Our friend Virginia del Giudice recently sent us another of her wonderful teeny gifts: a little colorfully wrapped bonbon of some sort. Only an inch across, it is an example of the power that even small gift can have in making the recipient feel appreciated, considered, cared for. We wondered what was in the mysterious cloth wrapping…
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As soon as we saw Mc&Co’s irregularly shaped mirrors we thought WANT. We’ve been thinking for some time that our very angular Laboratory could use some organic forms to soften it, and have been mulling how we might do that with mirrors. Mc&Co’s mirrors look like portals into other rooms. Swell! Although we’ve written about irregularly…
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I spend a lot of time trying things and…failing. Hmmm. Is failing even the right word? I spend a lot of times trying things and having them not go as expected.
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(Video link here.) Open Culture’s The Best Music To Put You To Sleep: Minimalist Composer Max Richter, Pop Phenom Ed Sheeran & Your Favorites put us onto some great resources for relaxing music that would be great for working, winding down at the end of the day or to help you fall asleep. We’ve been listening as…
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After we accidentally sacrified our trusty-ancient-unwieldy speakers trying to counteract the bed vibration that woke us up each morning, we went on the hunt for great sounding wireless speakers. We ended up getting two variations because music is so essential to us. It fuels our work when energy levels are low, helps us chill out, and even…
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How many times have you had your shoemaker polish your shoes, only to find the rough blims and tears on the scuffed toes pop up after the first wearing, making your shoes look as old as they really are? Having never found a shoemaker who solved the problem, we decided to experiment on a few…
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We spent a lot of time and thought devising a pot rack that would make our decades of pots easily accessible AND sleek-looking, rather than a weighty mass hanging above our kitchen island. So we were intrigued by two ideas found rummaging through Boffi‘s “Kitchenology“, pdfs of their latest offerings.
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On Labor Day it was like a cosmic switch was flipped: suddenly we could smell fall and a chill crept into the air. We’re totally down with Thoreau and thinking of ways to spark summer’s lovely feeling even in the dark days of winter.
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Seattle artist Peregrine Church of Rainworks discovered a readily available spray that allowed him to stencil invisible signs and images on the sidewalk and walls, that would magically appear when it rained. It’s a beautiful effect that we’ve discovered we can do ourselves.
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When we installed a tall, narrow 13-inch-wide sliver medicine cabinet in our newly renovated and very minimalist bathroom, little did we know that it would do more than provide storage for essential toiletries. The mirror door is backed by white-glazed steel, a perfect “clean slate” to which we could affix signs, reminders and images that…
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When my 5-year-old-laptop bailed on me, I reacted like any strong independent woman with a brain and an alarm clock; I handed it off to my husband and said “This is broken, please fix it”. Seriously. Being the feminist my husband is, he said NO…….
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When I wore my iPhone stuck to a velcro forearm band to a friend’s house, she said “How can you wear such an ugly thing?”; it’s terrible!” Terrible? Lighten up! It is actually an amazing device. I workout hard, cook, and do chores with it and it has yet to come off. It’s like a big Apple watch whose serious advantages trump its looks. As with everything I buy, I hacked it a bit, and pushed its limits.
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Lucky Peach, David Chang’s food magazine and site’s archive is chock full of compelling recipes and the thinking-behind-them from some of today’s most creative chefs. It makes for sublime food porn, as well as really exciting summer cooking, included our favorite: corn or fennel- infused whipped cream.
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“Girl prisons” are publications so full of notions of “the right way to be a girl”, so fierce with implicit “shoulds” and shame as to become a”prison” in the reader’s mind. Girl and other kinds of Prisons are so woven through our culture, we are always on the lookout for ones that liberate rather than imprison. Our new favorite: MAN REPELLER.
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In the New Yorker’s recent Why Startups Love Moleskines, David Sax describes the popularity of the spare notebook that many tech-savvy people find superior to digital task software. M.I.T. students, academics, artists and other high-achieving entrepreneurs prize Moleskine notebooks, which come in variety of shapes and sizes, for their simplicity and efficiency.
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The other day I was reading a poem written by Su Tung Po in 1097, over a thousand years ago, and realized that it was talking about me, right now in 2015, using such perfectly wrought words, I saw the most ordinary moment differently. Here is a fragment*
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A public typewriter is stationed at Tompkins Square Park for whoever wishes to write on. It is the brainchild of the The Poetry Society of New York who original introduced it at the NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island: The Typewriter Project’s mission is to investigate, document, and preserve the poetic subconscious of the city while providing a fun…
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Having traveled A LOT over the years, I’ve honed a kit of essential items that see me through, both physically and spiritually, the unexpected events that are guaranteed to hit, sometimes hard. Since I have a seriously-sensitive constitution, I’ve learned the hard way that taking some fortifications is well worth the bit of thought and effort…
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(Video link here.) The outlets of the “charging station” in the little foyer of my Harlem space are seriously overtaxed by devices and too many visible cords snaking out of the countertop outlet. So I was happy to discover the Portiko Extension Cord, a 6-foot extension cord with two outlets and two USB ports. I can…
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Throughout my school age years I kept ratty composition notebooks with me at nearly all the time to record lists, illustrations, ideas, and poetry: a way to combine artistic enjoyment and organization. Google Keep app is my modern version of that, a canvas for lists and notes-to-be color-coded, archived, tagged, and illustrated. My categories vary from the very practical to very playful.
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