There’s a lot we love about this whimsically d-i-y decorated storage cabinet: The torquoise and yellow legs…
Read Moreartful body painting with mud and a bottle
We found this startling image on Roy Arden’s blog…as usual, no provenance. Oh, but the beauty you can create with some mud and a (Coke) bottle…like this curiously chic, modernist pattern stenciled right on. (We love the idea of our bodies as a canvas). Related posts: body as artist’s canvas “why doesn’t everybody paint their…
Read Morelight reflective bike decals for safety and fun
We discovered RydeSafe Reflective Bike Decals via Better Living Through Design and quickly pledged to the RydeSafe Kickstarter project. These great-looking decals were designed by Tonky, an artist from Brooklyn who was hit by car and set out to make something that would keep him and other bikers safe while riding at night. The stickers…
Read Moredept. of tiny miracles: 100-year-old letter to santa found in a chimney
The Irish Times reported an amazing story of a 100 year-old letter to Santa found tucked in a Dublin chimney. It was found by the house’s current occupant, John Byrne, who works in the building industry. “At that time, the fireplaces were made of brick with a shelf on either side,” Byrne. “The letter was…
Read MoreKeeping Holiday Gift-giving ‘Real’: Our 12 Fave Gifts To Give
Keeping perspective during the holiday season’s flurry of buying can be difficult. While gift-giving is a lovely tradition, so many of us get caught up in the “keeping up with the Joneses”-style of shopping: buying the newest, neatest toy/appliance/Apple product to keep pace with our consumption-centric world. The shopping-cynic in us was thus delighted by…
Read Morehow to fly
After we posted a series of pictures of people leaping and flying – one of our favorite images and ‘the improvised life’s mascot – illustrator/motivational speaker Trevor Romain sent us this image for our collection. He took a picture of a father throwing his son into the air in shallow water in Hawaii and realized…
Read More6 Great Children’s Books to Give as Gifts
With the holidays fast approaching, everyone we know is starting their annual scramble to find great gifts. We’ve always felt that books make the best children’s presents. Over the years we’ve posted some of our favorites, all of which encourage creative thinking. From surprising cookbooks to clever craft projects, we highly recommend these six books…
Read Morea wondrous ipad app for kids and adults
Yesterday, we downloaded several iPad apps, hoping to check in with what the latest technology was doing. We tried apps for viewing art, reading magazine articles, listening to music that promised to present a ‘multi-dimensional experience.’ Among the most compelling was an multi-dimensional app designed for children, that charmed and resonated with our grownup selves.…
Read Morereader’s improv: street tennis
Film Maker/ProducerLauren Malkasian recently sent us this email: “We love your daily inspirations and have very much been taken, moved and forever changed by ‘the improvised life’; it’s like a magic tonic everyday. So here is a little something from us, all the way from LA, that we thought you might enjoy. We live on a street…
Read Morepost halloween candy stash
If you’re a kid, one of the pleasures of trick-or-treating is AFTERWARDS, when you’ve got a big stash of candy. Maria Robledo sent us this photo of her daughte Isabel’s haul: “she organizes her Halloween catch & stashes it conveniently under the couch for easy access while reading…” We envy that very cagey strategy… Related…
Read Morekid’s book we love: joel henrique’s ‘made to play’
We’ve written before about how much we love Made By Joel’s, Joel Henrique’s website that features his charming handmade children’s toys. This October 11th will mark the release of Joel’s first book, Made to Play!: Handmade Toys and Crafts for Growing Imaginations.The book compiles a number of great toy-making and craft projects for children and…
Read Morefrench fries made easy (recipe)
My fondness for French fries is ruled by an idiosyncratic logic that, for a while, made them mostly off-limits. It goes something like this: perfectly-fried French fries are rare even in restaurants. At home they are daunting: hours of fry-o-lator air lingering in the apartment, and a quart or two of hot fat to discard.…
Read More‘what every girl/person needs’ via miranda july
We’ve loved Miranda July’s work for a long time because her work always directly addressed the INSIDE of our heads, all those crazy voices and opinions and questions that take up so much space, and are really NOT who we are. Suddenly she’s become pretty famous because of the Future, her recent film that is getting…
Read Morepaint a chair like gaetano pesce did
For a fat, liberating dose of inspiration, check out the long riff on Mondoblogo of chairs Italian Designer Gaetano Pesce painted in the nineties for his kids. His “Open Sky” chairs are out-there, fun, wild, loose, and awesomely beautiful…
Read Morepractice flying (via the uganda skateboard union)
We thought we’d post this beautiful Yann Gross photo we stumbled on a while ago as an inspiring image unto itself, to ‘Practice Flying’. Then we decided to look into the story behind it. We discovered that it is from a series of photographs Gross made about a hand-built skateboard park in Uganda. So smitten…
Read More‘beautiful oops’ lesson for all of us: mistakes are OK
(Turn the sound off to really SEE what’s inside this book.—The Management (Video link here.) I was a child who drew inside the lines. I kept journals as a kid and, if I accidentally skipped a page, I would rip out the blank page rather than have an entry appear out of order. Only recently…
Read Moreawesome building blocks for kids + grownups (to d-i-y?)
Wary Meyers has the BEST eye for flea market finds. Dig this giant set of colorful interlocking building blocks he posted on his site. They have no known provenance. Says Wary: They could be old, could be new. My guess is this was an old collaboration between Josef Albers and Donald Judd. and Bill Ding.…
Read Moreaelita andre: what if you gave a child their own art studio?
When she was two years old, Aelita Andre, now four, created paintings so sophisticated and beautiful, they fooled an art dealer, who thought they’d been done by an adult and wanted to represent her. Since then, Andre has gained worldwide fame, and her own website and dealer. Seeing her gallery of paintings makes us think…
Read Moreellen silverman shot gwyneth paltrow !!! (w recipe)
Our dear friend Ellen Silverman, resident photographer at ‘the improvised life’, did all the photos for Gwyneth Paltrow‘s new cookbook My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness. To quote Heather Horn of The Atlantic Online “the book is an eyeful”, no doubt due to Ellen’s sensual and luminous images. Here’s a sampling of…
Read Morehow to dye easter eggs with food-based dyes (easy!)
Easter is next Sunday, and we’re planning on dyeing Easter Eggs, the holiday’s totally fun, messy activity that invariably yields charming results. Eggs become our blank canvas on which to improvise all sorts of gorgeous colors and designs. We love Ambatalia’s post on making your own plant-derived egg dyes out of ordinary foods, like onion skin for…
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