We love this guy dressed in a suit, tie shoes and hat, skateboarding his way…where?!!!!
What a chic way to travel (if you can manage it)…as liberating as our favorite “leap” pictures: read more…
strategies
how-to find affordable and/or rare books online
After reading two recent post referring to out-of-print books like Calder at Home and How to Construct Reitveld Furniture, a long-time reader emailed us a great strategy for finding affordable books online using “favorite searches” on ABE books. Check out her message below to hear how it works. We are going to try setting up searches for some hard-to-find books:
…when you are looking for a used book that seems too expensive, you should try ABE books. You can save searches (including advanced searches, e.g., by price, year, ISBN numbers if you want a particular edition, hardback or paperback, etc) and they send you an email you when any book fitting those parameters come for sale on to the used book market—sort of like a favorite search on ebay, keeping you from having to constantly check if a new, cheaper copy has become available. Many of the used book vendors on amazon are simultaneously selling on ABE (stands for Advanced Book Exchange).
I find it great for books that I would like to get to one day, and so am in no rush to buy (and most of my books I get from the library anyway), or that are out of print, etc.
Related posts: how to sell your books online
65 modern art books online…for free!
what are you reading that inspires?
calder via ‘world of interiors’ + ‘the improvised life’
open art books as decoration + artwork
dominic wilcox’s ‘speed creating’ wakes up your thinking
photo: dominic wilcox
When we want to wake/shake up our thinking, we check in at Dominic Wilcox‘s blog Variations on Normal. You never know what that clever guy will come up with. We especially love his month-long project, Speed Creating. Every day for 30 consecutive days, HE practiced waking up his thinking by making something creative with whatever was at hand in the course of his day, whether at home, in his studio, on the subway – anywhere. Writes Wilcox:
I believe that this self-imposed project with it’s constraints on time and money will force me to take an instinctive and experimental approach. The fear of failure and the usual time spent thinking through the potential pitfalls of a project will not be an option and I will need to react swiftly to my thoughts, observations and experimental outcomes discovered along the way. I am not focused solely on the final objects or images but on the creative journey I take. Complete failures are expected and embraced.
We love that Wilcox created a practice with inbuilt constraints designed to push his own limits and experiment, embracing the possibility of failure. You can see the 30 projects he came up with here. We especially love his Measuring Tape Diary made by spray painting an extended measuring tape white, and then recording the events of his day on it. We can imagine someone – or Wilcox himself – coming across it years later, and opening it up to discover…a day.
Check out his curiously beautiful Onion Ring Fabric made by glueing together bright orange onion crisps with flexible glue: read more…
2 simple, potent strategies to get yourself exercising
Ever since we gave up paying a personal trainer to keep us exercising, we’ve been slipping and sliding around with staying disciplined, and EXPLORING ways to get our heads and bodies into healthy work outs. Here are two simple strategies that we’ve found remarkably helpful:
1) posting this image on our wall (and in our heads). It’s a series of MRI images comparing cross-sections of muscles: a simple powerful message.
2) follow Leo Barbuta of Zen Habit’s advice: start small, and exercise in tiny bits, having fun while you do it, gradually building up to a routine that you work into your life:
“When the actions are tiny, they are easy. You have no excuse. You can do them anywhere, all day long…
I fold fitness into my life, like blueberries into batter, and it becomes a part of the recipe, not just a topping.”
We want to fold fitness into our lives like blueberries into batter! Here’s his fitness program: read more…
when is enough plenty?
'improvised life'
A post on 99% by James Victore gave us pause last week. He writes about how as we spend more and more time staring at screens (our computers, our phones, iPads, etc), our brains change too: we forget how to function without immediate access to “information.” Because we are always plugged in to our various networks or jobs, we no longer distinguish between what needs to happen NOW and what can wait…what we feel compelled to do vs what is good for us. We appreciate that Victore doesn’t tell us to simply throw away our technology:
Don’t get me wrong, I love the tools… Going backwards is not the answer. The answer is being conscious of the time spent on screens versus the time spent on ourselves. Can you create more time in your life? Time to plan and organize your life? Can you make more time to give to others? The answers are discipline, etiquette, and understanding the importance of time in our lives.
