We knew that changing the shape of a sofa’s or bed’s legs can be a simple way of jazzing up lines and look AND that there are lot of options around for unfinished wooden legs of all shapes and sizes. And we’ve written before about mask-painting one or all the legs of a table or chair. But we hadn’t thought of putting the two ideas together until we saw a how-to on the French blog Morning by Foley.
By by masking off parts of the an unfinished wooden leg with tape, you can create all sorts of designs – subtle and not-so – that lend a pleasing detail to a bed or sofa; read more…
April is the time when ramps – wild leeks – appear throughout the Appalachian and Catskill mountains, one of the first edible harbingers of spring. Then they start hitting farmer’s markets. Since the pungent leek is one of the most delicious and transformative foods we know of, we’re reprising past posts about the famous lily, along with our best ways of cooking/eating them: read more…
Now that spring has officially sprung, we find ourselves ready for new projects, around our houses and outside. We keep coming back to our friend Kate Payne’s The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, an all-purpose guide to doing-it-yourself in your home (and having fun, too) – for ANYONE, whether hip girl or not. (We think it would be a great book for guys setting up their first apartment.)
The books covers a ton of ground, from what you need to stock your home (and how to make your own resources) to the basics of easy, stylish home design. She has trouble-shooting options for virtually any common home mishap. It was Kate’s blog, of the same name, that we turned to last week when we needed instructions for how to hang pegboard in your kitchen.
Some of our favorite springtime gems from Kate’s guide include, her how-to on setting up your own bucket garden; read more…
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… read more…
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 time ago. They are used as “bricks”, staggered with light shining through, and cemented with strong transparent glue.
The effect is of a curiously light wall that can be made in a variety of shapes to define a space, read more…
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 ago there was an internet service that would alert catalog companies that you wanted to opt-out, although it seems to have disappeared. But Unconsumption has just alerted us to a next-generation service that might do something similar. PaperKarma is a new app (for iPhones, androids, and Windows phones) will contact the source of your junk mail and “remove you from their mailing list.” All you have to do is a take a photo of the piece of junk mail in question. The key is to take a picture that highlights the name of the company sending the mail, like in the photo below. read more…
We’re crazy about this smudged chalkboard wall – no words – that reminds us a bit of the chalky walls in Paolo Soleri’s Cosanti. And that got us thinking about how we might mix custom-colors of chalkboard paint (for writing or not) in colors that we LOVE, like an this odd green, or a rich midnight blue or ORANGE. Then we stumbled on a couple of posts about How-to Mix Your Own Chalkboard Paint. Easy-peasy. The most reliable-looking formula is from Martha Stewart Living. The gist is simple: you mix a spoonful of unsanded grout (we have some left over from setting bathroom floor tiles) into flat-finish latex paint. Voila! Chalkboard paint. Once you paint it on, you need to temper it with chalk (easy). Here’s the method, via Martha: read more…
One of the amazing and surprising responses to our going “dark” last week were Comments and emails the came in from ‘improvised life’ readers – whom we’ve never actually met – sending words of support, understanding and gratitude for what we’ve been doing over the past year or so. It knocked us out, reaffirming what we learn daily as we post, that there is a huge vein of generosity coursing through the world and the internet is a powerful conduit and connector. We are grateful for our virtual, curiously tangible, community.
We also got a shout-out from our new blog discovery Mike and Molly’s House, just as we were planning to feature their unbelievable Snaptastic Room Divider, an ingenious modular wall made up of an array of panels that are fit together with slotted connectors. Their way and spirit are totally after our own hearts, as we appear to be to them. They nailed ‘the improvised life’ in a post called “A Little Help from Our Friends“: read more…
We’ve been mulling the idea of using a pegboard on the inside of a tool closet door, the cleaning closet door (to hang mops, brooms, vacuum cleaner hose) and perhaps even in a walk-in clothes closet where it would be useful for hanging jewelry for jewelry, belts etc. We can’t stop thinking about Julia Child’s famous kitchen (you can take a virtual tour of the Smithsonian’s re-creation of it) with it’s charming/homely blue pegboard that hung many of her copper pots and tools. When painted, a pegboard’s polka dot grid can make a pleasing visual, witness the non-utilitarian pegboard headboard we posted a while back.
As is happening more and more, as soon as we started thinking out our options, an answer appeared. This one came as a great how-to found in Kate Payne’s Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking. She takes you through hanging up a kitchen pegboard step-by-step, and has some indispensable lessons learned. read more…
We’d figured we had alt-easter gift covered for this year with our seedling-filled Easter eggs, when Cynthia from 50Years50Recipes sent us ANOTHER swell, novel gift. She stuffed plastic eggs with goodies and sent them through the mail, as an invitation to her her niece and nephews to come for an Easter visit (She got the idea from Giverslog.) We were under the impression that the increasingly restrictive postal system had banned oddly shaped packages years ago. Writes Cynthia:
The eggs did arrive, but it took 10 days to get from one end of Mass to the other and two weeks to get from western Massachusetts to upstate New York. So the good news is it works-the downside is that even with first class postage it takes a bit of time.
Then an image we saw in a Remodelista post about cold frames got us thinking about another kind of ALT Easter eggs. We discovered that halved egg shells are sometimes used as starter pots for seeds to sprout in (supplying the plant with a nice dose of calcium). We thought: wouldn’t a carton of eggs with little seedlings growing in them be a wondrous and surprising Easter gift? Why not?
The process is pretty simple: crack and empty the eggs*, fill with potting soil, add the seeds… Instructables has clear directions and a PDF. If you start planning now, we figure you’ll have some charming little shoots in time for Easter, on April 8th. (See packages will give you a sense of how long a particular seed takes to sprout; beans and cucumbers only take a few days.) read more…
(Video link here.) Frank ‘Sugar Chile’ Robinson was eight years old when he performed Caldonia in the 1946 MGM Film No Leave No Love. His pure boogie-woogie is notable not only because he is so young, but because of his unique playing style, where he uses fists and slams to create his fabulous sound. Neither of his parents were musicians and by age two he was playing the piano by ear, formulating his own style based on “what worked”.
Soon after we found it, we happened to be watching a video of the great jazz pianist Thelonius Monk playing the piano in the 50′s. (Video link here). He, too, plays in a unique, very personal style, bundled fingers seeming to slam the keys to make stunningly clear sounds, and often playing with one hand crossed over the other instead of following the usual divided down the middle piano style: left plays left of middle, right plays right of middle. He started playing the piano when he was six years old and was said to be self-taught. read more…
Two cheap and ubiquitous materials seem to inspire endless improvisations and creativity: shipping pallets (our pallet posts are some of our most popular)…and duct tape. We are smitten with the colorful duct tape jewelry Michele Howarth makes and sells on her Etsy store Quiet Mischief and Company. She also thought has a pdf tutorial for sale so you can see how she does it, and use her plan as a jumping off point for your own brilliant creations.
, an all-purpose guide to doing-it-yourself in your home (and having fun, too) – for ANYONE, whether hip girl or not. (We think it would be a great book for guys setting up their first apartment.)
available at the supermarket; 
