All Saints Day

It's a beautiful day today in New Orleans. We are going to the cemetery to partake in a ritual here today, All Saints Day. We are going to visit our dear friend Miss Anne, and meet her son Chip there, and then go to lunch. The cemetery used be someplace creepy before I moved to New Orleans, but now it has become a way of living life. Below is a previous post I did about All Saints Day. I'm sure everyone of you have someone who has passed away, and who you remember on this day and everyday.

Our first trip to New Orleans in 1999 coincided with Halloween and All Saints and All Souls Days. Although we are Catholic, we had never participated in the traditions of going to the cemetery on November 1.


Our friend Sabina took us to our first All Saints cemetery experience to St. Louis #1 and St. Louis #2, probably the two most famous ones since they are in The French Quarter.

We have no family grave to tend, but we go to take care of the grave of our dear departed friend Miss Anne. It's nothing really, just a little kindness that makes us feel good. The cemetery is very peaceful, and doing some little mundane chore, like sweeping off the headstone and leaving flowers and some trinkets, is very comforting.

Our loved ones rest far way from us, so having an adopted loved one to tend to makes us feel a part of this time and place.
All over Louisiana, people are tending the graves, washing tombs, sweeping up, planting new flowers, leaving trinkets behind.

Sabina and I made a yearly visit to St. Louis #1 and # 2. We have no one there, but we visited our favorite tombs, including Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau's. You mark an X on her tomb, asking that she guide you and grant a wish in the coming year. Sabina is no longer here (she moved away after Katrina), and I just don't feel like doing this without her.

We'd also bring candles and flowers, and candy, and sometimes little bottles of perfume. I'd bring tango things too, and a personal trinket from my jewelry box.

Though it's a family thing, it is also a solemn day for the church, and the priests come to add their blessings.

It's a custom that has been going on for nearly 300 years. It takes place during the day, unlike other ceremonies in the New Mexico that take place at night.

All Saints Day in old New Orleans - it's much the same today

And go HERE for another reprise about All Saints Day.



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The Day After

Did everyone have a wonderful Easter?

Sabina sent this post Easter photo to me - I'm sure it is making you smile too!

The weather was perfect across most of the country. Wisteria and azaleas are blooming their heads off in New Orleans, and the tulips and hyacinth and daffodils are up everywhere. It's the grandest Spring floral display.

Here's something to do with your empty egg shells. What a wonderful little vessel for a mini flower arrangement!

I wonder if you could use all those fake eggs out on the market that come in so many pretty colors.


Just snip off the top! Let me know how you make out.

Here's a blast from the past from Easter 2004, the year before Katirna. I'm with my dearest friend Miss Anne. I used to ride with her in the Germaine Wells Easter Parade in the French Quarter.

Valorie Hart and Anne Farmen Easter 2004

We decorated our hats and baskets. There was breakfast at Arnauds, then Mass at St. Louis Cathedral, then parading in the French Quarter in old buggies, giving Easter toys to the children. After that, back to Arnauds for lunch with the husbands. It was grand.

A faded newspaper clipping from The Times Picayune
Valorie Hart riding in the Germaine Wells 2004 Easter Parade

I hope you had a grand Easter with your family, friends, and loved ones!!!

All Saints Reprise

We were ready for Halloween kids at our house!

We went to a tango Halloween party last night. Some of us were talking about the small number of trick-or-treaters coming to our respective doors these days. Unless you live in a gated community, it seems like kids trick-or-treating house to house in a city is nearly extinct. Of course safety issues are valid, but in our cases the kids, parents, grandparents, all of them our neighbors, know who we are.
One person suggested that Halloween has sadly been taken over by adults. And it's true - the street is filled with costumed revelers far from childhood years. The decorations festooning the outside of homes are getting more elaborate each year, and they are hardly childlike. This year I saw an entire New Orleans style cemetery (complete with crypts and theatrical lighting) created in someone's small front yard.

I didn't put up Halloween decorations (click on images to a larger view) until yesterday when I got home from work. It was kind of fun decorating for the moment at hand. I have tons of stuff in the shed, so it was easy to haul out a couple of boxes and be ready a half hour later for trick-or-treaters.

It was a cool night, so we wrapped up and wigged out, and opened a bottle of wine and sat on the porch waiting for the kids.

Cholo looks so cute next to the giant Snoopy. This giant tacky suburban lawn ornament cracks me up!

My wicker fan chair awaits my best Morticia Adams fantasy. I love the crows! Do you use them too? A friend of mine set a whole bunch of crows out on her front lawn and the real crows had a fit, cawing and screeching until she removed them!

