Wine writer Anthony Giglio’s Sicilian mother-in-law calls my rustic casserole of baked pasta layered with Wild Mushroom Ragu and ricotta salata “the Big Macaroni”. It IS…the delectable sum of 3 parts: pasta + ragu + cheese. You can make the ragu days ahead and use it for a million quick delicious dishes. And you can assemble the Big Macaroni the day before and bake when ready to feed your guests. They will die for its crispy chewy top and molten interior.
Read MoreHotel Henriette: Stay There or Steal Ideas
We’ve written extensively about our usual practice of deconstructing and arranging overwrought hotel rooms. We’ve encountered SO many that were over decorated, stuffy, busy, that we stopped loving staying in hotels. Until we saw photos of Hotel Henriette in Paris, which breaks the mould every which way and gave us a trove of doable ideas for…
Read MoreMake Your Motivators Powerful
On my office wall, I tape images that inspire, motivate, and hearten me. Recently, I taped up a greeting card that said PROCEED AS IF SUCCESS IS INEVITABLE. Although the words make great sense, they curiously had little impact…UNTIL something compelled me to pair it with a photo I’d clipped from a magazine: Big lesson in what a MOTIVATOR can be.
Read MoreDIY Magic Carpets
It’s curious how themes appear in our lives. We find a kernel of one and start thinking about it…and before we know it, we begin to find evidence of it in the most unlikely places. So it happened with Mo Khan’s charming vine of a diy magic carpet with power to transport. (It’s the only really good…
Read MoreTables Tattood with Memories or Poems
An image spotted at the great Moon to Moon has us revisiting the idea of tattooing wood furniture: carving with words or images in the tradition of stealth carvings on park picnic tables, bars and old school desks.
Read MoreOur Wild Carvel Cake Time-Lapse Adventure
A video posted by @signlaboratory on Jan 22, 2016 at 10:59am PST A lot of wild things go on in the Laboratory as we play with materials and hatch plots, then follow the trails of ideas that are defined by unexpected constraints and glitches. Witness our groovy, strange 15-second instagram time-lapse video that started with…
Read MoreQuick, Improvisational Custom Chai
Masala Chai is the lovely milky spiced tea of Indian Cuisine that has become wildly popular worldwide and is infinitely variable. Long ago, I made my own chai spice mix because I kept encountering ones I didn’t like. I vary the balance of spices according to my mood and embellish it with additional flavorings. Here’s my basic formula, along with alternate routes and rules you can easily break when whipping up your own
Read MoreMake a Scented Aromatherapy Candle in 30 Seconds
There’s a reason legendary New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman offers 329 different options for candles, diffusers and home scents: they can be very effective in reducing stress and calming a room. But they are EXPENSIVE and you can’t modulate their intensity. Check out our surprising method for making a custom scented candle in just a few seconds…
Read MoreWhen Doing a Geographic Renews and Enlivens
Current self-help wisdom asserts that ‘doing a geographic’ to solve your life dilemmas is a Very Bad Move. Blowing Dodge is no answer, they say. Well, I suggest common wisdom could be dead wrong.
Read More3 Good Things: An App to Amplify Happiness
During the recent uncertain days when Improvised Life was under siege, I started playing with a powerful app created by digital product designer Bryan Landers. 3 Good Things is like an ultra-minimal diary: You just add three good things that happened (each day or whenever you like) for a simple way to remember the good in…
Read MoreA Principle for Dealing with Everyday Losses +
When we wrote about navigating loss during th holidays, 80+-year-old skydiver Karrolyn Belkis pointed out something we hadn’t thought of: we feel loss daily. Things we love disappear, whether it be a person, an ability we had, a familiar place, a tree, a friend…something we rely on broke or fell apart or got lost. In answer to…
Read MoreHonoring Dr. King, 2016
We can’t conceive of a world in which Martin Luther King Jr. had not played so powerful a part. He embodied stunning courage, perseverance and nonviolence against all odds. His words continue to resonate on many levels and have proven to be enduring guideposts for daily life.
Read MoreCompose Sublime Soups Right in the Bowl
I got my greatest lesson in soup making during a middle-of-the-night meal at a 24-hour soup joint in New York’s Chinatown over 30 years ago. I was served a large bowl of chicken broth, with bunch of fresh watercress barely wilted in it, and an egg plunked in the center, perfectly cooked, with a runny…
Read MoreCheap + Chic: Crease-Wrinkled Big Cotton Shirt
A fan of the big white cotton shirt, years ago I discovered that XXL MEN’s cotton poplin shirts could be had for about $25 at Target* and looked as good as the much pricier women’s version. Averse to ironing, I’d drop them off at the shirt laundry and ask for “extra starch”. At about $2 each, I’d live…
Read MoreNow What…..? (Picasso)
A perfect question to jump out of bed with, or ask anytime of the day… …though we might add to it…
Read MoreKanya Sesser: ‘I Do Me. I Stick to Positive Energy”
(Video link here.) This video about 23-year-old Kanya Sesser, born without legs and abandoned as a child, says it all. She’s a wise woman. Here are our favorite bits:
Read MoreAdd Some Imaginary Books to Your Library, Like Dickens
Like Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote short stories referencing imaginary books, Charles Dickens filled part of his study with fake books whose fantastical titles he invented. He had a bookbinder create imitation book-backs that he affixed to real books. The effect is rather dazzling.
Read MoreThe Great David Bowie’s Technique for Igniting Imagination
We found two videos in which the great David Bowie talked about a technique he used called “cut-up”: a text was cut up and rearranged to make a new text Although Bowie used the method to write a couple of songs he found it had a greater purpose…
Read MoreWe are now SIGNLABORATORY on instagram!
We LOVE signs so figured why not create a SIGN LABORATORY on Instagram? Check out inspiring/mind-shifiting signs we find and forage and that folks send us…as well the as ones we MAKE:
Read MoreA Performance Coach’s Questions to Ask in the New Year
Kate Conklin coaches performers, athletes and thinkers to help them work better and excel. In this TEDx talk, she describes her unexpected path from studying traditional Bulgarian singing to investigating big questions about the creative life. They are well worth asking in the New Year.
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