Good Taste: Rosemary Lemon Fizz

It’s Friday—and if your work week went anything like mine, you are ready for a little reward. Here is a favorite recipe adapted from Gourmet that is every bit as delicious in its nonalcoholic form for an afternoon treat as it is with a splash of vodka for a more grown-up version at the end of the day. The herbal note from the rosemary makes this an excellent drink to serve with food—whether snacking on Marcona almonds drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt or sipping alongside a slow-roasted pork shoulder with herbs.

Rosemary Lemon Fizz

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 cup sugar

1 large rosemary sprig, plus additional for garnish

2 tablespoons vodka (optional)

Chilled soda water

In a small saucepan, bring lemon juice, sugar and large rosemary sprig to a boil, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Simmer an additional two minutes and allow to cool completely, about an hour. Fill two glasses halfway with ice. Divide lemon-rosemary syrup among two glasses. Add vodka if using. Top off with club soda and garnish with rosemary sprig.

High Five

Where we’ve been this week…

1. Human Scribbles Step into the world of this New York architect and you’ll be thinking about sunflower seeds, cathedrals, Stephen Hawkings and goldfish and the death of Sony’s Walkman. Where to start: Each post is it’s own interesting little essay. Stop at a pic that grabs you and dive in.

2. Elle Decor I  know we’ve mentioned Elle before but it is a great resource and they’ve just posted their excellent renovation issue. Where to start: I love this pale purple bedroom and there way they’ve incorporated a desk into the space.

3. The Well Appointed House This blog takes you deep into the land of decorating. Lots and lots of pretty. Where to start: A post on home office supplies.

4. Inside Out Blog An Australian interiors magazine with a lot of heart. They cover warm modern homes that you could easily imagine yourself living in. Where to start: Their work desk series. We’ve mentioned it once before but they’ve since added a bunch more work spaces.

5. Visual Notes Let’s end of a nice easy note (I’ve had a cold all week and eye candy is what I seem to be drawn to right now – not too much reading!) This is a blog from Berlin-based design student with a nice eye for clean-lined spaces, art and homewares. Where to start: Click on her home tours tag for a great collection of interiors. Lots of inspiration for the home office.

Five Fabulous: 2011 Calendars (yes, it is that time of year again!)

1. A Year in Caps, $32 This series of 12 sustainably harvested wood veneer cards interprets each month typographically. Get it: Heather Lins Home

2. Calendar Print, $42 Clean. Simple. Cool. Get it: Gold Teeth Brooklyn at Supermarket

3. Twenty Eleven Calendar, $16 This limited print wall calendar doubles as a piece of art; just frame and hang. Get it: The Must Stash

4. Desktop Calendar, $30 Printed with graphic, vintage type that’s over 50 years old, this letterpress and steel calendar adds easy elegance to your office. Get it: smeurer8 at Etsy

5. “The Chairs” Calendar, $20 We might be biased, but we’re charmed by this handmade design. Get it: storybymia at Etsy

Images linked to their sources within the numbered text

Unplggd: Recycle Your Used Electronics with eBay Instant Sale

If you’ve got some old gadgets lying around your home, eBay Instant Sale provides a quick and easy way to recycle your unwanted electronics (for free!) or sell them for cash instantly without having to setup an online auction.

Last week eBay launched eBay Instant Sale, which gives eBay-ers a convenient way to sell their electronics or recycle them for free. Eligible gadgets include laptops, phones, PDAs, cameras, mp3 players, and more. Simply type in the name, make, and model of your device, answer a couple questions about the item’s condition, and you’ll instantly receive a cash offer.

Once the offer is accepted, you’ll get a free shipping label to ship the device out. You can expect to get paid (via Paypal) soon after your item ships and the condition its in is verified.

Even if your used gadget has zero-value, eBay provides a free shipping label so you can send in your device and have it properly recycled—all you need to do is simply drop it in the mailbox. It’s a super convenient solution for those who don’t know how or where to recycle their electronics, and sure beats simply throwing your old gadgets in the dumpster.

[via engadget]

By Vivian Kim.”

Ideal Live/Work Space: Rebecca Niederlander

We continue the Ideal Live/Work Space series with artist Rebecca Niederlander of BROODWORK.

“What is my ideal live/work space? It is a well-designed space in which living with the profound is a given. It isn’t an easy thing to accomplish.  This year the world lost the amazing Jane Blaffer Owen, who reincarnated a near ghost town in New Harmony, Indiana into the glorious spiritual retreat it is today.  It took her an entire lifetime of dedicated work, and the process continues.

She involved Philip Johnson, Richard Meier, Jacques Lipchitz, and many other creatives in designing an ideal space to think and to create.

And to love.  It was on a trip to New Harmony that my then boyfriend and I realized we ought to move in together (in a few months we celebrate 22 years together).  Therefore, I’m tremendously honored to be among the artists whose works she chose to populate the complex. I could go on and on about this place and if you haven’t been there, then find a way to make the trip.

