Psychologist Richard Wiseman completed a ten-year study to figure out why some people, even smart ones, are luckier than others. He explains how and what he found in illuminating detail in “Be Lucky —It’s an Easy Skill to Learn” in the Telegraph. The gist: people who generate good luck practice four essential principles.
Read MoreSally on Splendid Table: Gifts, Table Decorations + Recipes
Check out Public Radio’s The Splendid Table interview with Sally about her favorite gift ideas for cooks and eaters. Most are inexpensive but give a big bang for the buck. To find more about the gifts on Improvised Life, click here for a roundup. You can also hear her favorite holiday tabletop decorations (some of which made great…
Read MoreWooden Board Bed Table
We have used wooden boards as a giant wooden trivet…cool oddly-shaped cutting boards…a bathtub desk… low tables and shelves… We hadn’t thought to use one as a bed table… GREAT. via Aasaber’s Instagram via SF Girl By Bay
Read MoreSong for Any Day: Hallelujah (K.D. Lang + Leonard Cohen)
(Video link Here.) Suzanne Shaker sent us this wondrous video of K.D. Lang singing Hallelujah. We love many things about it: beyond the astonishing rich and forthright voice, and a song of pure joy is Lang singing barefoot before thousands. And when they regale her with praise, she bows long, deeply-moved, expressing the Hallelujah she just sang. According to…
Read MoreWeekend Cocktail: The Cuban Table’s Mojito
As we start the run up to the weekend— we thought we’d feature the Mojito recipe from our new favorite cookbook, The Cuban Table: A Celebration of Food, Flavors, and History by Ellen Silverman and Ana Sofia Pelaez. Pelaez tells the story behind the delish cocktail that is made right in the glass:
Read MoreMesmerizing Guerilla Action: Balls on Escalator
(Video link HERE.) We have a soft spot in our heart for slightly subversive guerilla actions that shifts people’s views in public spaces, or provide a bit of art or science to illuminate. Colored balls set loose on an escalator make for a wonderful, anonymous “static loop of kinetic energy, redefining location“. No other info given.…
Read MoreFreestanding Painting Room Screen from The Glass House
In Remodelista’s recent 14 Lessons in Minimalism from the Glass House, we found many good ideas (in addition to a gratifyingly voyeuristic house tour). We especially love Philip Johnson’s inspired idea to mount a large painting on a stand to make an artful room partition.
Read MoreYour History of Distruptive Ideas
One of the best end-of-the-year “lists” we’ve come across is Businessweek’s The 85 Most Disruptive Ideas in Our History. We’ve loaded it onto our phone to read in spare moments about the influence of the Polaroid, whiteboards, contact lenses, smartphones, the sharing economy, bottled water, Power Point, Parkinson’s Law, Open Source, and Motown, to name a few.…
Read MoreChristmas Light Cars and Trucks
After Holton Rower emailed this photo of a car festooned with christmas lights, we wondered if we’d find more iterations of this unusual holiday decoration. Sure enough, we found all manner of vehicles decorated for the holiday,
Read MorePlywood Love: Bauhausian Kitchen Storage
This kitchen refurb by Hearth used plywood as cabinet storage in an elemental Bauhausian way. We love geometry of the squares and rectangles, the the grain showing through the washed finish and the holes instead of handles. …and are reminded once again the appeal of sliding panels… via Desire to Inspire
Read MoreTraveling a Narrow Path
(Video link HERE.) Cody Townsend skiing down a sheer face in a space between two rock walls no wider than a supermarket aisle reminded us of the narrow path that we all, at times, have to navigate (whether by choice or circumstance)… …which made us think of Oku no Hosomichi, “The Narrow Path to/of the Interior” by Japanese poet…
Read MoreA Pile of STUFF That is Really an Artwork
(Video link here.) Viewed one way, artist Bernard Pras assembled a random scattering of STUFF —chairs, stools, dolls, a tub, a violin…—at the Palais du Facteur Cheval in Hauterives, France. But viewed another, it becomes something totally OTHER. (…after our own hearts.) via Jody Lotito Levine. Thanks Jody!
Read MoreEndlessly Useful Photographer’s Apple Boxes
Wood apple boxes come in graduated sizes and have a handle routed out at one end, making them easy to move around. A staple of photo studios, they would be a great piece of multi-purpose “furniture” for home, to use as step stool, sitting stool, small table, ledge or stand for books or objects…We’ve discovered that you can buy them or make them.
Read MoreMeredith Monk’s “Inner Necessity to Create”
We recently reread the New York Times’ tribute to Meredith Monk, who celebrates 50+ years as an avant garde performance artist, vocalist composer, vocalist, dancer, choreographer, director and filmmaker. Fifty years!!! “I’ve been in fashion, out of fashion. I just keep trucking along. It’s an inner necessity to work, and that’s not going to change. I…
Read MoreDream Room Filled with a Grassy Valley
In Not Red But Green, Trondheim-based installation artist Per Kristian Nygård crammed mini hills and valleys of turf into one room of Oslo’s NoPlace Gallery. The unlikely landscape which explores “the limitations and possibilities of space” is “an antithesis to the organised architectural environment.” That’s for sure!
Read MoreOrigami Holiday Ornaments to Start DIYing NOW
Looking for something new to decorate the holidays this year, I’ve become smitten with origami decorations for the tree, to hang in the window, or place on the table. Or even to give as a small gift. I learned of the idea from my friend Peta Rimington, who had a gourmet food store and cafe called…
Read MoreCalvino: ‘Each Life is a Library’
In light of our posts on decluttering houses and work spaces, and our consideration of THINGS and what we need to live well and freely, we found Italo Calvino’s thoughts incredibly clarifying. The possibility that … everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable… is at the heart of living an improvised…
Read MoreThe Cuban Table’s Fab “El Pecado” (Layered Coffee)
In our new favorite cookbook, The Cuban Table: A Celebration of Food, Flavors, and History by Ellen Silverman and Ana Sofia Peláez, Peláez writes evocatively about ventanitas, the street-front windows out of which Cuban bakeries and cafe’s often operate “like beehives scattered across the Miami landscape”. The recipe for el pecado (below), which layers three kinds of milk…
Read MoreDelicious Read + Perfect Gift: The Cuban Table
At a crossroads in her life, Ellen Silverman traveled to Cuba where she fell in love with its unique culture. That trip catalyzed many returns and ultimately a rich and many-layered cookbook that would truly showcase the Cuban spirit and culture as expressed through its food: The Cuban Table. Here’s a start of our ongoing series on our favorite new cookbook.
Read MoreMummenschanz’s Clever Improvs w Ordinary Things
(Video link HERE.) Swiss theater troupe Mummenschanz have been performing their surreal mask-and-prop-oriented style for over forty years. Its subtle choreography mixes the clever use of light and shadow with everyday items like paper towels, toilet paper, giant bags, balloons and fabric to create charming and mind-shifting visions.
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