This image from Livet Hemma looks exactly like a Strawberry-Rhubarb Milkshake I devised years ago when I was monkeying around with rhubarb and strawberries, which are full-tilt right now. It got me hankering for one, and reminded me what an unexpected and delightful dessert they make for dinner parties. So I thought I’d share how to make it…
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Browsing through my image files, I came across photos I’d collected of matte black door hardware, which I contemplated using in the Laboratory. The first time I saw it used was in a friend’s just-renovated Brooklyn brownstone: black hinges add a surprising graphic element, as does the rosette of the crystal doorknob. Beautiful. Although I only used black hardware in one detail of the Laboratory, I learned its biggest lesson and caveat.
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A sensual description of Anson Mills’ Appalachian Heirloom Sweet Flint Popping Corn reminded of my popcorn improvisations, when I went haywire experimenting with different flavorings. Download 6+ recipes plus a ton of inspiration in a free PDF from The Improvisational Cook.
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We love this face of crochet bits that is peaking through the fence, that we think were done by Isabel Rower, who tends to embellish whatever is at hand. And as soon as we posted it, we found THIS image of a crochet-bombed benches at the San Francisco ferry building. Spring is here and it’s…
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Maria Robledo sent us this portrait of a pitcher she made recently in her new explorations working with clay. When we asked her about it, her email read like a poem:
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At a photo shoot at Maria’s studio, Suzanne Shaker and I played “face lift”, standing behind each other and gently “lifting” each other’s face. It was a funny, weird, grown-up girls’ game played by women who’d never actually get a face lift. We’re game to go where our faces take us…For a moment, we found a way to improvise younger selves.
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Maria Robledo’s Instagram of baked apples reminded me of my favorite baked apple recipe that I had at a dinner party one evening. They had an intense apple flavor brought out by modest ingredients: red current jelly, lemon juice and a little butter. Because the apples had been cored all the way through and covered…
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Our friend Christopher Eldredge emailed us this image on the very morning that we read this passage from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Sun My Heart. And IT reminded us of Maria Robledo’s perfect image.
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Eagle-eyed Maria Robledo sent us this fab art work (sadly unattributed). We wonder who the wise person/artist is who so clearly expressed the sense of LACK we all so often feel, that goes with self-criticism and imagining perfect worlds that don’t exist. We wonder:
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Maria Robledo, who advised us to paint a bedroom wall “dirty pink”, sent us a great example of the subtle, muted, every changing hue of pink.
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Bruno Ribeiro set up framed filters around Washtington D.C. to make Real Life Instagram, a commentary on our desire to slap a filter on reality and share it on social networks It’s also a reminder for us to SEE FOR OURSELVES. Which is what we think the best instagrams do, like this handful from Maria Robledo.
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“Paint one wall in your bedroom pink”, Maria Robledo advised during the course of the Laboratory’s renovation. My generous friend with a brilliant eye for color had become my ad hoc paint color advisor. “But have it be a dirty pink, and paint it glossy” she went on, “not a bright loud pink.” Then she helped me pick…
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We are constantly amazed at our friend Maria Robledo‘s eye for off beauty. On a recent visit, we enjoyed this onion flower that had dried on its long stem, propped in a vase we would have called homely until we “saw” its surprising beauty. Maria’s arrangement had become a sculpture unto itself and crashed our…
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Maria Robledo sent this image of one of the first plums her plum tree yielded. What might seem like a blemish could be seen as something else althogether: the perfection (and magic) of imperfection. Thanks Maria! Related posts: brilliant graffiti: ‘you are (not) perfect’ ‘seeing’ is a practice (look what’s hidden in plain sight) ‘the…
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Maria Robledo‘s instagram of a pear core looks like a fab modernist sculpture. Another swell little shift of view via Maria’s instagrams. Related posts: maria robledo’s stunning instagrams will change your view a blue passionflower’s crazy inspiration freehand, no-rule flower arrangements object lessons: some sh*t just doesn’t matter
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We know this was Maria Robledo‘s favorite cup. Broken in an instant, another kind of beauty came through (which the inimitable Maria ‘got’ and showed us). The handle looks like a perfect little sculpture of an ear. Related posts: maria robledo’s stunning instagrams will change your view a blue passionflower’s crazy inspiration freehand, no-rule flower…
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We found this wonderful image on Maria Robledo’s Instagram. Ohhh, what a great method of storing receipts (emptying pockets or bag then-and-there.) Thrown into a space between books —some amazing ones at that— they take on a curious beauty. We have a box in an easily-accessible file cabinet that we throw them into to collate…
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We’ve just discovered photographer Maria’s Robledo’s crazy-beautiful Instagram, a trove of images that will make you SEE the everyday differently and put you right in the moment. Only Maria could have come up with this simple, curiously moving arrangements of pussy willow blossoms (which people usually just throw away once they’ve been knocked off their stem). The…
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Maria Robledo sent us these words from Mother Theresa. They’ve been reverberating as we think of the people we know that really live them…wondering if we can find —improvise— ways to do that daily. Related posts: sister corita kent’s enduring rules for making + her art the collected wisdom of louis c.k. ‘proceed from gratitude’: personal…
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Our friend Maria Robledo makes “stealth” valentines for her husband Holton to find. She stitched “BE MINE” onto a curtain, and arranged beaded necklaces into hearts on the carpet.
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