Gearing Up for Halloween In New Orleans!

Hi Everybody! I just got back from New Orleans, where I celebrated my birthday with a friend over the weekend.

I have visited The Crescent City during Halloween weekend before. Back in 1995 I was there with some friends for Anne Rice's annual Memnoch Ball. If you ever get a chance to visit during Halloween season, it is a great place to be with lots going on! But this weekend, I was on the hunt for any early Halloween shopping I could do while I was down there...



Santa's Quarters, a holiday shop on Decatur Street, had an excellent selection of Halloween ornaments and a few decorative items:



I loved this creepy half-skeleton cat with a rat crawling out of its body:



I bought a shiny, vintage-style pumpkin ornament while I was there.


Just down the street from Santa's Quarters is David's Found Objects. Owner David Peltier had a pretty sweet collection of vintage Halloween items:

He told me this was the "overflow" from his own personal antique Halloween collection!


Across Decatur Street near the French market, Head to Toe had a very stylish Halloween display in the window:


This glittery skull purse is fancy!:

You can tell that owner Carol Earth has a good eye for sophisticated Halloween decor.

Pretty glass pieces from the window display:

...and one more shot of a beautiful witch in the window!:

Of course, it doesn't have to be Halloween season for you to come across some spooky things in the French Quarter!


Here are some shots I took at various gift shops around town...

A lot of the bigger gift/souvenir shops had a voodoo theme...


I liked this display of a skeleton playing a pipe organ...

Here's a scary guy greeting tourists at the entrance of one shop:

...and this display was on the back of the wall in the same shop:


My friend Elisabeth and I took a Haunted History tour of the French Quarter one night! Here are the long lines waiting for the tours just off Bourbon Street:


Tours meet up just outside Rev. Zombie's Voodoo shop at dusk:


Just before the tour, we checked out Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street:

What a fun weekend!

Next up: Halloween shopping in Santa Fe, New Mexico next month!