collecting....Divine

Collecting religious objects, art, relics seems to be more popular than ever....I went to the Long Beach Antique Market last week, there were several dealers with beautiful stalls of divine objects, crowds of buyers were gathered around admiring the beautiful, rare finds and leaving with shopping bags full. Santos, crosses, crowns, nichos, & altar candle holders or pricketts are the most popular. Rosaries, milagros & religious textiles are also in demand. I love to see a collection of altar pricketts, Santos, religious crowns displayed together. I am always hunting for that special piece for myself or for one of my client's collection. I am always asked how to start a collection....the first thing is to find what "speaks" to you, there is a wonderful source online of religious objects, antique & vintage, in all price ranges. A collection always looks wonderful displayed together and is always a work in progress, never truly finished but always enjoyed.
Sharing with you a few of my fave divine finds...

French & Italian antique milagros

Rue 27 Maison

Vintage Ethiopian processional silver crosses from Rue 27 Maison

19th c French Cage Dolls

French sterling chalice

Collection of vintage & religious objects

Details of 19th c Altar Pricketts from Edith & Evelyn Vintage

Divine vignette

19th c Santos from Rue 27 Maison

Altar Pricket from Rue 27 Maison

Antique Chapel Angels from ritslev.dk

Antique French Religious Crowns

Italian Angel Santos

Until next time...Cheers ♥

The joys of Easter....

Easter is arriving late this year...it seems everyone is anticipating its arrival in hopes of warmer days & new beginnings. When I sat down to gather my thoughts on Easter, I kept going back to Easters in the past...Easter shoes...Egg hunting at my grandparents with my sister & cousins...chocolate bunnies & the Holy celebrations of the weekend. I kept thinking about coloring eggs, my husband & I hiding them for our children, lacing up those white Easter shoes & knee socks for my son, white Mary Jane's for my daughter...sitting in church as a young girl for the Easter service with my yellow tulle petticoat under my knees & looking up at my Mother in her Easter hat that was topped with bright pink flowers, my Father looking dashing as always in his crisp linen suit. All the delicious food, fun & festivities we see as  children...blossoms into beautiful memories of a most special Holy Day that  reassures us of new beginnings, second chances & the greatest gift of all...God's love. My children are adults now, our Easters are celebrated differently, but still joyously. I do miss the hiding of the eggs & gathering the goodies for the Easter baskets....we are celebrating Easter at sunrise on the beach here in southern Cali...and having a family dinner with Easter ham, spring vegetables & fresh seafood. I know there will be a few chocolate rabbits but no tulle petticoats or lace up shoes at the beach...:) Sharing with you a few of my joys of Easter...

Easter Bunny from Martha Stewart

Easter fete from Stone Gable Blog

personalized eggs from etsy

Easter herbal lemonade from Honestly Yum

Rue 27 Maison

naturally dyed eggs

Easter sweets from Waiting on Martha

Easter place cards from satoridesigns

the golden egg from camile styles

Easter dining at Rue 27 Maison

Easter Rabbits from Mud Pie Studios

tulle petticoats

 

Sweet Easter Bread from Sweet Living

Happy Easter... 

Until next time...Cheers ♥

Always a delight...outdoor markets

The outdoor markets in southern Cali are in full swing...most of the year the outdoor markets here are very busy...there seems to always be more vendors, buyers & the best to offer in the Spring & Fall each year. I shop an outdoor market here at least once a week...every week...my very fave is the Antique & Vintage Markets...I also love the fruit, vegetable & flower markets. Last week we shopped a wonderful monthly market, The Grove Antique Market in Orange County. It's a large, fun market set at the base of beautiful mountains. I met some wonderful vendors, talked about the most sought after finds, European Country items, talked about my blog :) and found some fabulous finds for Rue 27 Maison.
Afterwards, we had lunch at a wonderful & very authentic restaurant, Terroni with my son, who lives in LA. Terroni is on Beverly in the Fairfax district & specializes in southern Italian cuisine, it is very delicious, warm & welcoming. We had a traditional 2 hour lunch, Italian style, followed by fried apple fritters with creme fraiche & Italian expresso, a truly delightful experience and one of the very best Italian meals I have experienced outside of Italy.
Sharing with you a few faves from our morning at the Grove market & our fabulous lunch at Terroni...

Early arrival, grey skies welcomed us with cool winds, the vendors still setting up their tents...

Always a stop at the vendor who deals in antique leather & vellum books...

The sky is now bright & a brilliant blue as we walk over to the fresh vegetables..love the striped canopies and the friendly merchants

A fave vendor, Valerie Brooks has fabulous European Country finds...

Hard to resist the French daybed, above, it was wonderful....below, Casa Vintage from Sandra Portillo always has a beautiful array of vintage objects

After arriving at the market at 6:00 am, Terroni sounds perfect for lunch, the restaurant is fabulous with several stunning chandeliers, the largest hangs over the bar at the entrance...

our fave Italian sparking water from Roma...

freshly baked bread & beef carpaccio...

Terroni uses olive oil made entirely from hand picked olives, cold pressed Coratina olives from Puglia..it has a wonderful flavor

delicious flat iron steak with argula & shaved parmigiano

the end to a perfect lunch...fried apple fritters with Crème fraîche & Italian expresso

Terroni's Wine Room

Rue 27 Maison, with a few finds from the day...

Until next time...Cheers ♥

Topiary...crush

Always a fave...Topiaries, I have several inside & in my courtyard garden, I love them in all forms, love the rosemary simple ones as well as the floral varieties. I use them as centerpieces, in the kitchen and I love them on the mantle. They look great in pairs, wonderful en masse & beautiful standing alone. Topiaries go well with rustic French country decor as well as the more traditional & modern interiors.
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants by clipping the foliage of trees and shrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes.  Sometimes geometric or fanciful, the term also refers to plants which have been shaped as an art form...a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape.
Since its European revival in the 16th century, topiary has been seen on the parterres and terraces of gardens of the European elite, as well as in simple cottage gardens. Traditional topiary forms use foliage pruned and/or trained into geometric shapes such as balls or cubes, obelisks, pyramids, cones, or tapering spirals.

Topiary at Versailles and its imitators were never complicated..low hedges punctuated by potted trees trimmed as balls, interrupted by obelisks at corners, provided the vertical features of flat-patterned parterre gardens. The art of topiary has been in and out of style in England in the last several hundred years...becoming very popular again in the late 1880s until present day...and have been widely used in all forms...in the formal English castle gardens, Country Manor homes and the simple cottage home & garden. 
Sharing with you some of my fave ways to use topiaries...

topiaries in the garden from Karl Gercens

topiary perfection from gershwinandgertie

Topiary love at Rue 27 Maison

Ginny Magher's home in France...

greenhouse topiaries via anurbancottage

flowering hydrangea topiary

beautiful setting from Tone on Tone...

rustic & chic from inspired design

topiaries from Tone on Tone...

Versailles...via the fuller view

Until next time....Cheers ♥