So were intrigued by this video trailer for The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. The book is Oliver Burkeman’s exploration of various kinds of ”inspirational, success-oriented thinking” and new research that posits that “positive thinking” might not be as useful as we thought. It lead him to a radical take on happiness and success: the power of negative thinking, in which we learn to “bathe in insecurity, uncertainty and failure.”
We’re definitely gonna check it out as we’ve long thought that these principles are actually keys to the creative process. This Guardian piece distills a chunk nicely. read more…
and 
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to name a few- we’ve found the most treasures in 
. I’m not sure “sacred” describes the selection of poems; were I to see the book in a store, I might pass it by, thinking “sacred” to mean religious. The books editor, Stephen Mitchell, calls them “poems of fulfillment.”
. The book is Oliver Burkeman’s exploration of various kinds of ”inspirational, success-oriented thinking” and new research that posits that “positive thinking” might not be as useful as we thought. It lead him to a radical take on happiness and success: the power of negative thinking, in which we learn to “bathe in insecurity, uncertainty and failure.”
