Today Remodelista featured Garde, a new shop in Los Angeles that sells “stylishly understated” housewares. We are smitten with the poplar-top table’s Garde’s owner Scotti Sitz designed to display her wares, and which are available by custom order. The bases appear to be an ingenious use of simple copper plumbing pipe. We’ve thought of all…
Read Mored-i-y vintage-box furniture (and obsession)
We recently came across a photo essay of a home decorated with vintage fruit boxes. We’re talking some kind of obsession here. They’re all through the house as furniture and storage solutions, like the bed and shelves above, and this kitchen island on wheels… …and this desk, made strangely chic by the lines, with…
Read Moretv break: the little rascals improvise a cake
(Video link here.) Of the many episodes of The Little Rascals produced in the ‘thirties, this clip has to be one of the best: the poor, ever-resourceful, uninhibited, unsupervised gang of kids make a cake filled with prizes, following the recipe in a completely original way. The backstory: Dickie’s abusive dad is so mean to Dickie’s…
Read Moreikea hack: reverse-painted glass brick room divider
We are smitten with this room divider featured a while back on IkeaHackers: it is a rather visionary transformation of a simple material by Marloes van Heteren of SOLUZ and Remco Wilcke of CUBE Architecten. Clear glass Ikea rectangular vases, in two sizes, were painted white inside, to make reverse-painted glass, a compelling material we posted some…
Read Morevivienne westwood: liberating words of an alt-fashionista
Ouno recently compiled quotes by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood that SO totally fly-in-the-face of the usual fashionista view, we were knocked out: it is fashion-as-liberation, self-expression and NON-consumption. Our favorite Westwood quotes: “Wear a towel instead of a coat, it’s very chic. Or your husband’s boxer shorts with a belt, or something from your grandmother.…
Read Moreweekend voyeur: beatrice da costa’s idea-ific interiors
After photographer Beatrice da Costa sent us her virtual flowers in an email, we went poking around her website. There we found a trove of images of interiors, each, though uncaptioned and mysterious, holding some cool and inspiring idea, like the extraordinary choice of wall colors, above. We are smitten with this corrugated tin ceiling…
Read Morecaine’s arcade: a miracle of cardboard, tape, imagination
(Video link here.) This morning, we found several emails from readers alerting us to this video that is flying around the internet like wildfire. It’s about 9-year-old Caine who devised an elaborate arcade out of cardboard, great quantities of packing tape, plastic toys – whatever he could find – over the course of a summer…
Read Moreyves klein’s curiously inspiring shirt
We’ve always loved Yves Klein‘s shirt printed with hand prints, foot prints and question marks: a mysteriously chic, primal cosmic design that makes us want to get some plain white shirts and paint whatever comes to mind. It would be like wearing a flag of a personal country. Mondoblogo reminded us of it. Related posts:…
Read Morewhy not send a virtual bunch of flowers?
We came home last night world weary after a long day. In our Inbox we found…a virtual bunch of flowers from our friend Beatriz da Costa… …and our whole mood changed! Bia sent us her own photo, but it’s easy enough to do with found ones to brighten someone’s day or wish them “SPRING ….PRINTEMPS….PRIMAVERA…..Happy days…
Read Morea crash course in finance via 11 TED talks
(Video link here.) Vicki Celestines, one of our readers, sent us this great compilation of “compelling TED Talks on Money.” Together, the eleven videos make up a unique “crash course in economics and personal finance” which we can certainly use. They cover topics such as putting a value on nature; raising kids to be entrepreneurs; poverty, money,…
Read Morefab orange-frame mirror, inspired by a work of art
Today, not for the first time, we mistook an artwork for a household object – a mirror actually. We saw this work by Winston Roeth at YouHaveBeenHereSometime right after seeing some images of mirrors and our brain said: “Wow, what a great deeply-orange painted mirror! Why don’t we make one of those?!!” Then we scrolled down…
Read Morechuck close’s ‘note to self’ (eight perfect rules for living)
Sue Anderson, an ‘improvised life’ reader, sent us a link to this GREAT video of artist Chuck Close‘s powerful, simple, forthright words-to-live-by from an ongoing CBS series “Notes to Self”. It’s well-worth suffering through the 30-second commercial for its memorable four minutes of pure wisdom (don’t bother with the last minute of news anchor blather).…
Read Morehow to stop junk mail
Even though it’s not our fault, the vast amounts of junk mail we get makes us feel frustrated and guilty. So much paper going to waste. Try and warp your head around this: the Wall Street Journal reports that 82.5 billion pieces of “advertising mail” were delivered by the U.S. Postal system in 2010. Years…
Read Morecool and surprising uses for pegboard
In The Selby’s recent photo essay of Coffee Supreme in Auckland New Zealand, we spotted some very cool uses for pegboard, a material with which we’ve become enamored when we saw a pegboard headboard. Practically, pegboard is masonite (tempered hardboard) with holes punched in it to hold metal tool holders. Visually, pegboard is polka dot masonite that…
Read Moregoogle street view as time machine + aide memoire
Usually we hear people talking about Google StreetView as a virtual armchair travel tool. You can “visit” all sorts of exotic places you’ve never been to without actually traveling to them, like Stonehenge and other UNESCO World Heritage sites. With the exception of artful manipulation like The Wilderness Downtown, for me these visits remain mostly…
Read Moresan francisco graffiti turns the sidewalk into a fish pond
Another shift of view from Maria Robledo: a fish pond illusion graffiti spotted in San Francisco. The graffiti there is very different than the often cryptic signage we follow in New York. It’s still reverberates with sweet 60’s-ish light:
Read Morealmost vaseless flower arrangement
Our friend Maria Robledo has an ever-improvisational way with “flower” arranging. Here, she cut sprigs of a fragrant vine from her garden and arranged them running down the center of her dinner table, placing the cut ends in shallow ceramic bowls of water to keep them fresh. Perfect. Come to think of it, jar lids,…
Read Moreblaise cendrars: art from easter ashes
The Henry Miller video we posted on Friday has led us to an Eastertime revelation. It can be summed up in two words: Blaise Cendrars. Miller praised the French writer as “my idol,” and says, “what a writer learns from Cendrars is to follow his nose, to obey life’s commands, to worship no other god…
Read Morehappy easter from ‘the improvised life’!!
Gif by the great dvdp
Read Morelast minute ways to get your easter act together
If you didn’t get it together to send plastic goody-filled Easter eggs by mail, or sprout little plants in egg shells, we thought we’d offer some solutions for last-minute Easter egg decorating: There’s still time to make your own plant-based dyes for truly gorgeous Easter eggs (it’s totally fun). We especially dig the moderne neon…
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