Art: modern design | myMCMlife.com

Rosewood Heights House

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.

rosewoodheights_initialrendering land

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.

rosewoodheightshouse

We’re calling it Rosewood Heights House. Follow along with our progress on Instagram @rosewoodheights.

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Art: Rosewood Heights House | Tagged: modern home, rosewood heights house, rosewoodheights | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Mid Century Modern Collection at Target

05/18/2016

I’ve been seeing ads pop up for Target’s Mid Century Modern collection. Has anyone seen these in person? Very nice designs… West Elm look at IKEA prices. I’m curious about the quality.

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: furniture, interior design, mcm, mid-century modern, modern, target | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Finishing Touches to Baby Boy’s Nursery

02/23/2015

I love to sneak off into the nursery and make little adjustments and finishing touches, preparing all the details, waiting with excitement, nesting.

I added a couple pillows and a quilt to my favorite Baxton Studios rocking chair so it’s comfy for rocking, snuggling and feeding my little guy.

Late one night I quietly assembled this bouncer seat. It’s one of the few bigger items I requested. We’ve borrowed random bouncy seats for the past 4 babies so I know we’ll get a lot of use out of one of our own—a cute one—the Fisher-Price Deluxe Bouncer, My Little Snugabunny. This was a gift from my mom.

The bookshelf is stocked with books that Ali has outgrown, new and hand-me-down baby toys, a CD player loaded with Jason’s Acoustic Lullabies, the precious little lamb my mother-in-law crocheted for our son and a soft light for late night diaper changing.

Speaking of diaper changing, that station is all set up and ready to go, too, with wipes, diapers, hand sanitizer, Butt Paste and a changing pad on top of the dresser. The lower shelves of the supply cart have burp cloths, bibs and receiving blankets.

Another item that we’ve borrowed for the past couple of babies is a Moses basket. My sister gifted us with one at my baby shower and I am looking forward to using it with our son. When a friend first lent us hers for baby Firefly last summer I thought it seemed unnecessary but it turned out to be a new favorite baby item. It’s pretty, light and easy to move from room to room when the baby is tiny. This one I chose didn’t have a very nice liner or cushion so I padded the bottom with blankets and used one of our mini crib sheets. It works great because it’s jersey so it’s super soft and stretchy.

There’s a little collection of lovies in the corner of the crib. The monkey is a Cloud B soothing sound machine that we inherited from my nephew Jack.

Above the crib I added some of the decorations that my sister-in-law Ginger made for my baby shower. I wrote about the record album in this post. The “Take a Deep Breath You’re Home Now” canvas is from Hobby Lobby and was a gift from my friend Steph.

OK, I’m ready now! Baby just needs to finish growing so he can come out and hang out in his new room.

1 Comment | Art, Art: interior design, Art: modern design, Art: new home nursery, Family, Family: Froggie/Isaiah | Tagged: baby room, expecting, nesting, nursery, pregnant, preparing for baby | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Home Tour: Living Room

01/14/2015

Our living room has changed a bit since February 2013 when I originally did a photo tour.

Sources:

Sectional Sofa – IKEA Karlstad
End Table – vintage from Jason’s grandmother
Arm Chair – yard sale find, reupholstered by us
Pillows, Throw blankets – Target
Coffee Table, Lamp, Wall Birds, Clocks – vintage from estate sales and antique stores
Lamp Shade – made by us
Rug – overstock.com
Painting – gallerydirect.com
Bookshelf – IKEA

If I missed anything you’re curious about, feel free to ask.

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

New Tile Backsplash in the Kitchen and Bathroom

12/11/2014

Last month Jason did a project we’ve been thinking about since we moved in two years ago—he tiled a backsplash and added under cabinet lights in the kitchen. He spent many nights working from after dinner until long after Ali and I were asleep. He’s such a hard worker. I LOVE how it came out. My only contribution was helping to pick out the tiles, which were a special order from Home Depot, in case you’re wondering. We picked the color and straight-stacked pattern to mirror the exposed concrete block wall that’s across from the kitchen in the dining room. (You can see it here in my grapefruit-belly photo.)

