We always scouring cool home ideas the are easy to do. Are we secretly lazy? We sew but try to avoid it or having carpenters come or buying major pieces of furniture. We just want to have a pleasurable, unencumbered time making something fresh out of what we have. Here are two three examples…
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The Typewriter Orchestra makes music on vintage desktop and portable machines. And suddenly we see typewriters as percussion instrument, in addition to unique tool for tapping the poetic subconscious…
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Understanding that “waste is symptomatic of failed relationships” has changed our view about repairing/mending/fixing — from the inside out.
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The AP reports that Cubans who make their own wine employ condoms as inflatable gauges that indicate when the wine is ready. That got us wondering about other uses for the common, incredibly useful material.
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Using our rusty French to translate this video tour of designer extraordinaire Paola Navone’s Paris apartment, we’ve gathered a small trove of smart, original, inspiring and doable ideas.
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An essential question, and strategy, can help find unexpected solutions to problems.
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After a friend proudly showed us unique patch she’d done underneath her sink a few months before, we had to know the story AND the material ahe used. It’s become an essential tool in our arsenal.
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A really useful but painfully ugly shopping bag pushed us to feel our way to an instant makeover. In the process, we were reminded of an essential principle for finding solutions to vexing problems.
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My collection of under- and over-sized things often yields surprising improvisations and pleasures.
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Brilliant paper artist and Couturier de Cardboard, Matthew Sporzynski sent a truly wonderful insta-hack he devised recently when trying to fix a vintage toy parakeet…A valuable lesson in improvisation and knolling.
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Despite all pressures and temptations, this year I will not be buying any Christmas gifts this year; I’ll use other strategies to show my love.
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We love this impromptu-looking curtain tie made of a strip of leather. Ribbon would be swell as well. It reminds us of our improvised hotel room strategy for calming down curtains with busy prints…
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At dinner at photographer Ellen Silverman’s house, I noticed a beautiful on-the-verge-of-flowering Amaryllis plant on her kitchen island…and next to it her clever, fast save of a cluster of buds that had broken off. It was as beautiful as the plant itself and embodied the elusive quality of wabi-sabi.
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What should we be thankful for this Thanksgiving season? The Alien Comic, one of the most original, whole-hearted and daring people I have ever met, gives us a full run down, bringing new appreciation to things we almost certainly take for granted.
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Find just the right branches, dry ’em out, trim to size, paint…. A hunk of forest indoors…
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We’re smitten with this chair by Pascal Anson, a wire frame with one thousand pieces of ribbon, rope and string that were individually tied it, creating upholstery and wondrous visuals. (And metaphorically, it is a reminder of the possibilities in the everyday, which we need right now).
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This astonishing chair, a mashup of plastic and stone, is from Sidewalk Salon, Manar Moursi and David Puig’s book about makeshift chairs they encountered while walking around Cairo, Egypt. They remind me of a fragment of Neruda’s Ode to a Chair.
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After Improvised Life’s part-time editorial assistant Mira Keras had a health challenge that lasted months, causing extended leave from her two steady gigs, her laptop broke. It happened just as she was feeling well enough to return to virtual work at Improvised Life AND when her emergency-slammed finances were at an all-time low. She told me about…
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After I did a sloppy job trying to disguise a torn seam in a prized sweater, I realized that seriously bold stitching would be a better solution. Turning a repair into a fierce intention works on all sorts of flawed and broken things…and people.
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In a recent New York Times T Magazine, we loved the a former Tuscan convent restored by designer Holly Lueders and her daughter, the photographer Venetia Sacret Young, largely by their own hands. There are MANY doable details and solutions we thought to steal down the line. One of our favorites: a vintage bathtub with a…
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