Recently, we emailed a friend-fearful-of-the-future our version of a care package: a handful of uplifiting signs and images about taking risks, leaping, going forward into the unknown, one of our favorite subjects. We had just sent off “Leap And the Net Will Appear” when Cynthia Allen from 50 Years 50 Recipes sent us a link to…
Read Moreperfect roast turkey via ‘canal house cooks everyday’ (which we’re giving away!)
With Thanksgiving soon upon us, the debate about whether to brine or not-to-brine the turkey before roasting rages on. We’ve long been a fan of brining, having found it the foolproof method for insuring a moist, well-seasoned bird. Until recently, when two things made us question our belief. Yesterday, on Serious Eats’ Food Lab we…
Read Moreif brainstorming doesn’t work, what does?
(Video link here.) We’re getting a little tired of pat ideas about how creativity works, based on “research”. Take Jonah Lehrer’s quick little film debunking the practice of brainstorming: getting a group of people in a room to throw out ideas without have their ideas criticized. The gist is that RESEARCH has shown that every…
Read Morerevise: ‘here’s to the crazy ones’ via apple + tyler knott
(Video link here.) Several times during the past week, we heard several very creative people we know say “Sometimes I wonder if I’m crazy” meaning…crazy to be doing this…or that…or whatever uncharted path they’ve embarked upon that is not THE NORM. In honor of them, and to antidote the feeling that “crazy” is bad, we…
Read Moremore salvaged tree trunk furniture
Since we first started foraging trees downed from Sandy for various home design applications, we’ve been seeing salvaged tree furniture everywhere. We have trees in our heads! We love the cubist desk, above made from massive hunks or redwood and eucalyptus. (If we had a crane to haul that 3-foot in diameter oak in the…
Read Moreessential disaster (and life) resource: neighbors + friends
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, we followed the New York Time’s blog Storm Aftermath: Live Updates and hit upon an amazing post called “Finding Good Neighbors in Wake of Disaster” by Marcus Yam. Because it had no hyperlink, we excerpted much of it below. The gist: neighbors are one of the best resources you can have,…
Read Moreminimalist shipping pallet daybeds and sofas
When we wander around the city and see a discarded shipping pallet on the street, we mentally embrace its instant and deeply pleasurable design challenge: What could we make with this? Lately, we’ve seen them cleverly used as day beds, with minimal work on the pallet itself, unless you feel like finishing or painting them.…
Read Moregive to sandy relief and get the world
Over the past week, we’ve posted a number of ways to give to Sandy relief. Now there’s a way to ‘get’ when you give. Jan Bekman’s 20×200 online gallery is offering limited edition, archival pigmant prints of Blue Marble: …NASA’s GOES-13 satellite captured this visible image of the Northern Hemisphere on Sunday, October 28 at…
Read Morecool, sturdy cardboard furniture to diy or buy
Recently on Unconsumption, we spotted these cool little cardboard benches made by A4A Design in Milan. The post mentioned that A4A has been a pioneer in designing cardboard furniture; that sent us looking for more, which we found at Inhabitat — a whole slideshow of them. Anaylizing A4A’s designs, we realized that much of their furniture is made…
Read Morean improvised response to loss + difficulty, after sandy
The grueling challenges wrought by Hurricane Sandy continue. The Nor’Easter has brought serious snow fall and cold; we’ve heard that some friends who just regained electrical power yesterday have lost it today. We cannot imagine the level of exhaustion and stress felt by people who have lost homes and are, literally, out in the cold…
Read Morebook giveaway: ‘canal house cooks every day’
We’ve long been fans of Canal House Cooking, the groundbreaking cookbook series created and published by Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton. We are totally smitten with their latest effort: Canal House Cooks Every Day, a bright red, 385-page tome documenting a year of cooking from Canal House, based on their popular daily lunch blog. The book offers…
Read Morevote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have come to terms with the fact that we won’t be able to not stay up late to find out the results of this crazy election. Neither will just about everyone else. So we’ll resume posting tomorrow afternoon (though if you’re really hungry, we’ll have some new facebook postings, including a woman with fab…
Read Morewhat to eat and drink on election night and the day after
Just about everyone we know is beside themselves with anxiety about this election (we find ourselves checking Nate Silver’s 538 polling blog compulsively for comfort). On the eve of the election, we offer our ‘improvised life’ survival guide: cocktails and easy-to-whip-up treats to help assauge anxiety no matter which candidate you favor. The first order of business…
Read Moresandy aftershock: ‘where is healing to be found?’
Last Friday, after 5 days of living without power, ‘the improvised life’s assistant Dese’Rae L. Stage sent us this email: I don’t think I even realized it until yesterday, when I had to jump through 10 hoops just to get ice and dinner. I was like, “god, I’m exhausted,” and it took me a second…
Read MoreForaging Fallen Trees for DIY’s
Not long after I dragged the tree sculpture home, I went back into the park to see what was happening with the huge, ancient 3-foot-in-diameter oak that Hurricane Sandy brought down. The parks people had been cutting it up — terrible to see. They just sawed it apart into chunks to chip; think of the…
Read Moreimprovising when all hell has broken loose
Since the extent of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation became apparent, we’ve had a hard time writing posts. We’ve wondered “what is there to write about except this, with so many people in trouble?” feeling a fierce cognitive dissonance between the people we know are out there struggling to survive and reports of our nifty Ikea hacks.…
Read Morename this nyc raptor: kestrel or hawk owl?
A couple of days ago I found a raptor perched on my terrace rail, right in the middle of Harlem in New York City. I took it to be an owl and posted it on ‘the improvised life’s Facebook page. Since then, a small controversy has been raging, as to whether it is a Hawk…
Read Morehurricane sandy time-lapse: what happened is happening still
(Video link here.) In this astonishing time-lapse video of Hurricane Sandy hitting New York City, you get to see her force grow before your very eyes. Although she’s gone, the effects of that immense storm are very immediate: lots of people around the New York area still don’t have power — no computers, tv, phone,…
Read Moredept of 2nd acts: tony giglio’s improvised walking sticks
Anthony Giglio, a regular contributor to ‘the improvised life’ — his wine-friendly grape “ice cubes” remain a perpetual hit — recently posted on his website about his dad Tony Giglio’s unexpected, found ‘career’ in retirement. He makes walking sticks, and his story is pure ‘improvised life’: About a year ago my father found inspiration in a…
Read Morecreative process: doing this-or-that ‘in your head’
We really love Maira Kalman‘s picture of her worn, old-fashioned boots and it’s simple, insightful, refreshingly real-life annotation. It affirms something we practice many times daily: imagining, fantasizing, trying-on scenarios in our heads that we ultimately will never do because the reality is, well, something we don’t really want to deal with, or can’t deal with.…
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