celebrations

fantasmagorie for new year’s eve

The treasures to be seen on YouTube continue to astonish. For this lazy New Year’s weekend, we offer Émile Cohl‘s Fantasmagorie; created in 1908, one of the first animated films.

To make this film, Cohl placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then traced the next drawing-with variations-on top of it until he had some 700 drawings… the characters in the film look as though they’ve been drawn on a chalkboard, but it’s an illusion. By filming black lines on paper and then printing in negative Cohl makes his animations appear to be chalk drawings.

It is charming, odd, fabulous and at the .47 second mark seems to be secretly giving a New Year’s message.

via OpenCulture

12.31.11 | comments (2) | in art, celebrations, video |

holiday wishes from ‘the improvised life’

archives of american art, smithsonian institution

A 1957 homemade holiday card by artist Alexandra Darrow, known for her Works Progress Administration murals of the 1930′s.

…And we’re wishing you fatso joy and blessings…

(We’ll be back on January 1st.)

via Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

12.25.11 | comments | in art, celebrations, inspiration blogs + sites, people |

santa’s coming!!!!

A friend of my friend made this very lucky shot last year. I’ve posted about it here. But now I watched it again, and realized that only few thousand people have seen it. It deserves more: for me it’s still the number one in this special moon+plane genre (music is still lame..).

via dvdp

12.23.11 | comments | in celebrations |

j.s bach does Christmas: live-stream and free downloads

Ever since we discovered radio station WKCR’s annual Bach Festival years ago, we’ve can’t get through the holiday season without a big dose of the great composer. The festival features music of Johann Sebastian Bach exclusively from 3pm on Thursday 12/22 till midnight on Saturday 12/31, streamable live at the top right of their site…full of fat joy for a week, whenever you want it…

like….right….NOW!

If you are a serious Bach-o-holic, you can also download James Kibbie’s recordings of Johann Sebastian Bachs complete organ works, organized into 13 different groups for download, free.

12.23.11 | comments | in celebrations, free + flea, music, resources, resources blogs + sites |

dept. of tiny miracles: 100-year-old letter to santa found in a chimney

The Irish Times reported an amazing story of a 100 year-old letter to Santa found tucked in a Dublin chimney. It was found by the house’s current occupant, John Byrne, who works in the building industry.

“At that time, the fireplaces were made of brick with a shelf on either side,” Byrne. “The letter was found on one of the shelves.”

It makes some simple, very specific requests: read more…

12.22.11 | comments (1) | in celebrations, family + friends, kids, sightings |

alt christmas trees made of string lights n’ things to d-i-y

Christmas holiday tree d-i-y

Although we love walking through the canyons of trees for sale on New York City streets, we haven’t been able to wrap our heads around buying and decorating a Christmas tree. Lately, we’ve seen a number of festive alt-Christmas trees made with inexpensive string Christmas lights: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form… read more…

12.22.11 | comments | in celebrations, cheap + great, d-i-y, inside, lighting, strategies |

revisionist jingle bells bollywood-style

(Video link here.) We need silly right about now.

With thanks to Cara de Silva!

12.21.11 | comments | in celebrations, community, video |

best-ever holiday cookie recipe: ethereal brown sugar butter cookies with many variations

Brown Sugar Butter Cookie from The Improvisational Cook

photo: maria robledo

With the holidays soon upon us, I thought I’d post one of my very best cookie recipes. Or perhaps I should say cookie dough recipes: in addition to being able to fashion it into all sorts of cookie shapes and flavors, it also makes a great bake-ahead tart crust. Fleur de Sel Cookies, Earl Grey Tea Cookies, Coffee Vanilla Bean Cookies, Shortbread Pastry Lids and Shells for Tarts, and Brown Sugar Lime Curd Tart are just a few of the creations it easily morphs into. Once you know the basic thinking behind it, you can improvise endlessly with it. read more…

12.21.11 | comments (13) | in celebrations, cheap + great, d-i-y, family + friends, food, how-to, recipes, resources, share |

‘sugar plum fairy’ on a glass harp (water music)

(Video link here.)

We were charmed by this wondrous rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Sugar Plum Fairy on a glass harp – wine glasses filled with water. We were also amazed when went to GlassDuo’s website and learned:

“Many of those who see a set of wine glasses for the first time consider it most avant-garde to use it as a musical instrument. And it amazes them to learn that in the Far East glass instruments were already known in the Middle Ages…”

How makeshift led to such beauty…

…And then we remembered the water music our friend Peggy Markel filmed on a street in India…

Magic.

