Did you know rowing machines, also known as ergometers, use up to 86% of your muscles and provides a full-body workout? According to healthline.com a rowing stroke consists of 65-75% leg work and 25-35% upper bodywork. This makes it awesome for people of all fitness levels, especially a beginner like myself.

When I think about the times when I most enjoyed the experience of a man-made garden, it leads me to the work of Piet Oudolf. His work has helped me better understand the landscape I enjoy, and I believe it will help me achieve the look and feel I am searching for. He speaks of landscape design in more architectural terms and focuses on the more structural elements of the plants instead of color. Because of my architecture background, that makes more sense to me.

According to Seth Godin, a tribe needs two things:

• A shared interest
• A way to communicate

These two things were the basis for creating the IRL, a growing catalog of our team's inspirations, resources, and discoveries to be easily and tastefully distributed.

Van Neistat is a spirited man. A spirited man, as Neistat's mini-doc series describes, takes matters into his own hands. For example, when a dishwasher does not perform to the spirited man's expectations, he formulates and strategizes a repair. The repair involves unconventional parts fashioned in a hyperbolic fashion that would leave anyone else questioning their own answers to the fix.

Located in Hamilton, OH, lies an amazing outdoor museum meticulously filled with beautiful sculptures. Started back in 1987, a man named Harry T. Wilks bought a small parcel of land to build his pyramid home and slowly acquired adjacent parcels to create the 300+ acre park known today as Pyramid Hill. He spent his life clearing the acreage, building roads, creating wandering hiking trails, even developing small lakes to showcase a vast collection of monumental outdoor sculptures.

Rhythm, texture, harmony, proportion, dynamics, and articulation. All words used to describe music. And also all words used to describe architecture.

"Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music." 

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As one of the oldest animation styles, cut-out animation has been around since the early 20th century. The film The Adventures of Prince Achmed came out in 1926 and featured a style of animation using paper silhouettes to create characters, which were then animated using stop motion photography. This style of animation lends itself to a humorous and sort of surreal feel.

I find the psychology behind getting tattoos, at least for the typical American culture, to be very interesting. You could be like Phoebe on Friends, whose tattoo was only a small dot of ink that's barely visible, or someone who is nearly covered from head to toe. Even though they are becoming more common and accepted, I still think people with tattoos are often prematurely judged or given a "backstory" of some sort.

Tom Monaghan, one of America's richest men and Doctor of Pizzerology. In 1960, Tom Monaghan and his brother purchased DomiNick's pizza for $500. Soon renaming it Dominos, Tom quickly took the pizza industry by the dough. Overworked and severally in debt, Monaghan decided to scrap the traditional pizza dine-in model as it was just bleeding money. His first decision was to close the dining room and go to delivery only. It relieved him of the over-processing that is dine-in costumers, allowed for his team to focus on making pizza even faster. This concept was largely unheard of across the food industry but soon became a hit with Dominos.

In this season of Christmas, we made our gingerbread house from a kit purchased at IKEA, called the VINTERSAGA, Swedish for "a serene shelter from the winter cold." However, we modified ours to resemble something more in line with where we'd want to live. Hopefully, you'll find something creative and fun to make into a holiday tradition with your family.

The Dutch tool chest came from the 18th century. In the Netherlands, the chest was used by shipwrights. Easily portable to move around the job site, and the slanted top protected the tools from the rain. The chest is dovetailed at the bottom to take the weight. The division between the top and bottom compartment is set in a dado on the sides and nailed outside.

Synchronicity's success lies in a group's desire to become synchronized and the courageous patience and repetition to practice the art form. Look for ways to synchronize with others around you. Your roller skates may look different. They may be your uniform, a mission statement, or your life goals.

Born in Afghanistan as Jalāl al-Dīn, he later moved to Turkey and undertook his career as a religious scholar and teacher, taking over for his father after his death. His life and work up to this point were respectable and fairly standard, as that sort of thing goes until he encountered a wandering dervish or holy man who called himself Shams of Tabriz. This is where the life of Rumi, the mystical artist, began to emerge.

Thanksgiving has been one of my favorite holidays for as long as I can remember. It most likely started as a child due to my birthday falling within the same week as the holiday. As an adult, I've grown to love the tradition of gathering with family and delicious food without the added stress and commercialism that seems to surround Christmas. It's more about just being together with those you love and focusing on all you have to be grateful for.

Folk art, according to Soetsu Yanagi, has two main features; it is made for daily use, and its appearance is common and ordinary. Think of those indispensable objects you use every day in your home. Your favorite handmade coffee mug, a comfy wool sweater, a scuffed-up coffee table that you've always kept, these objects are pieces of art, according to Soetsu Yanagi.

We made a road trip to Ada, Michigan, on October 16th to see a fascinating custom home. As part of the local Parade of Homes, Nate and Becky of Hygge Custom Homes were surprised to get a visit from us to view their home. Once the surprise factor was over, we were treated to a personal tour, learning more about the "smart" aspects, enjoying the views each window afforded, and building a relationship with the builders.

Sam Maloof is a self-taught woodworker. He started his woodworking career in 1948 out of necessity at age 32. As newlyweds, they didn't have the money to furnish their home, so he designed and built tables and benches from discarded fir plywood and oak shipping crates. He was asked by friends to make pieces for their house, and it soon became a business.

If you drop a wooden ball in the forest...will it bounce Bach?

In the video, 森の木琴 (Forest Xylophone), a wooden ball is inclined to plunk out Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. While the concept is simple, it relies on extreme dedication to recreate a piece of music from a simple kinetic machine.

A friend of mine recently released a full, song-for-song, tribute album of Brian Wilson’s Smile that he recorded entirely on his own over the course of several years. What I was most impressed with was the deep and intense love of something that would compel him to undertake such a huge task…mainly, for the fun of it.