08/23/2016
Jason and I are excited to announce our new project: a custom, modern 2-story, 3 BR, 2.5 bath house to be built beside our home, right here in Rosewood Heights in East Nashville. We loved the process of building and designing a home. We love real estate, architecture and interior design. Since we have no plans to move right now, we started to dream about what we could do with the piece of land between our driveway and our neighbor’s house. We’ve decided to build a house to sell. We’re excited to be working with architect Ryan Thewes again.
Rosewood Heights is 3.5 miles from Nissan Stadium (where the Tennessee Titans play), a mile down the street from East Nashville’s 3 Points (Jeni’s Splendid ice creams, Ugly Mugs coffee, Eastland Cafe, Rosepepper Cantina and a bunch more) but just a block away from Shelby Bottoms Greenway (960 acres of natural area along the Cumberland River, connected to Shelby Park) all of which means we have the perks of urban city living AND we still have deer eating our shrubs.
We’re calling it Rosewood Heights House. Follow along with our progress on Instagram @rosewoodheights.
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Art, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Art: Rosewood Heights House | Tagged: modern home, rosewood heights house, rosewoodheights | 
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Posted by mahlbrandt
01/14/2015
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: house tour, Art: interior design, Art: mcm thrift store find, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: home, home tour, IKEA, interior design, living room tour, midcentury modern, modern, vintage | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
08/19/2014
Here are a few more pics of Ali’s room to follow up yesterday’s post about her new doll house. She’s currently sleeping on a twin mattress on the floor. I’m still trying to decide if I should move the twin bed frame in from the other room or buy a new bed frame (either for her room or for the foster kids bedroom). I really like being able to snuggle up beside her to read books before bedtime. The beautiful owl blanket was made by my mother-in-law as a third birthday gift for Alianna. The quilt at the foot of her bed was made for me by my Granny when I was a baby. I love these handmade treasures!
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: kids room, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
07/22/2014
The real reason I didn’t write any blog posts for 2 weeks is because we left for vacation a couple days after Firefly left and there was a lot to catch up on at home and work when we got back. Jason and I love to vacation in Naples, Florida. I think we’ve gone 4 times in the past 5 years. This was the first time Ali has been there, though. She’s been to the beach before but this time she was old enough to really enjoy it and play in the sand and water. She’s a little fish and the Gulf in South Florida is warm, clear and gentle. We stayed in Foxfire Country Club in a condo that happened to have a bunch of really cool mid-century modern teak furniture. The pool was warm and we usually had it all to ourselves. Ali did awesome on the 12-14 hour car ride both ways. She’s a pro traveler. We used our DVD player for the first time. On the way to Florida she watched Frozen 4.5 times! Once there we saw so much native wildlife, mostly found by or spotted by Jason. He caught 5 large 9-point starfish out in the ocean. He also found 2 live sand dollars. We released all of them after admiring them. We also saw dolphins, manatees, sting rays (I stepped on one that didn’t have a tail. Phew!) and tons of little lizards in the wild. We visited the Everglades Wonder Garden and saw captive alligators, parrots, macaws, turtles and tortoises, butterflies, flamingos and lots of other birds and reptiles. We ate so much good seafood, saw gorgeous sunsets and had lots of time to play and have fun together as a family of three. We had our vacation planned long before Firefly joined our family but God must have known that it’s timing would perfect for our family to escape the painful realities at home and reset.
Ready for the photo overload?
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: God's creation, Art: mid-century design, Family, Family: Jason, Family: Me, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: beach, Family, Florida, Naples, sunset, vacation | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
12/04/2013
I started listening to Christmas music back in early October thanks to Jason’s new album. (It’s seriously fantastic. You should buy it!) The Sunday before Thanksgiving we put up our new-to-us Christmas tree and the rest of our decorations. It was so much fun to have Alianna’s help this year. She’s old enough to leave the fragile decorations alone for the most part, too.
My Granny’s Shiny Brite ornaments from the 1950s get a special spot up on the kitchen counter.
