We came across L’Econome’s perfect paring knife years ago in a kitchen ware store and have been in love ever since. They’re inexpensive – about $10 each – feel good in the hand, sharpen easily, AND look good, even as they age and weather. Since EVERYBODY needs a good paring knife, we’d buy them in…
Read MoreJust about everyone we know wants to cut back on using plastic wrap and ziplock bags but are having a hard time actually doing it. One way is with clever Abeego food storage sheets: cotton sheets that are coated with pure beeswax, jojoba oil and tree resin, known for their preservative properties. The sheets are…
Read MoreWe’re not big on bought gifts, preferring to donate money to charity in our friends’ name, or give food gifts we’ve made. That being said, it’s nice to have an arsenal of useful, well-designed, not-too-expensive treats to give on the holidays or otherwise — our favorite gift-giving is just for the hell-of-it when we’ve found…
Read More(Video link here.) On Ambatalia’s blog, we came across this useful little video demonstrating several ways of folding Furoshiki clothes — large squares of fabric — to make carry bags and packages. What the video fails to show is the little revelation that is scattered around Ambatalia’s site: you can WEAR Furoshiki clothes as well.…
Read MoreWe’d figured we had alt-easter gift covered for this year with our seedling-filled Easter eggs, when Cynthia from 50Years50Recipes sent us ANOTHER swell, novel gift. She stuffed plastic eggs with goodies and sent them through the mail, as an invitation to her her niece and nephews to come for an Easter visit (She got the…
Read MoreCarol McDonnell sent us an email about her very cool, very impromptu wrapping paper: Now that the NY Times has beautiful large full color photos, I decided not buy paper, but use it to wrap several books. The giraffe and the donkey head from the Whitney make a charming way to recycle . . .…
Read MoreEarly this morning we received an email from a friend who was about to make chocolate truffles for her Valentine, and wasn’t sure how to transport them. The email was sent in the wee hours of the morning, and we realized that for many, today means a last-minute scramble to get ready for Valentine’s day…
Read MoreMaria Robledo sent us this email of a swell gift wrapping idea her family came up with: “Covering over commercial labels on gift boxes w a little paint and saving on wrapping paper!” Just paint those boxes with a little acrylic paint. Gorgeous! …great for all sorts of boxes… Thanks Maria! Related post: ps: how to…
Read MoreEven though we mostly give charity donations as our holiday gifts, we DO like giving a few more tangible gifts as well, ones that are not too pricey and give a big bang for the buck. So we’ve compiled our eclectic list of favorite things to give…and get. In addition, on Friday we’ll be talking…
Read MoreWe’ve written a number of times about the gifts our neighbor Matthew Sporzynski occasionally leaves outside our door. They always come with perfect timing for whatever is going on in our lives, and are always wonderfully presented. Like this one. Matthew called to say “I made an experimental mac-and-cheese. Would you like to try it?”…
Read MoreI often bundle the the charity gift cards I give for Christmas with another teeny-but-potent gift: like this $4 tasting spoon from Branch. It is my idea of the perfect all-purpose cook’s spoon: long and thin, and slightly odd, similar to a treasured spoon a friend bought me from South America many years ago. Or I’ll…
Read MoreShards 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…
Read MoreA few years ago, I discovered that the holiday gift my friends treasured most was a simple card telling them that I’d given a donation in their name to a charity. They were happy NOT to get more stuff, and be given something that was helping someone else. It was a way I could give…
Read MoreKraft paper is so wildly useful that if I had the room in my city apartment, I’d keep a roll on a wall to have easy access when the mood/need hits.
Read MoreThe other day a friend came over carrying the book she’d been reading on the subway: Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. We were struck by the lovely frayed, striped ribbon she used as a bookmark. Such as swell little idea: a fragment of beautiful ribbon, perhaps leftover from gift wrap, repurposed into…
Read MoreLast Fall, designer Susan Dworski, a reader and frequent commenter, happened to mention carving rubber stamps out of Staedler Mars erasers to make artworks. “How did you get into that? we asked. Her answer was stunning: Been carving them since 1980 when our house burned down, and only my studio was saved. All four of us all…
Read MoreEvery since we wrote about artist Dieter Roth’s work tables, which he covered with sheets of thick artist’s paper so that they would capture the processes of whatever he was working on, as well as notes and scribblings, we’ve loved the idea and have used it. Recently, we stumbled on a clever iteration: use a…
Read MoreA still from the film yves klein: la revolution bleue (the blue revolution), found via Matt Olson‘s inspired blog Rolu, which so often gives us a new view. We would see the world very differently without it. What do you rely on to shift your view? (More on the great Yves Klein here.) Related posts: photo of the…
Read MoreEver since we stumbled on dvdp, a site devoted to seriously creative animated gif art, we’ve been checking in to see what leaps of techno-brilliance gif-makers have come up with. (There’s a great animated video of the gif’s history here). After the jump you’ll find a play on one of Michelangelo’s most famous images in the…
Read MoreWe hadn’t realized how beautiful black masking tape could be – we actually hadn’t realized there WAS such a thing – until we saw it used to hang a poster on Annaleena’s Hem. The black takes it out of the realm of masking tape and into a bold, intentional, very cool, happily impermanent, unframed picture…
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