gifts
Tessa Traeger Fine Art
Suddenly realizing that Easter is just a couple of days away, we started thinking Easter eggs, the symbol of the day both Christian and pagan. Immediately, photographer Tessa Traeger’s egg series came to mind. All eggs collected from various birds, they provide inspiration for egg decorating from Nature. Witness Livet Hamma’s diy spatter-painted eggs below. Easy-to-do, freeform, and potentially really beautiful (with one caveat*).
If, like us, you have been slow to get your Easter act together, look below for last-minute strategies, recipes and ideas. read more…
03.29.13 |
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in celebrations, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, entertaining, family + friends, food, gifts, how-to, recipes |
Christopher Hirscheimer
I met New York City Baker Katherine Yang at a book party for Canal House Cooks Every Day
, one of our favorite cookbooks. Co-author Christopher Hirscheimer described Katherine as having created one of the best chocolate chip cookies EVER: crisp, at once salty and sweet.
Katherine is the creator of Gigi Blue a by-order seriously bakery, where she brings to bear years of experience working for two of America’s great chefs: Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller. Yikes! Katherine screamed when she heard that we wrote ‘the improvised life’, saying that it is her favorite blog and that she actually hoards posts so she can read a lot at once, similar to what we do with her wondrous cookies….
She took liberties with the usual chocolate chip cooky, shifting the texture, and adding a bit more salt to give them a buttery salty-caramel-ish aspect, a brilliant stroke.
They’d make a lovely Easter dessert or gift, just for the heck of it.
We’d serve them like Anne Disrude, another brilliant cook we know used to: for dessert, she’d read more…
03.29.13 |
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in celebrations, food, gifts, people |
In the past month or so, two readers of ‘improvised life’ sent beautiful virtual bouquets in the form of emailed jpgs. You might think that a cyber bouquet would have little of the power or effect of a real one, but we’ve got to say, NOT SO.
Part of the reason they were each so powerful was that they were unexpected: thoughtful, handmade gifts of beauty from people who we’d never met, but are connected to through ‘the improvised life’; they sent them to express concern, care, appreciation for the work we do.
The first were some hyancinths from Sahana, a long-time reader and thoughtful Commenter; it came out-of-the-blue when we’d abruptly taken the site dark in order to recuperate from the flu. We felt like a friend had sent us flowers. In fact, she had.
The most recent bouquet came from Susan Dworski, who is fast becoming a regular contributor, with this note: read more…
03.26.13 |
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in cheap + great, d-i-y, family + friends, gifts, strategies |
We love the possibilities inherent in the great valentine DIY we found at Mineco Co UK, made of woven paper. All you need is an exactto knife and straight edge and some nice paper. Mineco’s site tells how-to, but there’s lots of room for improvising (were thinking cut up photographs, magazines, ribbon…)
read more…
02.13.13 |
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in celebrations, copy this!, d-i-y, family + friends, gifts, how-to, materials, strategies |
jules feiffer
We are amazed at how often we return to The Phantom Tollbooth, Nort0n Juster’s classic kid’s book that is celebrating 50 years of stunning popularity. It’s the story of Milo, a bored ten-year-old who comes home to find a large toy tollbooth sitting in his room. In his rarely-used kid’s-size car, he embarks on a surprising journey through a mysterious landscape, beyond Expectations through Mountains of Ignorance, The Forest of Sight, Illusions, Reality and Dictionopolis to the Sea of Knowledge. Rich with strange, true wisdom, it’s way more than a kid’s book. Our ancient copy is dappled with post-its marking many bits of brilliance that curiously resonates with ‘the improvised life’, like this from the gateman of Dictionopolis addressing Milo as he tries to enter the city: read more…
02.13.13 |
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in gifts, inspiration books + zines, kids, principles, quotes, video, why not? |
We found this today on the strange, great, illuminating Daily Fluxus Do It Yourself Instructions:
Instructions:
1. Identify the happiest feeling of the day.
2. Put it in a jar.
3. Switch it if something happier happens.
…
We’re wondering if this happiness jar would work in a similar way as jars full of air captured in a special place we posted about some time ago: when we look at them, we know that there is a bit of that place in there, along with good memories.
