For some time now, we’ve been compiling a file of wall decorations made from paint chips, the colorful free material available at your local paint or home store. Placed on the wall with a little thought and creativity, paint chips can make a surprising burst of color graphic. Check this out:
Read MoreIn Defense of Monday
Somewhere in our travels, we stumbled on this sign which echoes what many people feel about Monday, the start of the work week, including our own. Monday being a bastard, we get it. But we’re thinking we’d rather change the sign, and view, to this:
Read MoreCooking Adventure: Lucky Peach’s Online Recipe Archive
Lucky Peach, David Chang’s food magazine and site’s archive is chock full of compelling recipes and the thinking-behind-them from some of today’s most creative chefs. It makes for sublime food porn, as well as really exciting summer cooking, included our favorite: corn or fennel- infused whipped cream.
Read MoreHow to Sleep (with Max Richter)
Max Richter’s 8-hour lullaby, Sleep (on beds in the concert hall) reminded me of how many people have difficulty sleeping. I learned how to sleep the hard way, by NOT understanding my body’s needs, and thinking that I could defy them because there was no immediately adverse effect. When my bad habits caught up with me, I had to re-learn how to sleep.
Read MoreBeatrice Wood’s Sweet Perspective on Mistakes
We were wondering how we might illustrate the late centenarian ceramic artist Beatrice Wood’s extraordinary statement: “My life is full of mistakes. They’re like pebbles that make a good road” . Then we came upon the work of artist Richard Long, who for decades has made remarkable path works that seem to echo Wood’s words…
Read MoreGirl Prison Antidote: Man Repeller + a DIY Scarf Dress
“Girl prisons” are publications so full of notions of “the right way to be a girl”, so fierce with implicit “shoulds” and shame as to become a”prison” in the reader’s mind. Girl and other kinds of Prisons are so woven through our culture, we are always on the lookout for ones that liberate rather than imprison. Our new favorite: MAN REPELLER.
Read MoreHow This Lovely Gif Helped Us Discover ‘The Future is Space’
When we found this gif, we thought “How beautiful. That is the wondrous globe we are riding around on every day.“ We started following trails and inviting connectors —the daily practice of Improvised Life —and suddenly there was a poem by Pablo Neruda we had never read before, whose last line led us full circle to perfection.
Read MoreA Floor Made of Stacked Ceramic Bowl and Tea Cup ‘Bricks’
In his installation at the Maruhiro Flagship store in Nagasaki prefecture, Japanese designer Yusuke Seki used 25,000 pieces of imperfect ‘Shinikiji’ ceramics as bricks, stacking them to create a platform/floor to support simple timber plinths that showcase the products on sale. Feeding into our serious “brick love“, we looked closer into how Seki transformed the pottery into…
Read MoreKanaat: “Knowing that You Have”
Along with the wisdom of the MANY books we spent leisurely, thoughtful time with during our recent two week hiatus, THIS sign is among the most transformative things we read:
Read MoreSol LeWitt’s Instruction for Wondrous Walls
One of our practices is to look at artist’s work carefully to see what ideas we can steal apply in/on our own lives/walls/spaces. We take the do-able kernel and make it our own. We’ve discovered that conceptual artist Sol LeWitt actually left instructions for making his work (which became the works themselves). Why not follow LeWitt’s instruction in our own space, we wondered, to make a wonderful wall?
Read MoreA Breathtaking, Life-Affirming 60 Countries in 3 Minutes
(Video link here.) In 2011 Walter Chang quit his job after saving up for a couple of years to travel around the world. I trekked amazing landscapes, checked off the bucket list, hitchhiked, slept anywhere I could, and made countless friends. These are my memories. His video, We Call this Home, is a fine reminder of the wonders…
Read MoreHow to Never Overcook Fish Again? Slow Roast It!
I was pleased as punch when the great Food 52 told me they were going to feature my Slow Roasted Salmon recipe as a GENIUS recipe. Their words: “The most foolproof way to cook any fish—and a petition for a new cooking term” since slow-roasting fish can take as little as 15 minutes. I learned the…
Read MoreStylish Fashion from Your Fridge + Market
Virginia del Giudice sent us these utterly fab, seriously-stylish fashions made of fruits, vegetables and a few strokes of a brush. Gretchen Roehrs, who has reinterpreted Givenchy and Sonia Rykiel, has some serious X-ray vision, to SEE the possibilities in the most ordinary vegetables and fruits.
We wish that getting dressed were as easy as opening our refrigerator and grab a leaf of chard or kale to wear. We’ve discovered that…
Read MoreLouis C.K. on Bad Thoughts + A Practice for Healing with Them
Louis C.K. brilliantly, hilariously and barebones-honestly nails the competition we all have going on in our heads between good thoughts and bad ones: I have like the thing I believe, the good thing, that’s the thing I believe and then there’s this THING. And I don’t believe it, but it is there. It’s always this thing, and…
Read MoreRecipe for Desperate Times: Pasta with a Fried Egg + Parmigiano
I’ve written a great deal about the ability of a simple fried egg to transform just about any food, especially warmed leftovers — oven-roasted peppers or sweet onions, mashed or hashed potatoes, ratatouille, polenta, warmed over risotto, fried bread, asparagus, spinach, potato chips, to name a few — and raw greens, from dandelion to spinach, into a meal.…
Read MoreYour Mind Has the Amazing Ability… (Ellen Silverman)
We found this wondrous sign at Ellen Silverman’s Instagram. She stood at the chaotic corner of Broadway and 94th Street and made it into a cosmic little film. Check it out here (we couldn’t make the embed code work). A perfect reminder as we ponder the many ideas we have and find and the very…
Read MoreAre You a Feng Shui Survivalist?
Over the years,I have discovered I am part of a secret underground of people who quietly shift spaces they stay in to bring them closer to their personal sense of harmony, or to infuse beauty into the downright ugly, improvising using whatever was at hand. Here are some recent adjustments I made to the lovely country house a friend and I stayed in recently, and the logic behind them. My friend said they made the place better. What do you think?
Read MoreDIY Tree Churches (Our EASY Method)
New Zealand Artist Barry Cox spent four years building a chapel out of trees. He planted and carefully guided the growth of Cut Leaf Alder and other trees, weaving their branches together to create the framework. Then he used shrubs like Copper Sheen to create leafy walls. We LOVE the idea and found it thrilling to walk in, via…
Read MorePink Balloons: The New Mood Therapy (+ Party Installation)
Want to change your mindset and/or your space? Or devise a SERIOUS JOYFUL installation for a party? Create a floating sea of pink balloons, as Margaux Rodot, Mickaël Martin & Benoit Tastet did at the recent Lively Architecture Festival in Montpellier, France. They filled the courtyard of the Hotel de Griffy with balloons in varying shades of pink…
Read More