Dear UncommonGoods and Kentucky Derby fans: We know you don’t need any more mint julep recipes. We did a search for them and came up with 600,000 pages of results. We wanted to dream up a more creative Kentucky Derby Party idea… and we think we succeeded.
Illustrated with our unique collection of Kentucky Derby drink gifts, authentic Kentucky Derby accessories and a handmade wood Kentucky Derby Game, here is our Official 2016 Kentucky Derby Party Idea. Continue Reading…
Procrastination is rarely rewarded, but guess what, undecided gift-buyers: you’re in luck. Our spectacular selection of last-minute Mother’s Day gift ideas means you don’t have to suffer from eleventh-hour anxiety. Pounce on a great present now, and you’ll make the May 8 date with time to spare. Continue Reading…
Any Cub Scout, Brownie, or avid camper has heard this bit of wilderness wisdom: never get between a mother bear and her cubs. The conventional wisdom is that mother bears are fierce family protectors and symbols of maternal devotion. In The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio found this out the hard way…ouch. But are all mother bears such formidable foes? The bear facts are interesting: it depends on what member of the Ursidae family you encounter. Black bear moms—the type you’re most likely to cross paths with near populated areas of North America—are actually quite shy, and studies show that they’ll usually hide or retreat rather than defend their cubs against human threats. Not so heroic, black bear mom. Their brown counterparts, however, are a different story. Grizzly moms are much more likely to attack if they see people getting too close to their babies. So, the savage CG encounter that Leo endured is pretty plausible. And he did the right thing by playing dead—if you’re ever in such a situation, all you can do is grin and bear it.
Sagacious | $65-$120
Editor’s Note: Alex Abbott Boyd is obsessed with cocktails. Fascinating and colorful histories, hidden bars, innovative ingredients – he’s hooked on it all. Once he’d devoured every book he could find on mixology, he began experimenting at home with his own drink recipes. Meanwhile, hoping to become an entrepreneur, he was searching for a product he could be truly passionate about. You can see where this is going, right?
In 2012, one year out of college, Alex founded his own company, Cocktail Crate, to sell cocktail mixes based on everything he’d learned about the craft. Initially, each bottle was handmade and labeled by Alex in his home borough of Queens, and deliveries were made to local stores via the NYC subway. Today, Alex is excited to be working seemingly non-stop to bring the mixers to more and more people who appreciate a really good cocktail!
We asked Alex for some cocktail recipes to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and he delivered con mucho gusto!
Snowball the cockatoo was left at an Indiana animal rescue center with a note from his owner. “Snowball likes to dance to this,” it said, referring to what was also left: a Backstreet Boys CD.
In 2007, Neurobiologist Aniruddh Patel stumbled upon a YouTube video of the bird, who appeared to be getting down to the boy band’s “Everybody.” If this bird were actually grooving to the beat, he wondered, it might have circuits in the brain for processing rhythm similar to ours.
So Patel paid a visit to Snowball and created an experiment to determine whether he was truly dancing—characterized by synchronized movements—or just looked like he was. Patel remixed the song at 11 different tempos, then recorded what Snowball did when his jam came on. For nine out of the 11 variations, he bobbed enthusiastically in sync (no pun intended)—well enough to consider him the first-ever nonhuman “dancer.”
Inspired by Snowball’s fancy footwork, Adena Schachner, then a psychology grad student at Harvard, went back to YouTube and narrowed thousands of clips of animals purportedly dancing to just 39 who seemed to genuinely synchronize. Twenty-nine were parrots, like Snowball, and the rest were Asian elephants, deeming a recreation of Dirty Dancing’s “the lift” highly unlikely.
Boogie Monster Dance Kit | $40
Our makers never fail to motivate us, encourage our creativity, and fill us with inspiration. So, when a new design enters our assortment, we’re always excited to learn more about the people behind the product.
What gets an artist going and keeps them creating is certainly worth sharing, and every great connection starts with a simple introduction. Meet Gabe Herz, the maker, along with Andy Clark, of our new Cold Brew Coffee Maker.
Tracy Shea remembers her first time. As a sophomore at Ohio’s Mentor High School she took a ceramics course and was instantly hooked. “From the minute I touched clay, it’s always been something I wanted to do,” she recalls.
She scored a partial scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of the Arts, but ended up accepting a full-ride to a different college. “My parents refused to pay for an art education,” she explains. “They were like, ‘You’ll never make it as an artist.’”
Fast forward three decades and the Garrettsville, Ohio mom of two spends her days making her popular Pedestal Jewelry Holder. The lace-imprinted ceramic stand — fitted with 50 holes to hang earrings — was born from a desire to display heirloom pieces passed down to her from her aunt. Eyeing her collection “drove me to think, people have stuff that they don’t necessarily want to throw in a drawer,” she says. “People collect stuff for a reason — there are emotional ties. So this is a special place to put things that are really special.” She puts her process — and her life as an artist — on display.
Tracy Shea’s Pedestal Jewelry Holder
Image courtesy of Meera Lee Patel’s beautiful Watercolor World Map.
Our planet has been called the “Goldilocks planet.” Just like in the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” conditions on Earth have been considered “just right” for living things to exist (at least compared to other planets). As we know it now, it’s warm, but not too warm to function. And it has water, but not too much water to drown us all, or too little water to dry out the entire planet. Since Earth Day first launched 46 years ago, it’s no secret that if there aren’t major changes on how we treat our planet, that things won’t be “just right” in the future.
