Recently, Design Sponge featured the three-level Copenhagen apartment of Camilla Ebdrup, half of the Danish duo behind LuckyBoySunday, and her husband, photographer Andreas Stenmann. Their style is a mix of modern and vintage, with many items foraged from the nearby canals, where interesting items are washed in from the sea. We especially loved the wooden ladder that they use as a pot rack.
The ladder idea came up when there was no more room in the cupboards for the pots and pans, and it looks great.
Indeed! We hunted around for “wooden ladders with round rungs” and found a huge selection on Ebay under wooden ladders: read more…
There’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging — that I am in love with the world…I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio, and I see my trees, my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are.
Our friend Maureen Rolla turned his words into a New Year’s blessing: read more…
(Video link here.) In 2010, Graham Hill, the founder of treehugger.com, bought 420 square foot apartment in a tenement building in New York City’s Soho and, over two years, turned it into a showcase for tiny living.
Hill wanted a tiny space hat would expand to fulfill his wish list which included dinner parties for 12, accommodations for 2 overnight guests, a home office and a home theater with digital projector. He crowdsourced the design as a competition and received 300 entries from all over the world. Two Romanian architecture students won with their design “One Size Fits All”.
Hill’s LifeEdited apartment can be expanded to include the functionality of 1,100 square feet: walls, drawers and beds move and unfold to create 6 rooms: living room, dining room, office, guest office, master bedroom and guest bedroom, kitchen and the bathroom (which morphs into a phone booth or meditation room).
The video shows the transformation and is packed with interesting ideas. read more…
We didin’t realize how much Meg Ryan’s soliloquy from Nora Ephron’s “When Harry Met Sally”is the epitomy of YES, JOY, BEING IN THE MOMENT until we saw artist Rachel Perry Welty‘s wonderful sign. Using letters cut from Ephron’s obituary, she transformed a sad passing into a its much bigger view.
(Video link at Heliotown) Two days before New Year’s, we came across this passage from Mark Halprin’s Winter’s Tale, describing the moment the old year turned into new:
Then the hands of the clock started to race like the tortoise and the hare, and both reached midnight at the same time. The clock struck along with every clock in New York, and church bells, fireworks, and ship whistles sounded all at once…
…several women had begun to cry. The women said it was because of the numbing air that had washed over their bare shoulders, but even strangers embraced sadly as they coasted into the new year and felt its strength commencing. They cried because of the magic and the contradictions; because time had passed and time was left; because they saw themselves as if they were in a photograph that had winked fast enough to contradict their mortality; because the city around them had conspired to break a hundred thousand hearts; and because they and everyone else had to float upon this sea of troubles, watertight. Sometimes there were islands, and when they found them they held fast, but never could they hold fast enough not to be moved and once again overwhelmed.
It knocked us out, weaving so much of what that moment is into a single paragraph.
This has been QUITE a year and we’re taking this week to reflect and look back (while we look forward). We start with this image of Nik Wallenda walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls from The Big Picture’s The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012; we often feel like that, in our own small way.
(Video link here.) The inimitable James Brown perfectly expresses our gratitude and holiday wishes! Thank you for being part of ‘the improvised life’, for reading us, commenting, emailing ideas… And special thanks to our Friends with Benefits; your support has been a tonic (and essential).
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.
(Video link here.) This was a “Christmas email”sent by a friend. Perfect. It brought a big dose of JOY right into our day. So we hope it will do the same for you.
Starting this evening, The Splendid Table will feature Sally talking to Lynne Rosetto Kasper about the holiday table: how to make makeshift tables and seating for a once-a-year crowd, as well as dandy ways to decorate it. Go to Splendid Table’s site for info on when the show airs in your area, or to download or steam it.
Listen (and watch) are some of Sally’s holiday-helpful Splendid Table guest spots, with recipes:
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…
(Video link here.) In this short, great clip from design legend George Lois‘ CreativeMornings talk, he gives what he considers to be his most essential piece of advice for creatives — for anyone — : “be courageous!“.
And suddenly we realized that Lois is curiously reminiscent of the Cowardly Lion giving his great speech from the Wizard of OZ about why courage is so important . read more…
Two images in a recent Remodelista post illustrate an essential principal that just might let you off-the-hook over the holidays: linen table cloths don’t need to be ironed to be beautiful, nor do they even have to be hemmed. We offer proof below, in the lovely tables set ‘au natural’.
But if prefer an ironed look but are short on time and energy (and don’t need more stress), here’s a way of making linen LOOK pressed without having to iron it; we heard about it from a reader named Joan who learned it from her sister-in-law: read more…
and start carving, with whatever tools you have…dip in paint and stamp away —
