We discover SO many TINY improvisations as we wander through our days that we decided to start tracking them on Instagram. You can see the latest in Improvised Life’s sidebar, though you won’t necessarily know what it is. You’ll find the bigger view of our Improvised Life, with commentary, at instagram.com/whynot_improvise…Like the 50-cent Lil Debbie Cake, above,
Read MoreMaterial for Making: Raw Copper Sheeting
Jersey Ice Cream Co’s ingenious stove backsplash out of copper flashing made us LUST for copper sheeting, which we imagined cladding our ugly old fridge, making into a headboard, using as extravagant wrapping paper or placemats, wrapping an ordinary chair or table to transform it… among other things. So we checked it out.
Read MorePractice: Quiet
A friend recently told us about her practice of taking an occasional day of silence; she shuts down intrusive electronics like her computer, tv, phone, and goes through the day without uttering a word. The neighbors in her smallish town know that when she wears a button saying “Honoring Silence”, they need to do just…
Read MoreHow Analog Notebooks can Enhance Productivity
In the New Yorker’s recent Why Startups Love Moleskines, David Sax describes the popularity of the spare notebook that many tech-savvy people find superior to digital task software. M.I.T. students, academics, artists and other high-achieving entrepreneurs prize Moleskine notebooks, which come in variety of shapes and sizes, for their simplicity and efficiency.
Read MoreI Believe I Can…..(Gif-Inspiration)
One of the best gifs we’ve seen of late is I Believe I can… We know about flapping our arms hard to barely keep from falling in the water after we’ve stepped OFF the diving board BELIEVING WE CAN. Perhaps if we try a little harder, and shift our attitude slightly …
Read MoreA Sauce for All Seasons + Deconstructed Caesar Salad
Throughout the Mediterranean, the combination of garlic, anchovies* and olive oil finds its way into scores of dishes, from salads, pastas and vegetables to seafood and even lamb and veal. Here in America, it is the basis for the legendary Caesar salad. With the addition of Parmigiano, its dressing’s assertive flavors add up to something completely…
Read MoreMail’s here!
Our newsletters are a love letter to our readers: A collection of what’s happening and what we’re up to. Subscribing sends us right into your your inbox so you’ll have our quirky, thoughtfully-crafted content to read with your morning coffee. We know what it’s like to be bombarded by the words “please subscribe”. We hear we are worth…
Read MoreAirBNBs Enchanted Treehouses
AirBnb has a the cure to summer boredom; take off to a tree house adventure! If you’re outdoorsy, but not sleep-in-a-tent outdoorsy, a glamorous tree house might be a good fit. There are so many scattered around the U.S. (and other places too, check out AirBnB maps for an area closest to you). Among our…
Read MoreWhen Broken Tools Reveal New Usefulness (Su Tung Po)
The other day I was reading a poem written by Su Tung Po in 1097, over a thousand years ago, and realized that it was talking about me, right now in 2015, using such perfectly wrought words, I saw the most ordinary moment differently. Here is a fragment*
Read MoreUse A Typewriter to Tap Your Poetic Subconscious
A public typewriter is stationed at Tompkins Square Park for whoever wishes to write on. It is the brainchild of the The Poetry Society of New York who original introduced it at the NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island: The Typewriter Project’s mission is to investigate, document, and preserve the poetic subconscious of the city while providing a fun…
Read MoreCelebrate the Art of Clutter via Browning, Hao + Improvised Life
Having read and written a good deal about decluttering and letting go of stuff, we’ve witnessed something of a backlash in the media of late. Just as we were reading Dominique Browning’s recent Let’s Celebrate the Art of Clutter, we came across the work of Beijing-based Hong Hao who has been recording every item that comes into…
Read MoreTake Your Shoes Off ? (Signs, Opinions + Warhol)
We knew the Take-Your-Shoes-Off-In-the-House-thing had reached critical mass when we saw door mats for sale that say SHOES OFF in big ugly letters, and other iterations on the theme. It got me thinking about the homemade signs we’ve seen asking guests to remove their shoes, as well as the ones we’ve made ourselves over the years. Here’s…
Read MoreDIY to Alter Your Mental State (after Carsten Höller)
If haven’t experienced artist Carsten Höller’s work, perhaps you can devise your own version of his Giant Psycho Tank, above, which invites viewers to float weightlessly in the water of a sensory deprivation pool to alter their mental state.
Read MoreLinden Season’s Spellbinding Fragrance (and Tea)
Today after a rain shower, the breeze brought the scent of Linden trees in bloom in the park across the way. Every year I wait for this brief few days when the neighborhood seems intoxicated with the honeyed perfume. It reminds me of the fragrant tea that can be made from the blossoms and leaf bracts,…
Read MoreWe Cannot Know the Resonance of Our Work (Anne Frank)
We learned that there is no way to know how our work will resonate in the future, or IS resonating right now. It is not in our control. True creatives HAVE to make whether they are recognized or not.
A potent symbol of this came via email recently from a friend visiting Holland:
Read MoreStrawberry Shortcakes (with our Foolproof Biscuit Recipe)
This Sunday is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and we can’t think of anything more celebratory of the first day of summer than strawberry shortcake. So here’s our improvisation on a traditional shortcake recipe, made with a sublime, foolproof cream biscuits. Our friend Sarah brought them by one day after the classic butter-based biscuits she’d…
Read MoreA Rooftop Porch with Meadows in NYC (Green Roof Primer)
We were stunned by this image of David Puchkoff and Eileen Stukane’s porch and meadow on the roof of their six-story coop building in New York City. Puchkoff devised it as part of a plan to have the porch he always wanted, while creating a green roof. Plants insulate the building from heat in summer and cold in winter, and they reduce storm-water runoff by absorbing rain. The coziness and magic of a country porch IS possible in a city without having to keep a country house. Here’s how.
Read More2 Essential Steps to Completing Projects Close to Your Heart
(Video link here.) We love the Helio Sequence’s trippy, beautiful, psychedelic-ish animated video more for the visuals than for the music. Turn the sound off and you have a wordless meditation on the inventive, imaginative mind and the many unexpected connections that occur in the creative process. It reminds us of the many ideas we have for…
Read More7 Essential Items to Carry When You Travel
Having traveled A LOT over the years, I’ve honed a kit of essential items that see me through, both physically and spiritually, the unexpected events that are guaranteed to hit, sometimes hard. Since I have a seriously-sensitive constitution, I’ve learned the hard way that taking some fortifications is well worth the bit of thought and effort…
Read MoreLife Practice: Cultivating an Adaptive Worldview
A year ago, we clipped the compelling excerpt, below, from Tom Shakespeare’s BBC article about research indicating that people with disabilities paradoxically tend to display a positive worldview and enjoy a good quality of life because of it (often better than the obviously-abled). Upon reflection, we have found this to be true with friends who have experienced…
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