Hello! I’m back from New Orleans and luckily not too worse for wear. My girlfriends created an amazing celebration and, most importantly, I was surrounded by friendships that are longstanding and fulfilling. If you follow me on Twitter (or want to check out my flurry of tweets from the weekend) you can get a sense of the fun that was had.
I’m not sure how we covered all that we did in two days: dinners out at Marigny and Mona Lisa Restaurant, jazz brunch at The Court of Two Sisters, afternoon at Jazzfest, singing along at the Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop piano bar, cocktails at the Hotel Roosevelt bar, breakfast at Cafe Dumonde… and we managed to squeeze in some shopping here and there.
One of the first shops we came upon was the gorgeous Antiques de Provence, which reads like a page out of the blog Velvet and Linen. More and more, I’m getting into (what I would call) a french/swedish hybrid design style -some combination of the whitewashed feel of swedish interiors with the pretty lines of french antiques. Were I executing that vision in my own home, I’d start with these classic french pieces. I love the scale of those big armoires and large garden urns, the detail of the chairs with their nailheads, and the overstuffed bergeres may be on my lifetime design must-buy list.
At the total other end of the spectrum (and kinda the other end of the French Quarter) sits a junk shop called Greg’s Antiques. Affordable and chock full of antiques, vintage and salvaged pieces, this is one of those place you’d want to spend a day wading through. They had a surprisingly large selection of giant drums that would be so cute as a low side table or nightstand. But I was most transfixed with an old yearbook, that belonged to a geeky looking sophomore named Steven, who was dating either a hot senior named Judy or a Judy in his class. Had I more time, I’d have rooted through the book to solve the mystery.
They’ve got some good antiquing in New Orleans! On my next trip I hope to get to spend even more time exploring the local shops.
Images via Antiques de Provence and Greg’s Antiques
