Recently Brain Pickings‘ Maria Popova posted about Hermann Hesse’s Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte [Trees: Reflections and Poems] (public library; it’s not available on Amazon). To us, the best part of the post was Popova’s own words used to introduce Hesse’s: I woke up this morning to discover a tiny birch tree rising amidst my city quasi-garden, having…
Read Moresamuel l. jackson: “wake the fu*k up!!”
(Video link here.) We laughed out loud at Samuel L. Jackson’s new video, an exortation for apathetic Obama supportors to get off their asses and take some action in the election. (It’s a play on his last year’s wildly successful children’s story “Go the Fu*k to Sleep.) It worked; we donated some $$ for a…
Read Morepaola navone’s painted rugs
We love the simple white-on-concrete? stencils designer Paola Navone put in her Greek summer home. They act like rugs, and can be done on wood floors as well. We’ve seen this done before, but not quite so beautifully.
Read Morelinen flat sheet as stylish bedspread (dust ruffle included)
About a year ago, our friend Ellen Silverman came back from France with a beautiful linen flat sheet that she’d seen displayed in a Paris shop. The salesperson encouraged her to buy a king size sheet and use it as a coverlet that would drape on the floor and become it’s own “dust-ruffle”, hiding whatever…
Read Morecheck out: fast forward’s ‘not better just different’
The amazing avant-garde musician Fast Forward has joinged forces with his friend Elaine Sokolof to create a charming and illuminating Facebook page “Not Better Just Different”. (It’s public, so you don’t have to be a member of Facebook . Fast wrote us that they started the page just to “try something out and see what…
Read Morewishful thinking: grownup size concrete legos
Since our every early post Concrete Block Love, about a table base Marcel Breuer had designed of concrete blocks, we’ve posted quite a few posts about concrete blocks and what you can do with them. We LOVE them because they are so mundane with so much potential to be stylish. The other day we discovered…
Read Moreglossy white tile wall as erasable white board
We love the glossy white wall tiles used as white board at Bar & Co. a bistro-style bar in Helsinki, a great idea for a kitchen wall. We’re suddenly viewing our oversized rectangular bathroom tiles in a new way: message boards (with the possibility for leaving little wash-off-able notes in a normally scriptless room).
Read Moremoment of ocean and pink sky gif
The forecast for today: a wondrous pink sky and an ocean full of ideas… via 40licks Related posts: an evening gif: gratitude… practice makes! what have you been making today? peep show gif: funny, risqué, slightly x-rated color/pattern meditation break gif-inspiration: devise, invent, create…try something new
Read Morecopper pipe lust: inspirations from a chic dutch barber shop
We love copper pipe and have blogged a fab diy table made of it as well as sculptural faucets. But this picture of this Amsterdam coffee shop took our copper imaginings to new heights: copper pipe light fixtures, copper pipe faucets, and copper pipe hooks, all in one space!!
Read Morekitchen-testing chilewich floor mats
Having admired sleek, modern Chilewich floor mats, we decided to do a test to see if they would really clean easily despite our abuse.
Read Moremore on that procrastination thing
(Video link here.) Yesterday, we posted a thought-provoking sign we’d seen that we were mulling: “The work you do while procastinating is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life”. Curious that at the same time, Brain Pickings was posting about procastination also, in a completely different way. Their post featured a…
Read Moresighting: home hotel’s crochet-bombed tree (argentina)
Holton Rower sent us this photo from his travels in Argentina. In the courtyard of Home Hotel in Buenos Aires he found a suprisingly crocheted tree. (Those crochet bombers are everywhere…) post-valentine’s message (be a chalk graffiti guerilla!) the magic of guerilla poetry (become a poetry bomber) guerilla florist bella meyer: “flowers as natural art…
Read Morefaye toogood’s intentional unfinished hole in the wall
After our friend Lisa Morphew took a shovel and demolished the wall separating our living room and bedroom of our soon-to-be-renovated space, we sent a photo of the newly-opened room to our friend Tom Fallon, an interior designer whose given us lots of great ideas over the years. He emailed back: It’s great. Why not…
Read Morehow to demolish a sheetrock wall with a shovel (++++++ other life lessons)
In the process of planning our Laboratory’s renovation, we called on a number of friends for advice: designers, artists, and people who just had plain good sense of one kind or another. When I told artist friend Lisa Morphew of the prices some of the contractors we’d spoken to were quoting us she said: “Honey, what…
Read More‘the work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life’
We found this sign on French by Design last week and have been mulling it ever since. It’s a quote by graphic designer Jessica Hische, whose work if full of inventive and often very generous ideas (Check out the site, Mom, This is How Twitter Works. Also, click the heart at the top right of her…
Read More‘games we play’ + a design game to play in your head
(Video link here.) This video about the private little games people (especially kids) play in their heads reminded me of one I’ve been playing for years. When I walk by a really tacky store–say, of clothes or furniture–I look at the display and imagine, if I absolutely had to, how or what would I choose…
Read Morehow to behave better
We recently stumbled on Anthony Huberman‘s play on the Fischli and Weiss classic how to work better. Like that one, we’d love to see this painted on a building’s exterior wall so it could be read by anyone passing by: a great thought-provoking reminder. TOAST!!?? via Rolu Related posts: signs on walls: ‘how to work better’…
Read Moreever wonder what an orange floor would look like?
One of the big surprises in our renovation of ‘the improvised life’s laboratory was the floor. When we took up the funky carpeting, we didn’t find the concrete we expected but a soft gypsum compound that couldn’t be hardened. We had no budget for a floor so we started to look around at possibilities. We…
Read Moredumpster as park, mini public park, swimming pool
In the past we’ve seen dumpsters transformed into adhoc-ish swimming pools. Even easier to do is to turn dumpsters into giant planters, the brain child of designer Michael Bernstein called “Ten Yards of Futopia.” Imagine them scattered around a city. They’d act like mobile public parks, bringing blasts of NATURE (from gardens to forests) to…
Read Morephone-tails: cocktail breaks with dear friends – by phone!
It’s lonely being a writer. Sometimes I go for days without seeing another human being except my husband or the barista at the local coffee bar. When I’m deep into a book project, I try to remain focused. My phone calls with friends are, “Can I call you back? I’m in the middle of searching…
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