Can we activate happiness with this iteration from Fluxus?
What else could we store in a jar to remind us of what we need to remember?
via Daily Fluxus Do It Yourself Instructions
Related posts: a jar of air + memory
3 powerful principles for remembering + learning anything
stealing and tailoring ideas
quilts as memory-keepers
digital memory archive (photograph stuff then give it away)
02.12.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, gifts, resources, tools |
We’ve been admiring this Valentine for years. It’s by Fluxus, a collaborative whose philosophy resonates with our own:
Erase the boundary between Art and Life…
Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.
Fluxus, whose founders included Yoko Ono and John Cage, created this mission statement in the 60′s, WAY ahead of the curve. Its philosphy resonates more than ever.
Apparently there’s also a male version of the Valentine, though we couldn’t see much difference. You’ll find them here. We haven’t been able to log-on to Fluxus’ e-shop and aren’t sure if it’s up-and-running. We might just print out this valentine to give to our love, with the blanks filled in… read more…
02.11.13 |
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in art, cheap + great, copy this!, gifts, quotes, stores |
justin beal
Autoprogettazione, roughly translated “self design,” was a project and book by the modernist artist and designer Enzo Mari that gives instructions for building easy-to-assemble furniture — tables, chairs, bookshelves, wardrobe – using rough boards and nails. Originally published in 1974, it has been reprinted many times. Mari created the project because he thought
…if people were encouraged to build a table with their own hands…they would be able to understand the thinking behind it.
And if they understand the thinking behind it, just imagine what they could do…
Just leafing through Autoprogettazione makes us feel empowered to pick up a hammer. And we can’t help but think the rough boards Mari envisioned his readers using resemble – indeed could be culled from — the wood from shipping pallets.
Taking Mari’s basic approach and inspiration, many artist’s and designers have made their own iterations. We love Justin Beal‘s bed with a fab hot pink mattress, above. And we WANT Kueng Caputo’s Lampada lamp: read more…
02.07.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, furniture, gifts, people, resources books + zines |
photo: nacho alegre
Omar Sosa and Ana Dominguez of Apartamento magazine, with photographer Nacho Alegre, created a series of still-lifes with balancing bread. They’re beautiful, though I’m a little doubtful they are just balanced breads, no pins or stuts anywhere. To my former food-stylist’s eye, they seem, well….
…possibly faked, though it would be fun to get a bunch of breads and try. Nevertheless, they’re a charming reminder that read more…
01.18.13 |
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in copy this!, gifts, health, materials, projects + play, strategies |
The other day, I accidentally knocked a treasured cup off a table and watched, in the slow motion of a car accident, as it crashed onto the stone floor. It was gone in a moment, an object whose beauty I’d enjoyed daily since my friend Suzanne Shaker had given it to me over a decade ago: Ted Muehling’s nymphenburg porcelain ‘convex’ cup, a wonder.
As it flew through the air, I found myself thinking “It’s only an object…Nothing terrible has happened…no lives lost, no illness. An object only.” In the face of all the losses we’ve read about recently, that we’ve all seen in our own and other’s lives, it paled.I thought of the guy who remarked so matter-of-factly in the face of the huge beautiful trees blown over in the hurricane: “It’s Nature.”
I’m contemplating glueing the cup together, not to make perfect mends, read more…
01.17.13 |
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in gifts, housewares, people, principles, strategies |
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.
read more…
01.07.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, gifts, health, how-to, materials, resources, road warrior, stores, travel |
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.
read more…
12.24.12 |
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in celebrations, copy this!, d-i-y, family + friends, gifts, strategies |
*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
and start carving, with whatever tools you have…dip in paint and stamp away — check out our how-to here).
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…
12.21.12 |
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in celebrations, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, gifts, how-to, kids, materials, projects + play, resources |
