Nikki Tibbles is a famous British florist whose bold, crammed, often crazy-making 1890 five-story home has been featured on numerous design venues (and is available to rent as a location). Amidst all the STUFF and doneness, we found one idea we love: Stacked irregular boxes painted a bold yellow to make a wall of shelving. It is a sleek,…
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(Video link here.) Every week or so, we run through a diverse array of websites scouting interesting ideas that we and Improvised Life’s readers might find useful. We’re amazed at the growing number of “lifestyle” sites that tout pricey, high-design, often useless STUFF with the implicit message: Buy this______ and your life will be better. In addition to home…
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You have only to click on our MINDSET menu to see that we value Signs and Reminders so much we’ve devoted a whole category of them. We love them because they help shift our view when we are stuck in an old mindset, pattern, dark view… We’re always on the lookout for signs around town —it’s amazing…
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We hadn’t realized that Yoko Ono published a sequel to her enduringly wonderful Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions, written in 1964. Acorn‘s conceptual “instructions” seem more overtly focused on healing and personal change. We are especially intrigued with Cleaning Piece III, wondering what it would be like to NOT say anything negative about anybody. Would…
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The other day while grilling some pork chops, I quickly tossed quarter-inch slices from a huge sweet onion in butter until they were tinged with brown and barely wilted. They were like some lovely mild onion noodle! I realized that if I sliced the onion rings through the center, I’d get strips to make something even closer to a…
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In the last couple of apartments we’ve had, we’ve suffered —albeit, mildly in the scheme of things— the ubiquitous, ugly, boxy generic doorbell that most building’s management installs. We never really stopped to think how we could make it more pleasing to look at. Designer Laura Handler, who has a brilliant talent for fixing the irritating…
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In this surprising video, Tommy Edison, a film critic who has been blind since birth, talks about his favorite things to touch, which reminds us to tune in to our own senses.
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We were blown away when we saw the digitized album Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes (also known as “sun prints”, made by placing on object on chemical-treated paper in the sun) that she made in the 1800s. Atkins, the first woman to make photographs, used the cyanotype process to document algaes and made some poetic, often pleasingly abstract images.…
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(Video link here.) Derek Brown‘s version of Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major Prelude played on tenor sax in a huge empty warehouse is a pretty surprising rendition of the classic. He jazz’s it up, beat boxes it, and sends it reverberating around the space. We listened, then went back to its roots,
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Virginia del Giudice of La Percalina in Buenos Aires sent us a tiny gift via a friend. The wrapping was SO wonderful, that we felt as though we had been given something mysterious, deeply special: a treasure. We took our time unwrapping it and were reminded that when a gift is wonderfully-wrapped, opening it is,…
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Amy Pence-Brown, a 40-year-old Idaho mother of four and founder of the Boise Rad Fat Collective Facebook, stood stripped down to a bikini in a busy Boise market, blindfolded herself and invited people to write on her body. Her mission statement was scrawled in chalk on the board beside her: “I’m standing for anyone who has struggled…
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Designer Laura Handler continues to amaze us with the way she handles “some un-lovely things” in her Harlem apartment. We recently featured her disguise for ugly air conditioner surrounds using checkered duct tape. Now she’s turned her attention to another eye-sore whose ubiquitous look we’ve pondered and hated forever: big black flat-screen TV’s. (Why doesn’t some…
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After a very busy LAST week, we let a few things slide over the weekend, and they will, no doubt, pile onto Monday’s to-do list, which will make it…daunting.
What to do?
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Our friend Ellen Silverman, who photographs frequently for Improvised Life, sent us a compelling email the other day, with equally compelling photographs. She wrote: What you do when you don’t know you are having an emotionally challenged day, and then you suddenly do something that makes you realize that you are deeply distracted by…big emotions you…
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Perhaps graffiti artist Banksy’s most famous piece, made not far from Ground Zero, remains a fitting memorial to that day. Living in NYC, we cannot look south without thinking of the towers… photo: Nic Garcia for Gothamist
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In Hidden Art + Reminders on a Medicine Cabinet Door, I showed the INSIDE of my sliver of a steel medicine cabinet door and its ever-changing mashup of tiny artworks and reminders fastened with magnets. The one constant is a summary I made over a decade ago of Dr. John Sarno’s approach to dealing with back (and…
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When Instagram banned the hashtag #curvy, making it no longer searchable on the site, it caused a huge uproar. Other words having to do with body image —”skinny“, “fat“, and “thin“— were allowed. #curvy, an active ad hoc community on Instagram, allowed women of all shapes and sizes to affirm their beauty. The backlash was so…
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This interior by designer and stylist Carlos Mota jumpstarted two great ideas for our space. We wondered: Is that a painting or a framed chalkboard, wiped out in the most purposely smudgy way, with nude drawn on it? We love the idea of a chalkboard framed to be a constantly changing artwork. And especially a nude smack in the…
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(Video link here.) As a farewell to its audience after 11 years of programming, CBS’s Wire Tap radio show made a video of people giving advice to their younger counterparts. It’s worth watching through to the very end. We love:
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Whenever I can’t get a stubborn stain out of a linen napkin, tablecloth or a blouse, I do what my Greek great-grandmother did: I squeeze lemon juice onto the stain and put it directly in the sun. When I lived in a south-facing apartment with no outdoor space, I’d open the window and rig ways to…
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