These are good questions and Victore offers some good answers; the gist read more…
are you a ‘garage’ inventor?
Studio 360 recently aired a story about garage inventors; people who are innovating, pushing the boundaries of science, and creating without government funding or hi-tech labs. Garage inventors tend to be really smart and really tenacious; sometimes they come up with incredibly useful-to-the-world inventions, like William Kamkwamba who created electricity-generating windmills out of scrap parts in his poor African village; sometimes the inventions are the focus of a personal passion that not everybody sees as useful, from submarines-built-for-one to Miroslav Tichy‘s brilliant homemade cameras (above), created out of need and the belief that “you have to have a bad camera” to make compelling photos. But we’re most interested in the mindset that makes a person a self-propelled inventor. We especially liked this example:
Rachel Zimmerman works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, but she was an amateur inventor first. In seventh grade she created the Bliss Symbol printer, which allowed people with cerebral palsy to communicate quickly. “The nice thing about being 12 years old is that nobody is telling you what you can and can’t do.”
Practicing thinking like a kid is clearly one of the keys to innovative thinking. If you forget what you’ve been told you can or cannot do, the world opens up. Suddenly, there are more possibilities…
We’ve discovered that many of our readers have the “garage inventor’ mentality (whether they have a garage or not). They practice thinking outside-the-box to devise solutions to everyday problems. read more…
sighting (india): ironing board computer table
photo: peggy markel
Our intrepid friend Peggy Markel just arrived in India to prepare to lead one of her amazing culinary adventures, Tasting Royal Rajasthan. She sent us this amazing picture of an ironing board computer table and the story behind it:
“We’re staying with a new friend, Rajiv Jani, friend of a friend. It is his rig, was already here. I knew you would love it. I thought to call it ‘permanent press’. Here’s how it came about:
Rajiv lived in Atlanta for 10 years and had all of his stuff shipped back to Delhi. He set up the ironing board in a spare room for his ironing. But he found out that he could have his shirts ironed for 2 rupees each. (1/2 a penny.) 25 shirts? $1.00.
He was looking for a place to set up his home computer and set a few things down on the ironing board until he found the right place. His electronics started growing there as that was where the internet connection was and the wiring was getting too complicated to move.To buy a new table from Ikea would cost $150. Then you need a chair. read more…
brown sugar butter cookies with thyme-rosemary-lavender salt
photo: sally schneider
Just before Christmas, I posted my best-ever butter cookie recipe: Ethereal Brown Sugar Butter Cookies, along with many variations. The versatile cookie dough recently inspired yet another improvisation on the basic theme. Actually, it’s an improvisation on my Tuscan Herb Salt Recipe, that I then used on the butter cookies, to make a double-improvisation: Brown Sugar Butter Cookies with Thyme-Rosemary-Lavender Salt…
I used the essential Herb Salt method to make a fragrant salt using classic Herbes de Provence: rosemary, thyme and lavender (instead of the usual garlic, rosemary and sage). After I cut out the raw cooky dough, I sprinkled each disk with some of the aromatic salt, hoping that the combination would make for a subtle, surprising and delicious cookie. It did, and has become a new favorite.
That’s what happens when you start improvising: one idea links and layers with another, until you have improvisations made of improvisations…
The basic method is simple… read more…
how to sell your books online
photo: sally schneider
Like everyone we know, we have a growing pile of books that we’ve been wanting to sell, to cut down on clutter and make a few bucks in the process. We recently discovered BookScouter, a website that tells you how much your used books are worth to a variety of online retailers.
