Last day to enter to win this Jenn Ski print! Looks like your odds are pretty good.
Phone Photo Friday
02/19/2010
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Art, Art: graphic design, Art: mid-century design, Art: Phone Photo Friday, Other, Other Things: Giveaways | Tagged: cell phone photography, giveaway, Jenn Ski, Phone Photo Friday | 
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Posted by mahlbrandt
Enter to Win this Print from Jenn Ski!
02/17/2010
The very talented graphic designer, illustrator, mid-century modern enthusiast and blogger Jenn Ski partnered with me to offer you this beautiful print! (Matted size: 8×10) I love her work and style — creating retro-modern digital collages with interesting textures and an amazing eye for color. She also blogs about her beautiful mid-century home.
Here’s a glimpse of some of the many prints she has available through her Etsy shop. She also has a shop dedicated to vintage finds and another (temporarily closed) shop for vinyl decals.
All you have to do to enter is leave a comment tell me what city you’re from, just cuz I’m curious.
(If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, just say hi!)
Contest closes Friday night at 5pm CST. Only one entry per e-mail address please.
By the way, friends and family members are welcome to enter! You are probably 50% of my readers.
20 Comments | Art, Art: graphic design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Other, Other Things: Giveaways | Tagged: giveaway, graphic design, Jenn Ski | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
I Love Y’all!
02/16/2010
It’s the week of Valentine’s Day and I just want to take this opportunity to tell you all how much I appreciate you. When I started this blog (like any other blogger I guess) I was talking to myself, then a few friends, then a few strangers and now there are a whole bunch of you who read. I am seriously so humbled that you take the time to visit this here little blog.
A week or two ago my post to comment ratio inverted. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you but I was pretty excited about it. I don’t ask for comments very often and not many of you comment. I don’t mind cuz I still know you’re there. I mean not specifically who you are or anything creeper like that, but I know the number of you that are out there on the other side of the screen. And truly, it means the world to me. I love you all!
In celebration of love and blogging and mid-century modern, I’m doing my first giveaway tomorrow!
1 Comment | Art, Art: mid-century design, Other, Other Things: Giveaways | Tagged: giveaway, thank you | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Paint Decisions
02/10/2010
We’re considering a few paint choices for the bathroom walls, each in the pale greenish bluish gray range. I saved this photo a while back because I thought Sherwin Williams Window Pane would be perfect with our teal blue and green shower tiles.
(sorry I can’t recall the source.)
But, it’s too light & bright:
Here’s Contented (below):
Rainwashed: (Fitting name.)
And our current top choice, Sea Salt:
Sea Salt actually looks—on the chip and in the above photoshop mock-up—like Window Pane in my inspiration photo, don’t you think?
(Sidenote: I think Sherwin Williams has the best colors. They also have a very cool, interactive Color Visualizer on their website. And they just opened a new store in our neighborhood. Yay!)
Which color do you think works best with our tile?
8 Comments | Art, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: paint chips, paint colors, sherwin williams, wall color | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Bathroom Renovation Stage 9
02/09/2010The shower is DONE!!
Well, 95% done anyway. We’re eventually going to install a 2nd shower head—a rain shower mounted to the ceiling. But that’s a little further down the priority list. Most importantly, the shower is now functional.
Sunday we went shopping for shower curtains and it was SO much more fun than shopping for thin set and grout and tile sealer.
Since we don’t have the 2nd shower head yet, we have some plastic bags stuffed into the hole where the controls will go. Classy, huh?
Despite the plastic bags and the yet to be painted walls, that first long hot shower on Sunday night was so glorious!
Tomorrow you’re welcome to give your opinion on our paint color choices.
Catch up with our bathroom renovation progress:
5 Comments | Art, Art: bathroom renovation, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: bathroom renovation, master bathroom, tiled shower | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Gold Cortez & Granada Green {MCM thrift store finds}
02/03/2010
Jason and I have been collecting various patterns of mid-century modern dishware from around town. We keep finding pieces from this collection in olive green and gold. They’re glazed ceramic with scallop, half-circle patterns around the edges. It took a lot of research but we finally found the names (they’re unmarked.) Gold Cortez by Homer Laughlin Co. and Sheffield Granada Green. Homer Laughlin is best known for Fiesta Ware.
