A rather ordinary chair with good simple lines becomes much more interesting with an assymetrical two-tone paint job. We love that color-blockish thing!
Here’s a chair transformed by two-toned upholstery: mattress ticking and velvet in tandem: read more…
les floralies
Recently, we were enticed to buy a travel-size-two-fer of Les Floralies Sniff Boxes: one to encourage sleep, the other “focus”. Sniff boxes are little vials of “aroma beads” infused with various mixes of essential oils designed to assist well-being. We enjoyed Les Floralies‘ scents and charming packaging — and found that opening a sniff box did provided a lovely, instant break. But we have to admit that as soon as we opened the intriguing little vials, we started thinking about how we could improvise some ourselves, with our own, custom-mixed blend of scents. What would be the medium that would hold the scent of the essential oils for a good amount of time, without being messy when opened? White rice, balls of infused wax, salt...? Suddenly, we realized we had ALREADY improvised a solution — years ago.
The ladder idea came up when there was no more room in the cupboards for the pots and pans, and it looks great.
Although we’ve definitely disengaged from the holiday gift buying mania, we DO love the pleasure of giving gifts. Our favorite solution, do-able even at the very last minute, are charity donations. You can give money to a charity like the Robin Hood Foundation or Doctors Without Borders and then send out e-cards in your loved one’s names.
Our new favorite iteration: give a gift card that allows the giftee to give to the charity of his/her choice. At Tis Best, you can give real cards or e-cards, and best yet: you can design your own card online. We’ve made two this year: one with a pattern of Maira Kalman Stars, and one with Rockwell Kent‘s angel.
We find our family and friends always delighted to receive a charitable gift donation as we all try to figure out how to give in a bigger, more meaningful way.
*digikijo
A few weeks ago, after Susan Dworski mentioned that she carved stamps out of erasers, we started thinking about all the things you could do with home-made stamps. Why not stamp a pattern on sheets or rolls of paper to make your own fab holiday wrapping paper? (It’s easy, you just get yourself some Staedtler Mars Erasers
Then we remembered some wonderful gift wrap our friend Holton Rower made with his kids one Christmas. He made his stamps out of potatoes. read more…
photo: michael mcgillis
“Wake” by Michael McGillis is a 95-foot long pathway enclosed on both sides by brightly-painted cut logs; it’s on display at the Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota. Although the installation is apparently a commentary on humanity’s disruption of nature, for us (barbarians!) it’s an idea for embellishing the logs we hauled home after Hurricane Sandy, or still have our eye on out in the park…or a way to sparkle up part of a stash of fire wood. read more…
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While we were poking around floral designer Emily Thompson’s website, we came across this swell little tabletop decoration: pillar candles
Related posts: fab bird’s nest wreath (+ other found holiday decor ideas)
diy holiday wreaths (out of just about anything)
alt christmas trees made of string lights n’ things to d-i-y
d-i-y tape trees for walls, windows, or…
alt (wall) Christmas trees
holiday tabletop decor from the farmer’s market
photo: maria robledo
After we posted about making wreaths of “just about anything“, Maria Robledo sent us a picture of a wreath that pushes that idea in the most wonderful and surprising way: a real bird’s nest nestled into winter branches whose leaves have dropped. It was a gift from inspired floral designer Emily Thompson, who even left bits of New York City debris that were part of the find.
Maria photographed on story on Thompson’s “wild” wreath-making for Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Wrote Maria: ”Emily’s wreaths are always naturally-shaped. Doesn’t use the pre-wreath gadgets.” We found a slide-show here.
We love that Thompson often uses found and foraged materials. Any of the materials she winds into wreaths could simply be arranged on the holiday table, instead of flowers… read more…
‘the improvised life’s former assistant Sarah M alerted us to this easy-to-make gift for the holidays: color block wooden spoons, along with a link to A Cozy Kitchen showing how-to. It could not be easier: buy some wooden spoons
We’re not sure what Cara de Silva was doing reading Garden and Gun, but we love the story she spotted on wreaths made in the South. There’s a beauty made with tobacco leaves and a few sprigs of red berries, and another made from cotton plants: materials sourced from fields. It reminded us that a holiday wreath can be made from just about anything. Grapevine, which can be bought already wound into a wreath is lovely as is, and makes a fine round base into which to arrange all sorts of materials, from pine and holly to paper origami (It was the base of the cotton sprig wreath): read more…
(Video link here.) On Ambatalia’s blog, we came across this useful little video demonstrating several ways of folding Furoshiki clothes — large squares of fabric — to make carry bags and packages. What the video fails to show is the little revelation that is scattered around Ambatalia’s site: you can WEAR Furoshiki clothes as well. Tied around the waist, they make a swell apron. When made out of beautiful fabric, you can wear them as a scarf. Molly de Vries of Ambatalia designed this “42-inch square everyday furoshiki scarf” from fine Irish linen; it’s washable and meant to be worn “crumply”: read more…
zero waste home
A reader recently alerted us to Bea Johnson, creator of the website Zero Waste Home, who challenged herself to wear a single man’s shirt in 50 different iterations, as part of her committment to a zero waste lifestyle:
Great inspiration, and many iterations look so wearable and comfortable. Reminds me of Audrey Hepburn and her oversize shirts with tails wrapped around her waist and tied in front. A great look and a fresh perspective at the same time.
Bea posted images of her many stylish shirt improvisations on Zero Waste Home. Unfortunately, the black-and-white photos don’t show all the detail we’re dying to see, nor does Bea describe the fabric and style of the shirt she chose: But we got a sense of it in this photo: read more…
photo: sally schneider
As the holiday party season ramps up, we’ve been mulling ways to decorate the table in simple, charming ways (We’ll be talking about this very subject on The Splendid Table on December 21st). A favorite strategy is to make herb bouquets, a play on our penchant for arranging the table with an array of tiny flower bouquets in odd miniature “vases”, like apothecary and canning jars, juice and shot glasses. We’ve amassed quite a collection over years of combing flea markets and second-hand stores. We’ve also found that CB2 and Amazon have lovely inexpensive bud vases in interesting shapes (check out this Chive vase
Making herb bouquets couldn’t be easier: read more…
We have a strange aversion to wall-to-wall carpeting, finding it monotonous, one dimensional and claustral. But when we saw this clever carpeting made of stripey colors, we though, yeah we might could live with that.
Then we saw these stipes made out of floor tiles and realized the striped thing could be done with lots of materials, transforming them from something ordinary to something ELSE. read more…
ollson & jensen
One unexpected outcome of Hurricane Sandy for us was our new obsession with trees, after we saw some mighty ones toppled over and wondered how we could give them a second life. We hauled a bunch of huge heavy trunk parts home and have found ourselves wandering the park daily to check out the progress of the Parks Department in clearing them away, hoping to snag some slices of the massive 3-foot in diameter oak we wrote about. Most of it has been removed, save the huge trunk and roots. Today we counted the rings and figure the tree to have been around 150 years old.
A reader named Susie Flax summed up what it is that hooked us about the fallen trees in an email, along with a link to the very cool sliced tree trunk coffee table above, after our own hearts: read more…