Via Neatorama

12.19.11 | comments | in celebrations, music |

‘gif wrap’ + six strategies for cool, cheap gift wrap (d-i-y)

We wish our gift wrapping could do the boogie-woogie like this Gif Wrap by Fueled by Coffee. But barring that bit of magical brilliance, here’s our favorite strategies for impromptu gift wrapping. read more…

12.19.11 | comments (2) | in celebrations, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, gifts, materials, resources |

‘christmas is about remembering’

Algerian poet Rabah Belamri at La Napoule, France

photo: lisa morphew

Our friend Lisa Morphew recently sent us a photo of Rabah Belamri, an extraordinary Algerian poet we met many years ago in the south of France. Accompanying the photo were these words:

“It feels like this Christmas is about remembering the people that somehow changed my life.”

Rabah was blind; he lost his sight when he was a teenager living in a remote village in Algeria. He had a poet’s memory for the world, with a blind man’s acute senses: hearing, touch, smell, the “feeling” of a place.

Fearless, he would walk with us in the mountains, guided by his companion Yvonne, along rough dirt paths and steep inclines, through meadows of wild thyme, crossing streams by stepping trustingly on one rock after another, as Yvonne talked him across. Rabah and Yvonne, as though their senses were intertwined, would comment on scent of flowers we hadn’t seen, plucking wild fruits for us to taste that we hadn’t noticed. Writes Lisa:

“Rabah taught me read more…

12.19.11 | comments (2) | in art, celebrations, family + friends, inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, principles |

gifts for the wine curious: metro wine maps

When I saw ‘the improvised life’s recent post about christopher niemann’s fab color-tiled bathrooms, I immediately thought of the Metro Wine Map of France, created by architectural historian and wine buff Dr. David Gissen, which was introduced this past summer by De Long, a favorite resource of mine for beautiful wine region maps and clever viticultural charts.

I love how it riffs on the classic city subway map, and neatly organizes the mind-numbing number French wine regions and their myriad subregions, shown clearly in their relative positions. It also features major grape varieties shown in context with their corresponding appellations (think: place names, i.e. Rhone, Condrieu, St-Joseph), as well as major geographical features and architectural landmarks, too. read more…

12.17.11 | comments | in celebrations, family + friends, food, gifts, resources blogs + sites |

our favorite homemade food gifts to d-i-y

ellen silverman

We switched over to homemade food gifts for the holidays many, many years ago, and each year we find ourselves in the kitchen with the same tried-and-true recipes. But the repetition doesn’t come from a laziness or a lack of inspiration—over the years we’ve found that our friends and family look forward to these gifts, enjoying the tradition rather than hungering for something new. We’re getting ready to make this year’s batch, and hope some of these recipes and ideas serve you (and your loved ones) well, starting with our favorite: alt-malted milk balls (above)… read more…

12.16.11 | comments (1) | in celebrations, d-i-y, eating, family + friends, food, gifts, recipes |

build a gingerbread geodesic dome (vicariously or otherwise)

(Video link here.) Last year around this time, we wondered “WHY NOT make a modernist gingerbread house, rather than the usual Victorian style?” Making gingerbread houses and structures allows you to act out your architectural and sweet-tooth fantasies, and are a perfect holiday activity to do with friends or kids; they invite collaboration and the pushing of limits.

We have never seen anything that nailed gingerbread-building better than this video of the making of a geodesic dome gingerbread house: from the creation of a structure to the baking of walls to the final, wild, decorating with sugary delights of all kinds. It’s a way to vicariously experience the magical process…but…

…if you want to build your own geodesic dome and feel you need a little help, you can order a kit from Scout Regalia, with a template and complete instructions. (We’re thinking you could make a six-sided template to cut out gingerbread “tiles” and then use an inverted bowl to give the dome structure…)

Buckminster Fuller would have loved it. read more…

12.13.11 | comments | in celebrations, d-i-y, family + friends, food, projects + play, video |

bob dylan’s blessing (+ our thanksgiving wish for you)

(Video link here.) At Apple’s recent celebration of Steve Jobs’ life, Norah Jones sang Bob Dylan’s classic Forever Young, which he wrote in the early ’70′s. Although we’ve heard the song many times over the years, we never really focused on the lyrics until we watched the video of Jones’ performance and looked them up. We were surprised to see that Dylan had written what is, in effect, a blessing: wishing all good fortune, the highest of hopes.

Hidden within the last stanza are the perfect words for clinking glasses in a toast on Thanksgiving Day… read more…

11.23.11 | comments (4) | in celebrations, community, family + friends, people, video |