So far we’ve collected in green: a dinner plate, 5 tea cups, 3 saucers, a coffee carafe and a pitcher that I use for tea. In gold we’ve found: 4 bowls, a coffee carafe (gave away) and most recently: 3 dessert plates and 6 saucers. The most interesting thing is that we’ve found them all over Nashville: an estate sale, a yard sale, a vintage store and 2 different thrift stores.
I wrote this post when we found the bowls. The the olive green coffee carafe makes a great vase:
1 Comment | Art, Art: mcm thrift store find, Art: mid-century design | Tagged: dishes, fiesta ware, gold cortez, homer laughlin, mcm thrift store find, sheffield granada green | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Concrete Shower Pan Goes Down Smooth
01/26/2010Last weekend we tackled the most intimidating part of the bathroom renovation (in my mind, at least): pouring the concrete shower base. I’ll just show what we did through pictures. And of course I use “we” very loosely here.
Shower all cleared out and ready to go.
Mixing up the concrete mix and water in our pitiful, rusty old wheel barrel. (See the broken wood handle?) I was going to do this part but it turns out my arms are too weak. Each bag of mix was 60 lbs dry.
I prefer to watch this guy in action anyway. I’m excellent moral support.
First bucket full of concrete gets placed. That float is named the Task Force.
Second bucket down. Creating a slight slope toward the drain was very tedious. And important. Jason and his task force can handle it.
The consistency is like wet sand. Not as liquidy as I had imagined.
Four bags/bucketfuls down. 240 lbs. More of the very meticulous smoothing and creating a slight grade toward the drain.
Some days I am very grateful to be married to a perfectionist. Another half a bag to finish it off and get that slope just right. (4.5 bags of sand mix, 270 lbs, 4’x5′ base at 1-1.5″ thick in case you want details.)
All done. Just needs 24 hours to dry. Phew! The whole process only took 3 hours but was very labor-intensive. I’m so glad it’s done. Thank God it all went smoothly. Now on to finishing the rest of the tiling … another update coming soon. I HOPE!
Keeping up with our progress?
1 Comment | Art, Art: bathroom renovation, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Jason | Tagged: bathroom renovation, concrete shower pan, master bathroom, tiled shower | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Bathroom Renovation Stage 8
01/21/2010Tile is officially HALF done! Yay! We’ve been working hard on it and our goal is to finish the shower this month. (Sorry for the pieced together photos. Couldn’t get it all in 1 shot.)
We started putting drywall up to close off the laundry area with some leftover pieces from another project.
We designed built-in shelves into one side of the shower wall. In order to finish them with cement board so we can tile, we had to put drywall up on the laundry room side.
Jason bought the concrete for the shower pan today. Saturday is the day we mix and pour and level and pray. I’ll try to remember to keep my camera handy during the process.
Phew! We’ve come a long way! Need to catch up?
4 Comments | Art, Art: bathroom renovation, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: bathroom renovation, master bathroom, tile, tiled shower | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
A Teapot, Short & Stout {MCM thrift store find}
01/19/2010Not technically from a thrift store, we got this funky, mustard-yellow, wood-handled teapot from Stu on our trip to Cincinnati. (We met him at a thrift store so it’s almost a thrift store find.) This was one of the first things Jason spotted when we walked in the door.
It’s definitely vintage and the inside was really cruddy. It had some caked-on calcified minerals stuck to the bottom and insides. (I made that up but it was something hard and gross!) Thankfully my amazing, persistent, determined husband spent hours soaking, scrubbing, soaking, scraping and washing it until the speckled cobalt blue insides were restored almost back to their original mid-century modern glory.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: Cooking, Art: mcm thrift store find, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: mcm thrift store find, mid-century modern, stu nitzy, teapot, vintage | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Drive-By Shooting (MCM Architecture)
01/18/2010
Location: NW Nashville/Bordeaux
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Posted by mahlbrandt
myMCMlife.com 