Dia de Los Muertos 2016
November 1, 2016 – Dia de Los Muertos is here.
If you know me, or read my inconsistent blog posts, you’ll know that Lawrence and I lived in Diamond Bar about three years ago. We were in the process of buying our first home when the seller backed out. To make a loooong story much shorter, we ended up living with my parents for two years. After my beloved father-in-law passed away unexpectedly in 2013, Lawrence decided we should move into his parents’ (and his childhood) home to care for his mom.
And so – here we are. We’ve lived here since February 2015. Why am I sharing this? Because during all that time from when the house purchase fell through until this past weekend, most of our home altar has been packed up in two boxes, waiting for the day we find a space of our own again to set it up.
Since the last time we had our altar up, we’ve unfortunately lost more loved ones, including my awesome father-in-law and my sister Patty (both in 2013) and my dear Tia Chepa (November 2014). We’re also dealing with space constraints – in Diamond Bar we had the whole top of a credenza to use. Here, we have a bookshelf (though we plan on spreading it out onto a second shelf).
Here are photos of our altar over the years…
2015. Last year I took some space on my desk to honor our baby, my grandmother (“Tita”), my suegro (father-in-law), my sister Patty, Lawrence’s sister Adriana, and my aunt (Tia Chepa). Not bad for a small space…
2013 was a very rough, sad year for Lawrence and me. November 1st and 2nd came so soon after unexpectedly losing Patty, I couldn’t think of setting up an altar space. The only blog post I wrote was a short one: my sister Patty…
2012: in our Diamond Bar home:
the main part of our 2012 altar…
2011…
our 2011 home altar…
And now – Dia de Los Muertos 2016…
Like I wrote, this year’s altar is set up on one shelf of our dining room bookshelves. A smaller space, yes, but I’ll be spreading it out into the shelf underneath as well…
our 2016 altar (so far)…
I consider this a work in progress, and – just like in our previous home – our altar will be set up year round. That means I have lots of time to set up a beautiful space in honor of all our loved ones no longer here.
Do you have an altar set up anywhere? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
’til next time…
susie carranza studio 