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Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category
Halloween Superstitions
Friday, October 14, 2011
- On Halloween, a girl can divine the name of her future husband by paring an apple and tossing the peel over her shoulder. The peel will fall into the shape of the man’s initials.
- If a girl stands in front of a mirror in a darkened room holding a candle, the face she sees in the reflection over her shoulder will be the face of her future husband.
- Black cats were originally thought to protect witches’ power from negative forces.
- To keep spirits away from your house, place a bowl of food outside to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.
- Light a candle to guide your loved one home from the spirit world
- Ringing a bell scares away evil spirits.
- If you see a spider on Halloween night, it could be the spirit of a loved one watching you.
- To meet a witch on Halloween night, put your clothes on inside out and walk backwards.
- Do not look at your shadow in the moonlight. Doing so on All Hallows Eve will guarantee a death in the near future.
- If you see a ghost, walk around it nine times, and it will disappear.
- If you hear 3 knocks and no one is there, it usually means someone close to you has died. This is called the 3 knocks of death.
- If you kill a black cat on Halloween, you will have 7 years of bad luck.
- If you hold your breath while you drive by a cemetery, evil spirits can’t enter your body.
- If a black cat meows on your porch or near a window, a death will soon occur in the family.
- When bobbing for apples, it is believed that the first person to bite an apple would be the first to marry.
- If you go to a crossroads at Halloween and listen to the wind, you will learn all the most important things that will befall you during the next twelve months.
- If a person lights a new orange colored candle at midnight on Halloween and lets it burn until sunrise, he or she will be the recipient of good luck.
- A burning candle inside a jack-o-lantern on Halloween keeps evil spirits and demons at bay.
- If a candle flame suddenly turns blue, there’s a ghost nearby.
- Walk around your home three times backwards and counterclockwise before sunset on Halloween to ward off evil spirits.
- Girls placed hazel nuts along the front of the firegrate, each one to symbolize one of her suitors. She could then find out who her future husband would be by chanting, ‘If you love me, pop and fly; if you hate me, burn and die.’ The nut that popped out of the fire instead of burning up when she named her suitor would indicate her future husband.
- Gazing into a flame of a candle on Halloween night will enable you to peer into the future.
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Halloween Decorations
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Decorating your home for Halloween can be as simple or complex as you like. In recent years, companies have created strings of lights that you can hang outside your home like Christmas lights, but in the orange of Halloween. Inflatable yard decorations depicting Jack-o-Lanterns, black cats, and spooky ghosts are another quick and easy way to dress up your yard for the holiday. Carving pumpkins is both a fun Halloween activity and a traditional means of decorating. The flickering glow of Jack-o-Lanterns in the night is always a spooky sight.
If you would like to put more effort into really scaring trick-or-treaters and party guests, design your decorations around a theme. Scary graveyard and haunted house are two of the most popular themes. For a graveyard, buy premade fake tombstones at your local party store or make your own by cutting out and spray painting Styrofoam. Add skeletal remains, open coffins, ghosts and dark spirits hanging from the trees. If you really want to splurge, a fog machine will create fantastic atmosphere, and glowing colored lights placed on the ground will seem eerie in the mist.
The trick to creating a good haunted house is to make it look long abandoned. Spiderwebs, fake bugs and bats, and tattered curtains fluttering in the wind work very well. You can add to this with flickering black candles in the windows, torn wallpaper, old paintings or photographs of people who are obviously long dead—the possibilities are endless. There are dozens of premade items for sale that make decorating on this theme quick and easy, but you can also do it yourself by creating spiderwebs from torn cheesecloth and using baking flour to create fake dust.
Of course, there are many other decorating themes if you use your imagination. A vampire’s lair, witch’s castle, or mad scientist’s laboratory are some other traditional Halloween themes, but why not go for something more unique? Given the current popularity of the Zombie Apocalypse scenario, you could go wild creating a post-apocalyptic look that would thrill trick-or-treaters. No matter what theme you choose, the important thing is to be creative!
Halloween Costumes
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Trends in Halloween costumes change every year—after all, no one wants to be seen in the same costume they wore last year. However, costumes always fall into one of several categories:
Cute
The cute costumes are usually for infants and younger children, and are often similar from year to year. Most costumes for very young children dress them up as an adorable animal like a monkey, bunny, or dinosaur. There are also miniature versions of costumes for older children, which can range from devils and angels to witches and pirates, or whatever else is popular for older kids that year.
Silly
Funny costumes are for all ages, kids and adults both. Many silly costumes are foods or other inanimate objects, and there are also sets that go together for couples, like Fork & Knife or Ketchup & Mustard. Many costumes in this category are a play on words, like A Chick Magnet being someone dressed as an actual magnet with rubber ducks attached to it. The possibilities are endless, and this is a great way to show off your creativity.
Scary
By far the most popular category, scary costumes play on the long tradition of Halloween superstitions and ghost stories. Old stand-bys like vampire, witch, werewolf, and mummy remain prevalent each year, but every year also sees new ideas that push the envelope of what is frightening. Masks, makeup, and costumes are becoming more and more realistic so that it is very easy to come up with a hideous persona that will startle your friends and neighbors.
Sexy
Sexy costumes for women have become very popular in the last decade. Many of these play on traditional sexy characters, like French maid and belly dancer, while others take characters from movies and children’s TV shows and create a more flirtatious version of their outfits. Stick Rainbow Brite in a short skirt and stockings or modify Lara Croft’s costume just a little, and you’ve got the perfect sexy costume.
Pop Culture
This category is the most ephemeral of all, for it shifts with every trend. Costumes can portray currently popular entertainers like Lady Gaga, political figures, characters from recently released movies, or play on a trend like the vampire craze started by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. For Halloween 2011, the Zombie Apocalypse will be a huge trend, popularized in books, graphic novels, movies, and TV shows like The Walking Dead. Many boys may want to dress as Thor or Captain America this year. Steampunk continues to flourish in a smaller portion of the populace, and is an excellent choice for creative and detailed costuming.
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