So I'm taking down the Halloween stuff, and thinking about making a journey to the cemetery to partake in another New Orleans tradition. I am reprinting the following post I did last year about today, All Saints Day.

Calling All Saints

Our first trip to New Orleans in 1999 coincided with Halloween and All Saints and All Souls Days. Although we are Catholic, we had never participated in the traditions of going to the cemetery on November 1.
Our friend Sabina took us to our first All Saints cemetery experience to St. Louis #1 and St. Louis #2, probably the two most famous ones since they are in The French Quarter.
We have no family grave to tend, but we go to take care of the grave of our dear departed friend Miss Anne. It's nothing really, just a little kindness that makes us feel good. The cemetery is very peaceful, and doing some little mundane chore, like sweeping off the the headstone and leaving flowers and some trinkets, is very comforting.
Our loved ones rest far way from us, so having an adopted loved one to tend to makes us feel a part of this time and place.
All over Louisiana, people are tending the graves, washing tombs, sweeping up, planting new flowers, leaving trinkets behind.
Sabina and I made a yearly visit to St. Louis #1 and # 2. We have no one there, but we visited our favorite tombs, including Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau's. You mark an X on her tomb, asking that she guide you and grant a wish in the coming year. Sabina is no longer here (she moved away after Katrina), and I just don't feel like doing this without her.
We'd also bring candles and flowers, and candy, and sometimes little bottles of perfume. I'd bring tango things too, and a personal trinket from my jewelry box.
Though it's a family thing, it is also a solemn day for the church, and the priests come to add their blessings.
It's a custom that has been going on for nearly 300 years. It takes place during the day, unlike other ceremonies in the New Mexico that take place at night.

Calling All Saints And Souls

Our first trip to New Orleans in 1999 coincided with Halloween and All Saints and All Souls Days. Although we are Catholic, we had never participated in the traditions of going to the cemetery on November 1.
Our friend Sabina took us to our first All Saints cemetery experience to St. Louis #1 and St. Louis #2, probably the two most famous ones since they are in The French Quarter.
We have no family grave to tend, but we go to take care of the grave of our dear departed friend Miss Anne. It's nothing really, just a little kindness that makes us feel good. The cemetery is very peaceful, and doing some little mundane chore, like sweeping off the headstone and leaving flowers and some trinkets, is very comforting.
Our loved ones rest far way from us, so having an adopted loved one to tend to makes us feel a part of this time and place.
All over Louisiana, people are tending the graves, washing tombs, sweeping up, planting new flowers, leaving trinkets behind.
Sabina and I made a yearly visit to St. Louis #1 and # 2. We have no one there, but we visited our favorite tombs, including Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau's. You mark an X on her tomb, asking that she guide you and grant a wish in the coming year. Sabina is no longer here (she moved away after Katrina), and I just don't feel like doing this without her.
We'd also bring candles and flowers, and candy, and sometimes little bottles of perfume. I'd bring tango things too, and a personal trinket from my jewelry box.
Though it's a family thing, it is also a solemn day for the church, and the priests come to add their blessings.
It's a custom that has been going on for nearly 300 years. It takes place during the day, unlike other ceremonies in the New Mexico that take place at night.

HGTV Rate My Space Top Rated Today

I am a stylist, decorator, designer. I had a design business over 15 years ago.
I'm a boho through and through. I love the beauty of the world, and especially the rooms and spaces people create for themselves, or for a profession.

To amuse myself, I make little styling projects at home. The digital camera allows instant results.


The blog allows an instant magazine. I am in pig heaven.

These images were made for the good folks at HGTV's online phenom Rate My Space. They really are my base readers. We encourage one other, and have a strong support system among ourselves.


I did not intend to put in on the blog, because it is a little like a Hallmark card, and it is personal, because it's my Easter tribute and memorial to my dearest, best-est friend Miss Anne.


Miss Anne was the ultimate visual vamp. Her home was jam packed (but not junky looking) with decades of things.

She loved to decorate, dress up, garden, club hop, dance, dine out, shop, paint pictures, and sew.

She had every decor and fashion magazine, and she knew trends, and what was good and what wasn't.

She was not wealthy. But her home looked unique and fabulous.

She was a single working mom who once lived on boiled peanuts to put her son in a good private school (and feed him something better).

She was a fashion maven beyond compare.

And most of all she was a positive life force: kind, but not stupid; busy, but never obsessed, and she was my devoted friend.


So here's to Miss Anne!

Thank you all for helping me make my tribute to her get to Page One Top Rated on RMS!