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A Beautiful Mess blogger
has curated a perfectly happy place: her bright, candy-colored home in Nashville.
For years Larson has collected a rainbow of vintage glassware, which lives in her
Larson in her kitchen.
There are people who live in technicolor, as the trope goes, and then there is Elsie Larson. The Nashville-based blogger for A Beautiful Mess covers all things food, home, style, and crafting with a ferociously positive zeal. Dropping in to her home similarly feels a bit like visiting the happiest place in America—a playland for design-loving grown-ups. It’s unsurprising that this house, quite beautiful and not the least bit a mess, is where Larson runs her site; creates photo apps like A Color Story with her business partner and sister, Emma Chapman; and, in her downtime, paints, makes jewelry, and whips up colorful cocktails—while sharing all of it impeccably with her over a million Instagram followers.
Collections of instruments, vinyl and record players are artfully displayed for easy access.
Larson sees her home as the truest expression of her style, a mix of “1960s glam with an extra dose of cozy. I love gold, marble, and brass, but also lots of comfy finishes like fluffy rugs and blankets,” she says. She collects Deco-inspired brass fixtures from multiple sources, and she and her husband, music producer Jeremy Larson, even spray-painted some inexpensive figurines brass just for fun. The numerous musical instruments he plays, along with a beloved Crosley record player, are scattered around the house. Unsurprisingly, music has hugely shaped their world. “Sometimes songs can be a good inspiration for a room,” Larson explains, “like ‘Come Fly With Me.’ I feel like if you’re designing a space you’d love to live in, there’s a soundtrack to match.”
Color stories abound throughout the house. Each photo-ready vignette is punctuated by a bright hue.
Strolling through Larson’s home, much like visiting her website, reveals several fun DIY projects. In her kitchen, she had the oven and refrigerator wrapped in a honeydew-tinted vinyl that’s commonly used on the sides of buses (“It can withstand more heat than regular paint!”). She repackaged and labeled all her spices in clear containers with white Sharpie marker, which, she advises, can be removed with lemon juice. Then there’s the home’s fizzy pink “color story” that starts with the front door and extends to the bedroom ceiling. “Our bedroom is light and airy, but the blush ceiling gives the whole space a soft glow,” she explains. They also collect plants, including an 8-foot-tall cactus that is the same age as Larson. “I definitely consider myself a plant lady!” she says, laughing. Jeremy swears the plants exert a positive life force on his workspace. As does, no doubt, his wife. And for those more stressful days, Larson has an easy-to-replicate recipe for unwinding: “whiskey + Sinatra + bath bombs.”
