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scrabble tiles for kitchen or floor
welt als tastatur (1996), by thomas feuerstein This surprising kitchen is the brainchild of Austrian conceptual artist Thomas Feuerstein. It is an artwork, but like many artworks we come across, it...
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gift: diy color-block wooden spoons + baskets
‘the improvised life’s former assistant Sarah M alerted us to this easy-to-make gift for the holidays: color block wooden spoons, along with a link to A Cozy Kitchen showing how-to. It could not be...
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ladders as pot racks in wood or copper (diy)
Recently, Design Sponge featured the three-level Copenhagen apartment of Camilla Ebdrup, half of the Danish duo behind LuckyBoySunday, and her husband, photographer Andreas Stenmann. Their style is...
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corian + composing food right on the worksurface
photo: pinch food design Truth be known, I have been composing food right on my kitchen worksurface for many years. As a food writer, I enjoyed the big palate the worksurface offered, perfect for...
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il reader julie houston’s brooklyn renovation
julie houston We are always thrilled to hear (and see) how ‘improvised life’ resonates in our readers lives. Sometimes it’s a “shift” of mindset, sometimes it’s a daring diy. In Julie Houston’s case,...
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life lessons from an exploding egg + roz chast
Sally Schneider This morning while engrossed in redesigning ‘improvised life’, I forgot about the eggs I was boiling on the stove. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a gunshot in the kitchen. When I...
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video: sally makes fragrant herb salt + other goodies
(Video link here.) Before I moved up to Harlem, the great Lynne Rosetto Kasper, host of public radio’s The Splendid Table, visited me in my old Chelsea apartment to film me making Tuscan Herb Salt....
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diy minimalist stainless steel pot rack
Sally Schneider For many years, I steered clear of potracks. I disliked the feeling of having things hanging above me when I cooked, the visual busy-ness they created, and the generally clunky lines...
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paint test: beautiful hardworking flat matte Aura
Sally Schneider Encouraged by our friend Bruce McKenna, we tried Benjamin Moore’s flat matte Aura paint in The Laboratory’s very hard-used kitchen, instead of the usual oil-based eggshell, which we’d...
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paint-dipped wooden spoon
Heather Chontos puts her colourful spin on a fleamarket find, dipping an old wooden spoon in tangerine paint to transform a low-tech stirring implement into something…fab. It’s from a selection of...
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paint bright colors inside your white kitchen cabinets
As much as we love white, we’ve been getting a bit weary of the generic Ikea-esque kitchen cabinets we see a lot. That is until we saw these simple cabinets with the INTERIORS painted bright colors,...
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diy or buy: not-plastic beeswax food wrap
photo: apartment therapy Just about everyone we know wants to cut back on using plastic wrap and ziplock bags but are having a hard time actually doing it. One way is with clever Abeego food storage...
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essential kitchen tool: your hands
photo: tessa traeger Some of the most beautiful images of hands we know of are by Tessa Traeger, photographed in the Vivarais region of France. They remind me what just about every good cook I know...
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Remodelista’s New Book is Full of Good Ideas
We were thrilled to be invited to the recent launch party of our friends at Remodelista’s new book Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home/. And we were equally thrilled to walk away with a copy....
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how to speed clean silver
Sally Schneider In preparation of our friend Ellen Silverman borrowing our space to shoot a video, we decided to tackle the long-neglected job of cleaning our very tarnished silver (we’ve been BUSY!)...
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Paint Dipped Wooden Spoons to DIY or Buy
www.etsy.com/shop/LivingEmbellished Over the past few months, we’ve seen a spate of paint-dipped wooden spoons, with instructions to diy or just buy, like these Etsy ones from Living Embellished’s...
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World Knives on L’Econome Paring Knives and Our Readers
Sally Schneider/Improvised Life After we posted about L’Econome, our favorite paring knife and wonderful, inexpensive holiday gift, AND mentioned it on public radio’s The Splendid Table, the two...
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Find: Big, Stylish, French Striped Dish Towel / Napkin
Over the holidays Ellen Silverman gave a dinner party for 14 and wanted a special napkin that guests could take away with them to remember the event. She found some inexpensive but wonderfully stylish...
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Toast as Comfort and Stovetop Toasters
Sally Schneider At Kottke, we learned about the latest Bay Area food craze: $4 artisanal toast, and the compelling way it came about: Trouble’s owner, and the apparent originator of San Francisco’s...
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Ellen Silverman’s Video Ode to Soft Boiled Eggs with a How-To
(Video links HERE and HERE.) Recently, photographer Ellen Silverman borrowed the Laboratory to shoot Girl + Egg, her whimsical 1-minute video of…just that. Although Ellen brought a variety of egg...
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