Our intrepid friend Peggy Markel just arrived in India to prepare to lead one of her amazing culinary adventures, Tasting Royal Rajasthan. She sent us this amazing picture of an ironing board computer table and the story behind it:
“We’re staying with a new friend, Rajiv Jani, friend of a friend. It is his rig, was already here. I knew you would love it. I thought to call it ‘permanent press’. Here’s how it came about:
Rajiv lived in Atlanta for 10 years and had all of his stuff shipped back to Delhi. He set up the ironing board in a spare room for his ironing. But he found out that he could have his shirts ironed for 2 rupees each. (1/2 a penny.) 25 shirts? $1.00.
He was looking for a place to set up his home computer and set a few things down on the ironing board until he found the right place. His electronics started growing there as that was where the internet connection was and the wiring was getting too complicated to move.To buy a new table from Ikea would cost $150. Then you need a chair. read more…
Just before Christmas, I posted my best-ever butter cookie recipe: Ethereal Brown Sugar Butter Cookies, along with many variations. The versatile cookie dough recently inspired yet another improvisation on the basic theme. Actually, it’s an improvisation on my Tuscan Herb Salt Recipe, that I then used on the butter cookies, to make a double-improvisation: Brown Sugar Butter Cookies with Thyme-Rosemary-Lavender Salt…
I used the essential Herb Salt method to make a fragrant salt using classic Herbes de Provence: rosemary, thyme and lavender (instead of the usual garlic, rosemary and sage). After I cut out the raw cooky dough, I sprinkled each disk with some of the aromatic salt, hoping that the combination would make for a subtle, surprising and delicious cookie. It did, and has become a new favorite.
That’s what happens when you start improvising: one idea links and layers with another, until you have improvisations made of improvisations…
Like everyone we know, we have a growing pile of books that we’ve been wanting to sell, to cut down on clutter and make a few bucks in the process. We recently discovered BookScouter, a website that tells you how much your used books are worth to a variety of online retailers.
The best part is that they pay for shipping (book rate) and provide labels, making selling books fairly simple—you just have to pack them up and drop them off when you are making a trip to the post office. We decided to test the process out to see if it’s really that easy. If you’re looking to sell, here’s the deal, start to finish: read more…
A few weeks ago we wrote about the concept of “pulsing and resting,” throughout the work day; actually taking breaks from work in order to get more done (and do better work!). One of our readers introduced us to the Pomodoro Technique, (names after a tomato-shaped timer) which is based on this very idea and provides a specific method:
Choose a task to be accomplished
Set a timer for 25 minutes
Work on the task until the timer rings
Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
Every 4 cycles take a longer break
We decided to try it out, and it so far it has been a wonderfully useful technique. We’ve found that the 25-minute work cycles allow us to package together work in a way that makes sense, so we aren’t cramming a big bunch of unrelated tasks together. The result: we’re calmer, and feel more organized. Getting up and getting away from our desks is also extremely refreshing, and allows our heads to cool out throughout the day.
It’s so simple that it’s definitely worth a try. read more…
At dinner parties these days, everybody seems to be drinking lots of water, in addition to or instead of wine. Rather than plunking a pitcher of water on the table that will undoubtedly need several refills, we’ve found another solution. We decant filtered water into great-looking wine bottles whose labels we’ve soaked off. We keep 4 or 5 of them in the fridge to have chilled water readily available. They look great on the table, and seem to make non-wine drinking guests feel like they are included in the pouring of something special.
During an ordinary day, we find them a simple, useful pleasure: chilled water to pour from a lovely vessel.
Once you start really looking at wine bottles, you’ll notice all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, some more beautiful than others. We go for the most austerely sculptural we can find. read more…
When we first read about Appree’s leaf-shaped sticky notes, we wrote them off as just another expensive and unnecessary take on a good simple, efficient design – the Post-It. THEN we saw them used to embellish a wall – not trying to be practical ‘post-its’ but rather, tiny little leaf sculptures…
….a-h-h-h there’s a sweet idea for decorating a room. read more…
One of the very best products that Ikea has carried over the years was their plywood Frosta stool. It is a fine ripoff of the famous Alvar Aalto stool, but cost only $12 (as opposed to $300+). It is no longer available in the United States, but is available in other countries, including France, Italy, Ireland and Sweden. It was featured prominently on Ikea’s Swedish blog recently, with ideas for painting the stools in stylish way; to us that array of Frosta’s is like a pile of French macaroons we weren’t allowed to eat.
