Call Dave Bruce at (504) 616-0080 or

click here http://www.davebruce.com to reach a New Orleans area home sales specialist.

Receive a custom evaluation for your home, including comparisons to other homes that have recently sold or are on the market. This guarantees you receive the most accurate information available. When you're looking for a partner to help you negotiate the complexities of selling a home, you've come to the right place. The experience, dedication and strong communication you'll receive here will help ensure the successful and profitable sale of your home!

A website that maps the newest and most popular restaurants tries to answer the question where are the best new restaurants, what is the newest? what is the most popular? This site has developed a "Heat Map" that shows where and what. Their criteria requires a restaurant to be open for less than year and to have taken shown to be really popular.

New Orleans is known for it's food with new restaurants popping up all the time and this site might help you figure out which ones are worth trying. If you buy a home in New Orleans or currently live here you get to check out new restaurants all the time. The famous and well known restaurants are easy to find and if you are visiting New Orleans names like Emeril, Brennan's and Commanders Palace will be mentioned. The heat map has some of the more local restaurants, Eater Heat Map.

They say that you can eat out every night of the year and never visit the same restaurant twice and never have a bad meal in New Orleans. Don't know if that is true probably too expensive and too caloric for me to try but that's what they say.

One of the most common complaints I hear when people have to start the packing process before moving is "I have so much STUFF". I think that we all have a tendency to accumulate things/stuff/junk in our homes.

If you are one of those people that never keeps something just in case, then this is not for you.

For the rest of us, getting rid of things can be a chore. Fortunately, there are a couple of really easy ways to dispose of items you no longer want, and certainly don't want to move, that could be useful to someone else.

pickupplease.org

The pickupplease website allows you to schedule a free pickup of unwanted household goods, clothing, small appliances and small furniture. It's easy, easy, easy to just go to the site, provide your address and choose from several different available dates throughout the month.

I used them recently and loaded up my front porch with bags of clothes that no longer fit (don't ask), a box full of coffee cups (I have no idea where they all came from), an old end table and a box filled with what appeared to be every curtain that has ever hung in my home at one time or another. When I got back home, all of the items were gone and they left behind a handy door hanger receipt for tax purposes. You can't get much better than that!

The bonus is that donations are used to support local, state and national programs for Vietnam Veterans of America. Visit pickupplease.org

freecycle.org

Freecycle is a community group that posts items they are offering for free or allows folks to request items they are in need of. You'll have to create an account with them, but once that's done, you can post your discards on the site for pickup by anyone in need.

I've used this site as well, getting rid of shoes that I don't wear anymore by giving them to a member of the Krewe of Muses who is busily gluing, glittering and otherwise embellishing shoes for the next parade.

Visit freecycle.org

If you know of any other local businesses accepting donations that we can support or get the word out for, please leave their information in the comments below.

Originally published at West Bank Living, your source for all things NOLA

Yet another scam arrived in my inbox this afternoon. This one attempts to look like it is coming from REMAX because they have the balloon in the email and they ask you to click through for property information....they ask you to sign in with your Facebook or Twitter accounts...

NO WAY, NO HOW WOULD THE "REAL" REMAX send something like this ---PLEASE DO NOT OPEN IT, DO NOT CLICK THROUGH AND DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR ACCESS TO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS...THE EMAIL:

If you are new to an area there are things that you will not know. Here are some of the things that I didn't know when I moved to New Orleans.

1. A Po Boy is a sandwich on French Bread "dressed" with mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato. In New Orleans you will be asked if you want your sandwich "dressed". If you are not asked and you don't say your sandwich will come with all of the toppings.

2. The roads are in terrible condition in some parts of the Garden District and Uptown. There are no drains for water to flow to so the sides of the roads are tranches where water can collect during heavy rainfalls.

3. Until this year there was no recycling but now the City of New Orleans recycles except for darkly colored glass bottles. ?!?!

4. It is legal to drive and talk on your phone and yes drivers are distracted and this is not a good thing.

5. Sometimes it is okay when making a left turn to go through the red light at the turn but it is not okay all the time. The very nice New Orleans police officer I asked about this said it up to the officers to decide and there are no signs when and if you will receive a ticket and there no signs.

6. Locations are discussed as towards the river or towards the lake and because of the curve of the Mississippi River north can become south and east is not necessarily east.

7. There are 70 communities in New Orleans and it is impossible to know everything about everything.

8. In New Orleans your entire property tax is due in January.

9. There is no no parking for road cleaning, there is no road cleaning however the roads seems clean anyway.

10. In New Orleans you can buy a daiquiri at a drive thru and so if you thought that driving while on your cell was not a good thing what do you think of this?

11. It is legal to walk around the French Quarter drinking liquor and there are many daiquiri establishments.

12. The trolly car's cost $1.25 and you must have exact change.

13. One of the local supermarkets is a chain by the name of Rousse's. They are all over and have prepared foods that people down here seem to like.

14. I am told that Popeye's makes the best beans and rice as good as making it at home.

15. There is a shopping mall out in Metairie with stores like Williams Sonoma, Sephora and there is an Apple Store, my personal favorite. All of he big box stores are also out in Metairie with Best Buy, Target, Sears (for now) and most of what you can think of.

16. Lot's of things are discussed in terms of Hurricane Katrina with comparisons of how it was before to how it is now often made.

17. You could if you wanted to eat out every night of the week for a year and never eat in the same place twice or at least it seems that way.

18. This community rocks. It is quirky, engaging and engaged. People have moved here from all over the country. People visit and stay because there is just no place quite like New Orleans.

If you have never been to New Orleans you really should make it a point to visit..