I haven’t taken any photos of the backsplash in our master bathroom yet but Ali snuck this one on Monday while I was getting ready for work.

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: interior design, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Jason | Tagged: backsplash, home projects, kitchen, renovation, tile, tiling | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Respite

10/27/2014

Last week we were asked if we could do a last minute respite placement for a 4-year-old boy. We agreed and then scrambled to get a bed ready for him. We’ve been in the process of moving furniture around in the past couple weeks (months?) and went from having a crib and twin bed in the foster kids room to crib and bed frame. Then two weekends ago we had a crib and no bed at all. This room is almost all the way put together and when it is, I’ll do a full post about it. But here’s the bed and night stand, ready less than 24 hours before our respite guy arrived.

If I were to give his fella a blog nickname it would be Rhinoceros. He’s full of energy and stomps around like a large animal. He was full of noise and motion. He and Ali had a lot of fun. Jason and I were thankful it was just for two nights. Even though it was very tiring, I’m thankful we were able to help his foster family out with a restful break.

rhino

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: interior design, Art: kids room, Art: modern design, Art: new home kids room, Family, Family: Foster Parenting | Tagged: foster care, respite, rhino | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Alianna’s Big Girl Room

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

A Lottie to Love

07/30/2014

My three year old is getting into the age of Barbies. I have a set of beautiful handmade Barbie furniture that my Granny made for me and with it I found two of my old Barbie dolls. They’re in bad shape…each is missing part of a limb from a puppy incident, each had an unfortunate haircut at some point and they were embarrassingly naked. I could have bought my daughter some new Barbies to go with the furniture but I did a little research and discovered these Lottie dolls are an affordable (comparable price to Barbie), funky, young-girl-friendly alternative.

To quote the top reviewer on Amazon: “In a market flooded with weird looking dolls with impossibly enhanced female figures dressed inappropriately (to put it nicely) with faces painted with makeup, in comes Lottie.”

And straight from the Lottie website: “The key point of difference is that Lottie has a ‘childlike’ body – she doesn’t wear makeup, jewelry or high heels and she can stand on her own two feet (always a useful life skill for all girls, big and small).”

For Ali’s third birthday she got one Lottie doll from Grandma and one from us, along with an extra change of clothes. I plan to add to the set over time.

signature

1 Comment | Art, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: barbie, dolls, girls, little girls, lottie | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

11th Anniversary Squirrel Buster

06/26/2014

We celebrated BIG last anniversary with a trip to Naples and Key West for 10 days, including snorkeling in a coral reef—the highlight of the trip. Father’s Day, our anniversary, my (30th!) birthday all fall within 5 days of each other. Combine that with newborn baby induced sleep-depravation and schedule-juggling and… This year I ordered a bird feeder. To celebrate our 11 years of blissful matrimony, we have a Brome 1015 Squirrel Buster Classic hanging outside our living room window. (Using this bracket.) It really is a gift to both of us, our whole family, as we’ve already been seeing lots of birds frequenting the feeder and we can see it from the dining room table and from the living room (where I’ve been sitting a lot to feed Firefly.)

It’s pretty cool how this works. It has a spring mechanism that closes up all the feed openings if a squirrel-weight animal clings to it. But for bird-weight animals, there are several openings for seeds. The birds are dropping a lot on the ground, though, so the squirrels are still happy.

1 Comment | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation, Art: modern design, Family | Tagged: anniversary, bird feeder, home, squirrel buster | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Courtyard Deck and Built-in Bench

06/25/2014

I gave a little sneak peek of this project on Friday. Jason recently constructed this bench and deck into our courtyard. This is the main entrance into our home, a private garden space that’s secluded from the street and neighbors. It’s a lovely space to sit and it just got better! We still need to add some cushions but we’re enjoying it already.