The rest of my Shiny Brite and Trim Time collection of vintage ornaments go on the aluminum tree in the dining room.
I made a stocking for Bee (on the left) similar to Alianna’s stocking, out of an old wool sweater. I still don’t know if she’ll be here for Christmas but I can take off the initial and reuse the stocking in the future if she’s not.
The past few years we’ve only done the mid-century silver tree and vintage ornaments but Jason suggested a more traditional tree this year. I’m really loving this giant tree with it’s warm lights in the corner of our living room. The crackling fireplace makes it all just heavenly.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: crafts, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Family | Tagged: Christmas, Christmas decorations, christmas tree, decor, holidays, lights, mcm, mid-century modern, vintage | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
08/20/2013
After Buzz went home and while Jason was gone to Europe, I went on a crazy reorganizing, cleaning, selling spree. While we had two energetic toddlers bouncing off of everything at our house, we decided that our vintage sofa was too precious for our home at this stage in our lives and foster parenting journey. Yes, the sofa we spent 80 hours last summer reupholstering. Gone! It now belongs to a young woman in Alabama where I’m sure it’s enjoying the single life and is no longer being jumped on by little pipsqueaks.
We’ve decided to resort back to IKEA. When we got married in 2003, we were all about IKEA. We had a few second hand items and gradually replaced everything with the big box Scandinavian modern. In 2007 when we bought our 1955 ranch, we started replacing IKEA items with vintage items…usually could sell the IKEA furnishings for much more than the estate sale and thrift store treasures we were scrounging up. This may be a first step in the other direction for us… we’ve sold a vintage piece of furniture and replaced it with an IKEA piece of furniture.
For now we have a very empty living room but
hopefully by the end of this week we’ll be picking up one of these:
We’re still trying to sell these American By Martinsville tables. I thought I had a buyer but they backed out. If you or anyone you know is interested, please let me know. We’re happy to negotiate.
2 Comments | Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: changes, couch, interior design, living room, sofa | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
08/12/2013
I’ve been plowing through my to do list, including selling off a bunch of stuff to clear out the garage. We have this one big item left that needs a new home. Any local readers interested? It’s the top half of a china cabinet hutch, part of the Declaration series by Drexel. It’s big and heavy. We haven’t done anything to clean it up or refinish it. I have it marked down to $20 on craigslist and I still can’t get anyone to buy it. Dimensions: 52″ wide, 55″ tall, 13″ deep. It comes with shelves.
Pretty soon it’s going to be sitting by the curb for free…
3 Comments | Art, Art: mcm thrift store find, Art: mid-century design | Tagged: china cabinet, furniture, hutch, mcm, mid-century, mid-century modern, wood | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
06/26/2013
I had my 15 minutes 15 seconds of fame last month in an NPR interview with All Things Considered’s Andrea Hsu. She found my blog while researching for a story on the popularity of mid-century modern furniture. I was totally humbled to get to speak with her about why Jason and I are so drawn to home furnishings from the 1950s-60s and why we connect with the values of our grandparents’ generation. Check it out here. It’s just a few minutes long if you listen or you can read the story.
Here’s an excerpt of my What is “MCM?” page (which I think it what caught Andrea’s attention):
In 2007 when Jason and I bought our beloved 1955 atomic ranch, we dove head over heels into mid-century modern design. We love the simplicity, functionality and minimalism; the colors; the low, flat furniture; the unique details; the Danish and Scandinavian influences.
The more we fixed up our house, rifled through thrift stores and bartered with old ladies at estate sales; the more we started thinking about the lives our grandparents and great-grandparents lived half a century ago. We realized that we hold many of the same values: hard work, faith and family first, saving money and buying with cash, fixing things when they break, not wasting anything, watching our consumption, growing our own vegetables, knowing our neighbors, resting on Sundays.
That’s my mid-century modern life the best that I can describe it.
1 Comment | Art, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Family, Family: Me | Tagged: interview, mcm, mid-century modern, NPR | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
myMCMlife.com 