thank you!!!!!

Voting for the Homies Home Design Award nomination has ended and ‘the improvised life’ was officially nominated, thanks to your votes, though it didn’t make the finals. No worries; we did great! Your steady  barrage of votes kept ‘the improvised life’ on Apartment Therapy’s Hot Movers list for a day and a half, right up front.…

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please vote for ‘the improvised life’

ApartmentTherapy’s Homie Awards honors the best in home blogs for 2009, and I’m thinking “Why NOT see if the 6-month old ‘the improvised life’ could have a chance for a nomination at the last minute. The voting for nominating a blog ends on December 29th, so there are only a couple of days to get…

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‘a new way to cook’ : “one of the decade’s best food books”!!

On Christmas day, I received a totally unexpected and mind-boggling gift: an email alerting me that my 2001 cookbook A New Way to Cook is included on the Guardian’s “The Best Food Books of the Decade” list. It is such an honor; please bear with me for tooting horns and telling a tale. From UK foodwriter…

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wishing you: joy!

This is ‘the improvised life’s first Christmas and we’re going to take off starting NOW, Christmas Eve, to wander around the city and look at all the wonderful hoopla, have a cocktail, cool out, count blessings. We’ll be back on Monday for the run-up to the New Year… Until then, we are wishing you a…

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alt (wall) Christmas trees

At the farmer’s market this weekend, Keith Stewart was selling beautiful Christmas trees from his farm, as well as “wall trees” which are tall sculptural branches cut from huge trees. Keith recommended leaning them against or affixing them to a wall and decorating them like a regular Christmas tree (at much less cost). There are lots…

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a toast to giorgio carbone, prince of improvisers

Giorgio Carbone, known to his loyal subjects as has “His Tremendousness” passed away in November in Seborga, the country he created through a masterful feat of improvisation. In 1963, Carbone, a former mimosa farmer, was seized by what the NY Times called “a glorious vision:” that Seborga, five square miles nestled between the Italian Riviera…

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ny times year in ideas 2009

The always illuminating New York Times Magazine Annual Year in Ideas issue is out, and we are guaranteed hours of interesting reading. Here’s a short-list culled from a wealth of subjects. The titles indicate only a fraction of the nuanced information in the article. My favorite is “Good Enough is the New Great”, an idea…

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food gifts: homemade chocolates for improvising (recipe)

Shards of chocolate embedded with surprising flavors and crunchy elements make terrific gifts for much less $ than pricey “artisan-made’ chocolates. Here’s an easy, step-by-step method – and a couple of tricks –  for making unfussy homemade chocolates: a thin sheet of fine chocolate into which you’ve embedded surprising and delicious elements, like chopped Marcona…

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