The best part is that they pay for shipping (book rate) and provide labels, making selling books fairly simple—you just have to pack them up and drop them off when you are making a trip to the post office. We decided to test the process out to see if it’s really that easy. If you’re looking to sell, here’s the deal, start to finish: read more…
we test drive the pomodoro time management technique
copyright: mastermind maps
A few weeks ago we wrote about the concept of “pulsing and resting,” throughout the work day; actually taking breaks from work in order to get more done (and do better work!). One of our readers introduced us to the Pomodoro Technique, (names after a tomato-shaped timer) which is based on this very idea and provides a specific method:
- Choose a task to be accomplished
- Set a timer for 25 minutes
- Work on the task until the timer rings
- Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
- Every 4 cycles take a longer break
We decided to try it out, and it so far it has been a wonderfully useful technique. We’ve found that the 25-minute work cycles allow us to package together work in a way that makes sense, so we aren’t cramming a big bunch of unrelated tasks together. The result: we’re calmer, and feel more organized. Getting up and getting away from our desks is also extremely refreshing, and allows our heads to cool out throughout the day.
It’s so simple that it’s definitely worth a try. read more…
wine bottles as chic, cheap water decanters
photo: sally schneider
At dinner parties these days, everybody seems to be drinking lots of water, in addition to or instead of wine. Rather than plunking a pitcher of water on the table that will undoubtedly need several refills, we’ve found another solution. We decant filtered water into great-looking wine bottles whose labels we’ve soaked off. We keep 4 or 5 of them in the fridge to have chilled water readily available. They look great on the table, and seem to make non-wine drinking guests feel like they are included in the pouring of something special.
During an ordinary day, we find them a simple, useful pleasure: chilled water to pour from a lovely vessel.
Once you start really looking at wine bottles, you’ll notice all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, some more beautiful than others. We go for the most austerely sculptural we can find. read more…
appree’s faux leaf stickies for instant home decor
When we first read about Appree’s leaf-shaped sticky notes, we wrote them off as just another expensive and unnecessary take on a good simple, efficient design – the Post-It. THEN we saw them used to embellish a wall – not trying to be practical ‘post-its’ but rather, tiny little leaf sculptures…
….a-h-h-h there’s a sweet idea for decorating a room. read more…
email ikea to bring back the great frosta stool…………(and where to buy one until they do)
One of the very best products that Ikea has carried over the years was their plywood Frosta stool. It is a fine ripoff of the famous Alvar Aalto stool, but cost only $12 (as opposed to $300+). It is no longer available in the United States, but is available in other countries, including France, Italy, Ireland and Sweden. It was featured prominently on Ikea’s Swedish blog recently, with ideas for painting the stools in stylish way; to us that array of Frosta’s is like a pile of French macaroons we weren’t allowed to eat.
We find ourselves now treating the four Frosta stools we’ve had for years as though they were as precious as Aalto stools. They are endlessly useful as side tables and impromptu seating, and stack to store out of the way. We’ve seen many great hacks using the bent-plywood legs as shelf brackets, speaker holders etc …
We’ve written Ikea twice to ask why, what the possible logic could there be to dictate such a decision; we haven’t heard back. So we have to two ideas: read more…
portable rubber stamp for instant business cards + signs
We are big fans of impromptu business cards as well as interesting signs posted on public walls, or, well, anywhere. So we’re smitten with the possibilities inherent in Printery & Bindery’s compact, portable self-inking rubber stamp, with a ring to affix it to your key chain, for anywhere stamping. You could have it made up to print your essential info for instant business cards, OR design a sign you want to stamp around town…like CREATE! or JOY! or BE YES!. At $23, they’re a bargain (and a gift we’d want to get).
via Swiss-Miss
Related posts: report from tangier: 3d business cards
minimalist business cards (why not blank ones?)
business card stamp
out of work?: retrofit your business card!
our handmade business card
alt christmas trees made of string lights n’ things to 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
