This is the final call for our free book giveaway! One of the the great things about Kate Payne’s Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking is how it makes you realize that processes or projects that seem complicated, are really easy enough to do in your own home. Curing bacon in the perfect example. Kate Breaks it down…
Read Moreproject + reno lesson: embrace the unexpected……… things won’t go as planned
About a year ago, we wrote a post called “On Things ‘Not Looking Good While You’re Working on Them”, about the difficult – and often ongoing – “middle” of a project when things haven’t come together. We were heartened by artist John Currin‘s revelation about the creative process: the ONLY way to make thing anything…
Read Morewe’re back!
(Video link here.) Moving home and office has taken us longer than we imagined. It’s taken a full week to get things up-and-running in our sublime new space…to LAND. Thanks for bearing with and for many messages of goodwill. With thanks to Film Noir Johnny for the perfectly-timed video. Related posts: sneak peek: improvised life’s…
Read Morewe’re moving!! (back next week)
The Internet and phone are turned off in our old place; we’re camping amidst boxes. Needless to say, posting has been erratic…we spent 15 hours yesterday at the new space wrangling electricians, Fios guys, handiman, rug delivery. We’re both overwhelmed and excited by the impending move to new digs, ‘the improvised life’s ongoing work-in-progress, a…
Read MoreRedefining home: He Quit Money To Find Another Way to Live
(Video link here.) They say that moving homes is one of the most stressful of life events. We are finding that to be true, due to the sheer volume of details that makes up a life: it’s as though we’re in an avalanche, crushed by how much there is to do. Though we keep things…
Read Morebook giveaway: fridge pickles via ‘hip girls guide’…
Soon summer will be here, bringing with it a crop of cucumbers (and countless other vegetables) just waiting to be pickled. But for those who are intimidated by the process of water-bath canning for shelf storage (or who just want a crunchy fresh pickle!) there is an easy solution: spices, water, vinegar, salt, and two…
Read Moresneak peek: improvised life’s new space + our cool optical illusion design solution
I thought it would be fun to give a sneak peak of the new space I’ve been renovating – the secret project that has run me ragged for months. It will be a sort of laboratory for many ideas we want to explore on ‘the improvised life’. Although it will probably never be ;finished;, this…
Read Moreintroducing ‘the improvised life’s new ‘laboratory’
A few months ago, I bought a space in Harlem, soon to be home of ‘the improvised life’s new LABORATORY, in which to experiment with all sorts of ideas for home and daily living. I had scoured New York City real estate listings for YEARS, traipsing from space to space in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and…
Read Moreholton rower’s catalytic art (plywood + 50 gallons of paint + big imagination)
Last week we went to the opening of an exhibition of artist Holton Rower’s paintings, made by pouring gallons of vividly colored paints onto plywood forms. They are on display at The Hole in NYC, an immense space that Rower’s monumental work fills with reverberating color and energy. The paintings are made of humble materials:…
Read Morefreehand, no-rule flower arrangements
Photographer Maria Robledo emailed us a couple of images of her impromptu flower arrangements, with these words: I love making these freehand arrangments. I dont start with that intention, i start with looking at the leaf or flower as a photo then i bunch ’em together w/o thinking. it’s a surprise to me too because…
Read Mored-i-y instant color block tablecloths
On Ikea’s impossible-to-translate blog, Livet Hemma, we found this image of the two-toned fabrics European Ikeas are selling. We’re not crazy about the color scheme but love the idea: why not overlap vividly-colored tablecloths or large swathes of cotton or linen to make a color block table? Unhemmed ends are CHIC. Related posts: found: frosta/alvar…
Read Moreone mid-century desk interpreted by two owners
Last year, I posted a mid-century modern folding desk that I’d used for many years, and had decided to sell. Maria Robledo bought it for her 13 + year-old daughter Isabel. Recently, I was thrilled to see Isabel’s take on the desk: full of color and pattern, and a completely different style than my ascetically…
Read Morethe possibilities of folded paper
The great DVDP devised a gif out of origami artist Jun Mitani’s flickr photostream: a lovely reminder of the possibilities inherent in simple sheets of paper… …which reminded us of Between the Folds, a wondrous video clip we posted about origami’s cosmic potential. Related posts: origami’s cosmic potential (de)creation (rhino origami rewind) triangle letter how-to (mail for free)…
Read Morecolorful d-i-y shipping pallet planters (w safe paints info)
Innovative uses for shipping pallets continue: here a play on shipping pallet gardens, painted bright colors and hung on a wall. In a post we wrote about how-to transform a shipping pallet into a vertical, layered garden, some readers brought up the question of food-safe paints for pallets that will house herbs, greens, nasturtiums and…
Read Morehow do you know when to take the leap?
It’s well known that one of our favorite visual themes is people leaping – an obvious metaphor for “taking a leap” into new territory, work, projects, endeavors that we might have thought fearful…life. We came across an interesting trove recently on Retronaut, of New Yorkers in the 1890’s. Although there are some spectacular leaps…
Read Morediagram your life with diagram.ly
There are a lot of online drawing tools, but most of them feel too complicated to be of much use to us. Diagram.ly, on the other hand, couldn’t be easier. If you’ve ever needed to throw together a quick diagram for a report and been stymied by the lack of options or user un-friendliness of…
Read Moremaking a table garden with cheap potted bulbs
We written a couple of times about the big transformation of pots of inexpensive potted bulbs when you tilt the whole root ball out of its plastic pot and into a wide ceramic bowl. But we never showed what actually happens over the course of a week as the tightly-closed bulbs open and bloom. So…
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