Happy Women's Day!

Why Valentine's Day?

It's 14th of February and once again we celebrate or hate today's holiday, worldwide known as Saint Valentine's Day. Have you ever thought about reason why we celebrate it and where this holiday originated from? Stories vary but all of them follows brave and romantic actions of martyr Saint Valentine. 

In 3rd century, Roman Emperor Claudius II decided that single men are better soldiers than those who are married, so he prohibited young men from marriages. Despite of this law, Saint Valentine performed marriages for young lovers in secret for love sake. Unfortunately he was discovered, imprisoned and sentenced to death for his actions. During his imprisonment he fell in love with jailor's blind daughter (here the story varies) whom he according to some legends healed and right before his death he sent her a note with "Your Valentine" written on it. 

If you want to surprise your chosen Valentine, try to create something yourselves. Don't buy merchandised products, rather be original and use your head to find out what would really make your love happy. 

And don't forget, LOVE EVERYDAY!

Original gift: Clean, paint and decoupage lids of some jars and fill the jars with jam of your favourite flavour, with some sweets and custard powder of your choice (I love the chocolate one). Put together the recipe and original gift is created. Enjoy <3

Happy Valentine's Day

Saint Nicholas Day Celebration

In our country, we celebrate Saint Nicholas (alias Santa) day on 6th of December. The evening before, we would as children clean our shoes or prepare some stockings and leave them in front of the door or outside the window. Next morning, on Saint Nicholas day, we would find our shoes/stockings full of treats, which St Nicholas left there for us.

Christmas is more about celebrating the birth of Jesus. We still exchange gifts between each other and have huge dinner and christmas tree but our presents are brought to us by baby Jesus not by St. Nicholas. 

Saint Nicholas day is based on legends of real man, Bishop of Myra, Nicholas. Through the centuries there have been many stories told of St. Nicholas' life and deeds. However, our custom is based on the particular one, the story of St. Nicholas giving dowry gold. 

The story tells of a poor man with 3 daughters. In those days a young woman's father had to offer prospective husbands something of a value - a dowry. This poor man's daughters, without any dowries, were destined to be sold into slavery or become prostitues. When St. Nicholas heard of it, he decided to help them, but being too modest to do so openly (because of the chance of family's humiliation), he went to the house secretly and left 3 bags of gold in stockings hanged on window. (the end of the story varies)

And so every year on the 6th of December, the day when St. Nicholas died, children clean their shoes and leave them outside in hope, they would get some symbolic gifts.

The gifts are usually oranges (as representation of gold pouch), chocolate money, chocolate St. Nicholas figures or some practical gifts.

St. Nicolas Day

Halloween

A year has passed and we're getting ready for another halloween night. We take it quite seriously at our house, so every year we try to create even scarier Fright Night. The essence of successful Hell House design is in colours (black, red and white) and lighting. 

The aim is to use as little light as possible but still enough to create some scary shadows. Great idea is to play with different colours of light bulbs... For instance, we covered our ceiling light with scattered black rubbish bag, then we used blue LED lights across the room, left red light table lamp on and lighted looots of candles of different sizes.

If you've got a mirror in your house, there is plenty of stuff you can do with it. At first, find some great scary slogans (such as: Hi, I'm Chucky, wanna play?...) and paint them with red paint on the top of the mirror. Splash some paint across the writing, paint your hand with red and make some hand prints on any free space. And do you know what really creates some spooky atmosphere? When you place candles right in front of the mirror - those reflections are unbelievable!

As I've mentioned before, your essential colours are black, white and red. Play with those colours! Create some bloody backdrop, where your guests can pose in front of camera! For example, we used old white valance to make our own backdrop - again... red bloody hand prints, blood splashes, some scary slogans, itching plants on the side, big black spider hanging from the ceiling and voila, you've got some great spot for taking photos ;)

Realistic Haunted House atmosphere is multiplied with realistic bats... And don't tell me, those bats aren't realistic! ->

Tutorial How to make bats

Every good host of HELLoween party should prepare some gifts for their guests - really good idea is to announce some competitions, such as the scariest or the best costume of the night or the most creative one, and award them with spooky gifts (:

As I said, everything is about details... but not only details in designing your house, it's also about details of your costume.... BE CREATIVE!

Here are some great ideas for Halloween decorations or costumes -> Please, follow me on Pinterest.

All photographs are my own and are subjected to copyright matter.