What Owen created was a rare place where there was enough breathing space to imagine possibilities.

I’d like that in my ideal live/work space, too.

Imagining possibilities requires the ability to be positive.  Positiveness requires the ability to laugh.  “Dying is easy but comedy is hard,” actor Edmund Gwenn is credited as famously saying.  Similarly, artistic creations which make one laugh or smile or believe are ideal to me. So there needs to be both a physical space that is ideal and a mental one.  Of course they are intertwined.  Following on the conversation begun by Alain de Botton last week—YES, YES, YES how we live in architecture most certainly affects one’s day to day life.  The exploration of this is a significant component to my own sculptural work.  Exploring the experience of the individual-be it works that are large meanderable installations or individual works designed for specific homes-allows for a wide range of play.  There would be a lot of play in my ideal live/work space so that one can pretend to be a very small insect in a paper forest, or the king of the forest.

Speaking of playing at being king of the forest, BROODWORK participant Juliette Bellocq (who will share her views in this space in two weeks) asked me what it would be like to live in one of my sculptures.  She could mean this:

or this

But she got me thinking about the larger possibilities. This would be fun to live amidst.

However, I think it would be ideal to do this:

And as long as I had a place to make a pie, I think my family will happily join me in our special squiggly house.

The Playlist: Daniel Kanter of Manhattan Nest

With a sharp eye for design, enviable DIY skills, and a toolbox full of wit, New York University sophomore Daniel Kanter spends the time he’s not in class painstakingly adding detail to his apartment (and then documenting it) on his blog, Manhattan Nest. His NYU degree will be from Gallatin School of Individualized Study, but we’re voting that he receive at least an honorary degree in good taste (hey—check out those chairs). Here’s a look at the music that keeps him going.

What do you listen to while you work? I like to have music on almost all the time, except when I’m reading or writing for a class. I’m definitely one of those people who needs their music to match their mood, so most of the time that means some type of alternative-rock, current favorites are The Smiths and The Cold War Kids. I tend to get really into a specific band and just listen them to death—recently that’s been The Black Keys and The White Stripes. When I’m DIY-ing or working on my apartment, I like music with a lot of energy, which can range anywhere from The Cure to The Old Crow Medicine Show—the best old-timey bluegrass group out there; they’re pure fun—to, yes, Lady Gaga. I’ve even been known to submit to short but intense bouts of that grizzly Bieber Fever pandemic. When my ears need more of a rest, I like folk music (or artists with strong folk influences) like Bob Dylan, Donovan, Pete Seeger, The Dodos, Abigail Washburn, and She & Him. But let’s not forget the power ballads of the 80s. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler is an epic masterpiece.

How do you listen? While I’d never consider myself an audiophile, I do love my turntable. But it’s not just a hipster prop; I really use it. I’d like to say my parents gifted me all of their unused vinyl; but, in reality, I just took it upon myself to liberate a couple dozen records from their languishing post on the basement shelves. My dad’s copy of David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and my mom’s set of The Band’s The Last Waltz get a lot of play in particular. Generally I prefer music to be played out in the open, but having a roommate makes private listening a necessity for the sake of basic decency, so my headphones are employed often. I also have one of those little iPod speaker do-hickeys, which gets used all the time.

Do you have any favorite music websites/providers? I’m sort of incompetent with computers and the Internet, so mostly I just use the iTunes Music Store. Shazam is a great iPhone app that can recognize ambient music almost anywhere, which is great for covert music discovery. I feel like a spy when I pull it out in the coffee shop to figure out what they’re playing. I also often make questionable decisions at flea markets and thrift stores with record purchases—they’re just so cheap! I recently came home with nine Joan Baez albums. Nothing against Joan Baez, but that might have been excessive.

Does music influence your work? Adding a soundtrack to your life definitely puts you in a certain frame of mind and influences the way you interact with your environment and generate ideas. I like music that does something unexpected—the kind of songs that you don’t know exactly what you’re in for after hearing the first ten seconds. I suppose I try to carry that quality through to my work on my home, blogging, academic work, etc. In my workspace, I made my desk from a traditionally-styled nightstand I found on the curb and played the beat-up wood against a crisp white desktop, white painted drawer fronts, and hairpin-inspired legs from IKEA. The shelving was made with steel plumbing pipe and plywood. I like the interplay of the exposed honey-colored tone of the plywood edge (which to me is evocative of mid-century modern furniture) and the more industrial feel of matte-black pipe. Added to that are office accessories ranging from the 40s to the present, a vintage oriental rug, needlepoints, and—still my favorite element—my vintage Eames “light sea foam green” Shell Chair. Broken down piece by piece, it sounds like a mess. But I like the way it all works together.

Where do you find music recommendations? Who influences your musical taste? Music recommendations come from everywhere. I’m lucky to have a lot of musically inclined and talented friends, so their recommendations are always the best. But I’ve also found some of my favorite music from other blogs, movies, or hearing things at the coffee shop or at a party.