We find ourselves now treating the four Frosta stools we’ve had for years as though they were as precious as Aalto stools. They are endlessly useful as side tables and impromptu seating, and stack to store out of the way. We’ve seen many great hacks using the bent-plywood legs as shelf brackets, speaker holders etc …
We’ve written Ikea twice to ask why, what the possible logic could there be to dictate such a decision; we haven’t heard back. So we have to two ideas: read more…
We are big fans of impromptu business cards as well as interesting signs posted on public walls, or, well, anywhere. So we’re smitten with the possibilities inherent in Printery & Bindery’s compact, portable self-inking rubber stamp, with a ring to affix it to your key chain, for anywhere stamping. You could have it made up to print your essential info for instant business cards, OR design a sign you want to stamp around town…like CREATE! or JOY! or BE YES!. At $23, they’re a bargain (and a gift we’d want to get).
Although we love walking through the canyons of trees for sale on New York City streets, we haven’t been able to wrap our heads around buying and decorating a Christmas tree. Lately, we’ve seen a number of festive alt-Christmas trees made with inexpensive string Christmas lights: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form… read more…
Ever since we learned to drive, we wondered why sideview mirrors couldn’t be adjusted to avoid the blind spot that causes so many accidents, and kept us awkwardly looking over our shoulder to see if any cars were hiding in it. We never actually tried seeing if we could adjust the mirror, testing out possible solutions; we just went with the accepted wisdom. Until recently, when we read the about Society of Automotive Engineers’ simple solution to the blind spot issue, published in Car and Driver, that flies in the face of what has been considered gospel truth for ever:
“The paper advocates adjusting the mirrors so far outward that the viewing angle of the side mirrors just overlaps that of the cabin’s rearview mirror. This can be disorienting for drivers used to seeing the flanks of their own car in the side mirrors. But when correctly positioned, the mirrors negate a car’s blind spots. This obviates the need to glance over your shoulder to safely change lanes as well as the need for an expensive blind-spot warning system.”
The diagram above shows the simple shift.
Our big takeaway is that the experts – and accepted wisdom – ARE NOT always right. We question a lot (making our kitchen cabinets way deeper than the usual, making a “built-in tub” a modernist free-standing one after we saw that it had feet) and that questioning is one of the themes of ‘the improvised life’. We love this spectacular example.
(Video link here.) In his riff on being broke, comedian Louis C.K. vividly echoes the Russian proverb: “A rich man in his fur coat cannot understand why a poor man feels cold”, as he addresses the many people he knows – a whole nation, in fact – who are broke.
Being broke is, in fact, an age-old dilemma which forces one to be creative to survive. The wonderful Chinese poet Su Tung-P’o lived in the eleventh century and made and lost many fortunes during his long life. He wrote this letter to his brother during one of his extended period of down-and-outness, describing his improvised method of budgeting, made all the more interesting by his unique point of view: read more…
“Sculptor and designer Harry Bertoia was just 15 when he moved from Italy to the United States. Two years later, struggling to assimilate in school, he made this list of personal attributes as part of a class project. After high school he attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where, along with his neatness and accuracy, he developed a fluid sense of sculptural form that made him a leading designer of modern furniture.”
(Video link here; start at 4:50) We had a non-stop day, working on a big project, then racing back to write a post many hours late…wondering if we might write about lateness, or busyness or not-living-up-to-our-obligationness, which so many people we know are trying to figure out. We were poking around the files, half-written posts, and bookmarked bits when we STOPPED to watch a video clip Cara de Silva sent us this morning with these words:
“This is a segment of a TED talk that I found profoundly moving because of the images and the speaker and the narrative. Somehow all together they go beyond the subject.”
On flixxy.com, Cara had found the 4 minute video that filmmaker and TED speaker Louie Schwartzberg had used as an example of what his work as a cinematographer using time-lapse photography had taught him over the years: gratitude. You can watch the whole TED talk, above, or let the video load and jump right into Schwartzberg’s film at 4:50 mins. read more…
The northeast had a surprise snowstorm in late October which left a lot of people without power. Our good friend Pamela Hovland sent us pictures of her family’s improvised living arrangements: mattresses arranged around the fire place with an array of colorful quilts and pillows made for cozy, impressively stylish indoor camping. But best of all was Pamela’s makeshift refrigerator, tucked into the snow in her yard. read more…
In October, 2010 I had just started graduate school and was in a bit of a panic about my choice. I was setting myself up for somewhat limited career options and would graduate with a sizeable chunk of student debt. So when I was asked, at a conference I attended that fall, to write myself a postcard that would be mailed to me three months later, I thought hard about the message I wanted to receive.
Of course I forgot all about the postcard. I came home three months later to find it waiting for me, declaring confidently: “Keep calm. You made the right decision.” And indeed, I had.
Sometimes there is nothing more comforting than our own reassurance or words of wisdom, but for whatever reason we’re often not able to hear ourselves clearly in the moment. That’s what makes FutureMe such a great idea: you can write yourself emails to be delivered at any point in the future. read more…
: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form… 
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