If your work was a song or a musician, what or who would it be? Optimistically, I’m going with David Bowie. Not because I’m brilliant or talented or British or married to Iman, but I think that his music and style expertly toe a line between beauty and fun. I suppose I take the design of my space pretty seriously, but I try to be careful not to let that quest for a good-looking room shut out the things I love. Some people want to live in a magazine, but I’d rather keep my surroundings sort of playful and personal. In the end, I’d rather have my space be “me” than be perfect.

DANIEL’S PLAYLIST
Time, Pink Floyd

Plainsong, The Cure

Golden Gate Jumpers, Cold War Kids

All Delighted People (Classic Rock Version), Sufjan Stevens

I’ll Keep It With Mine, Nico

Baby, Let Me Follow You Down, Bob Dylan

All I Want, Joni Mitchell, Blue

The Boy With the Thorn in His Side, The Smiths

Time, David Bowie

Next Girl, The Black Keys, Brothers

Quiet, Please!, Cold War Kids

Images: Daniel Kanter

Design For You

Today is the last day to enter your email address and go into a draw for the Embody chair. This chair began its life in the design studio of Jeff Weber and the late Bill Stumpf. They wanted to solve a problem – the lack of harmony between us and the computer we find ourselves seated at for most of our working day. Their idea?  To design a chair that could do more actually have positive effects on the body. You can read the full design story here but Weber said “You can’t design without empathy. Since design has become more technology based, we’ve had to sit in our chairs in front of computers for longer periods, just like everyone else. We identify with the problems people have as a result of sitting.”  Their solution to this 21st century problem was the Embody chair and you can read all about the design process here.

Our Design for You competition is winding down. Next week, next Tuesday to be exact, will be the final day you will be able to enter to win one of the five painted Eames rockers. Plus the person with the most friends and family who have signed up will win an Aeron chair. But now time is really of the essence. You’ve got until November 2 – next Tuesday. Get onto it!

10 New MacBook Air Cases

With the announcement of the newest Apple product ringing in our ears we have set to finding the perfect case for it. Available in two sizes both with super slim footprints, theMacBook Air can easily fit into a variety of cases, but which work best? Since the product is so new, many makers have yet to release their cases for this lovechild of the iPad and MacBook. We’ve scoured the internet to bring you these 10 great MacBook Air cases and we look forward to curating more lists as more cases are announced.

WaterField SleeveCase: This case from the San Fransisco sewing shop is available in both the 11.6″ and 13.3″ configuration and are shipping by October 29.

SASBAG’s Green Green Grass Sleeve: We love the bright green print of this sleeve for the larger Air and we also love that it is handmade.

Booq Viper Hardcase: Created just for the smaller Air, this hard case has a rugged exterior with a nicely padded, non-scratch neoprene interior that even has room for a few accessories.

OrganizingInStyle’s LotusPond Sleeve: This handmade case has a zipper closure and we love the eye catching exterior and contrasting interior prints.

Leathinity: This hand-stitched leather case for the larger MacBook Air is from Etsyseller sths from Hong Kong.

Herringbone Sleeve: Another favorite from SASBAG this sleeve reminds us of a classier version of all the envelope sleeve cases we saw when the MacBook Air first debuted.

ItaliaCraft’s Newsprint Sleeve: This sleeve has a water resistant zippered compartment . We just hope that Airs in this sleeve don’t get mistaken for old newspapers and tossed in the recycling bin!

Jositajosi’s Winter in Oxford: This handsome sleeve is handmade and is available for custom orders.

Tom Bihn Cache: Designed to be used inside of a larger backpack, briefcase, messenger bag, or travel bag, this sleeve was made for the 11.6″ MacBook Air.

Blytheking’s iSockit: Handmade from an old government issue wool field blanket and vintage button, this case is sized for the smaller MacBook Air.

Have you spotted any great cases for the new MacBook Air?

By Joelle Alcaidinho.

Make a Plan: How to Carve Out Time to Think

GOOD magazine, which publishes an actual print magazine four times a year, has themed their most recent issue to work. They are rolling out the stories online this month. Check out the piece on how to find time to think. Sounds simple but it’s a really hard to do when there are so many things making demands on our time.

More from the SAYL Chair Launch in Los Angeles

I bumped into David Lai and Scott Arenstein from Hello at the SAYL chair launch in Los Angeles recently. Hello is the creative digital agency that works closely with Herman Miller on our online presence. David, who is Hello’s CEO and Creative Director, tested the chair (above) and ended up having a good chat with Naoya Edahiro (below), one of the designers from Yves Behar’s fuseproject.

Among the many projects Hello has worked on with Herman Miller is the Design For You competition.You can read Hello’s post on the competition here. And, of course, they are a huge part of our new online store. I’ll be posting more about what went into getting the store off the ground including some very cool images of the shoots that take us to iconic houses all over Los Angeles.