Some funny tricks for the coming holiday

The first of April is marked in our calendar as All Fools’ Day. It is this very day when we like to play tricks on our friends, relatives and colleagues. For such a long history of this holiday, there appeared lots of different tricks, pranks and practical jokes. Here are some of them for your good preparation for the coming holiday.

· Rearrange somebody's drawers or file cabinets in a different order and see them baffled.
· Hard boil an egg and place it in the regular egg carton the night before. In the morning, ask someone to help you make breakfast and beat the egg to make omelets. Hand them the hard-boiled egg and watch them trying to crack it!
· On the other hand, you may just glue the eggs to the carton and ask someone to hand them to you in the morning. As the victims struggle to take the eggs out of the carton, they break.

There are lots of fantastic tricks for heavy sleepers. Some of the popular ones are:

· Draw funny eyebrows and moustache on their faces while they are asleep.
· Place some whipped cream in their hands and tickle their nose with a feather.
· Placing someone's hand while they are asleep in a bowl of cold water is a sure way to make them wet their beds.

· This one is to play Dr Doolittle. Tape a little walky-talky on your pet or hide it somewhere near where it is laying. Walk off to a safe distance where you can keep yourself hidden from others with the other piece. As soon as another family member tries to pick up or pat on the back of your pet, say in a gruff voice, "I hate you doing this to me." See them jump with fright and shock.
· Late at night, fill the hair-dryer with baby powder. Catch the expression of someone who has just washed his or her hair and turned it white by using the hair dryer.
· This can be done in class, office or home. Ask your friends, colleagues and siblings to perform particular actions together at the same pre-planned time like dropping their pencils at the same time, to tie shoelaces, to reboot their computers, to drink water or any such innocent actions. These synchronized actions are sure to surprise anybody who will wonder about what is happening.
· Good for teachers. Tell your students that you are just going to note the scores that they have got on their tests or exams and will hand out to them after an hour. Go to the room and them keep running out looking like very scared and tell them that the principal has just spilled coffee or ink on the test/examination papers and they will have to take them again. Note their reactions and exclamations. You can bet that the dullest of all students will loudly claim that they had done their best this time and it is not fair to them. Then you can tell them how much they have really scored.
· If you are good at graphic designing, this one is for you. Make fake parking tickets or buy them from the market and put it on the cruisers and bikes of the traffic police officers who take liberty and park their vehicles in no parking zones. Make sure that you or your vehicle are not watched or can be traced back.
· Put an elastic band around the push button of the sprayer in the sink and make it face towards where the person stands. Similarly, you can turn the showerhead towards the spot where a person stands and. As soon as the next person turns them on, they will get all soaked. Be sure not to forget that you don't get soaked yourself.
· An easy way to fool others is to tape down the click-button of the phone with a transparent tape so that whenever someone picks up the phone to receive an incoming call, it still keeps ringing. Works only on landlines.
· Try it with your teenaged kids. Set the alarm clock for 3:00 a.m. and hide it under their beds. See them tearing down their room in a sleepy fit to shut it up.
· Take an orange. Slit it at the bottom and use a needle to take its pulp out through the slit. Thinly slice an apple and insert it carefully inside, arranging it with the help of the needle. Offer the orange to the friends when they call at your home and peel it for them. See them gasp in surprise when they see the apple slices instead of orange pulp. Needs skill.
· Squeeze a banana softly until it becomes very soft and using a needle make some holes in its black spots so that they cannot be seen easily. Ask someone to hand you the banana and watch them as the smashed pulp comes pouring out!
· Put toothpaste/shaving cream/whipped cram or any such thing in the socks of your roommates. Make an escape before they try them on.
· Add yellow or beige food coloring to the milk to make it look like rotten milk. Works every time someone pours out the milk and is stunned to find it rotten.
· Make a small hole just below the edge in the plastic disposable cups. Offer juice or some other drink to your guests in a way that they would pick it up with the hole facing them. As soon as they will try to drink, the liquid will spill on them through the hole.

You are sure to have some tricks of your own which always work for you. If you do want to try something new this spring, choose one of suggested above. The most important thing is not to offend or spoil anybody’s mood by your innocent jokes. Do not forget about it as well.

Easter activities for children

Easter is considered to be one of the most important Christian Holidays. The resurrection of Christ is celebrated all over the Christian world with slight difference in the date of celebration. But it is not so important when we celebrate the holiday of God, Love, Forgiveness and Good. We want to believe that God still cares for us and won’t leave us in peril. Unfortunately, not all Easter traditions are still being observed. Very often we forget what kind of holiday we celebrate – it is enough for us just to have another holiday. I wish we were not so ignorant and indifferent!

The most important thing is to explain our children the origin of this holiday and its major symbols and traditions. To make the holiday closer to hearts of your kids, there are some games ideas for them:

1. An egg decorating competition with boiled eggs! It may be even more interesting if you take part in this game! This is a fun game, however if there is to be a winner there is going to be a loser, kids do not like losing so have some extra treats to give those who were not chosen for first prize.

2. Egg Rolling is commonly popular at this time. You need hard boiled eggs and a spoon. You can either have the children roll the egg along the ground to the finishing line or have them balance the egg on the spoon.

3. Have a baking competition so as to speak, you the hostess bake sponge cakes and have the children decorate them. Place before them bowls of hundreds and thousands, jelly beans, cream, piped icing etc. This game will give so much pleasure to the Easter baker and eaters, (kids). Have a video camera to hand for all events so you can look back and enjoy every Easter moment.

4. Make sure to have different types of music, although we celebrate the resurrection of Christ - the kids may not see this quite as important for their party until older and may want to sing or dance to nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty as opposed to 5 little ducks (chicks) went out one day.

Remember that all you do or don’t do is reflected in your children. Do not neglect them and their upbringing – spend more time with your kids, have parties, holidays and games with them – especially in such a day – Easter.

Have a great holiday, enjoy yourself and give joy to people who are close to you!

St. Patrick’s Day coming…

Tomorrow the whole world will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Today I’d like to dedicate my article to some Irish traditions of celebrating this holiday. Because it is well-known that this holiday has Irish roots and Irish origin. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated to honor Saint Patrick, a missionary credited with converting the Irish to Christianity. It is believed that he was not even Irish. Some say he was born in either Scotland or in Roman Britain. When he was around 60 years old, St. Patrick traveled to Ireland and spread the Christian word.

This holiday, as well as many others, has its own symbols. The shamrock is one of Ireland's most famous symbols. It is said that Saint Patrick used the shamrock, or seamorg, and its 3 leaves to explain the concept of the Trinity - the father, son, and the Holy Spirit. It is true that the shamrock is associated with good luck, thus, in order to become happy and have luck all year long, many people wear shamrocks on St. Patrick's Day.

Another symbol of Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day is Leprechaun. The legendary leprechaun is an elf-like creature. In most representations he looks like a small, old man. Leprechauns like to spend their time alone making shoes. They live in the woods and hide from everyone, but maybe this has something to do with their mysterious pots of gold! The leprechauns are said to keep their pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. Some stories say if a leprechaun likes you, he will share his gold. Others stories say you must catch a leprechaun, and then he will take you to his pot of gold. During the holiday you can try to lure him to you and grab him, or you can try to build a Leprechaun trap to capture him in. If you are lucky enough to capture a Leprechaun, your work is not done yet! Legend says you cannot take your eyes of the Leprechaun for even a second or he will disappear. The first thing you should do is to build a trap and lure a leprechaun into it. There is not a sure-fire way of doing it – you may use all kinds of things you have and which, to your mind, can be of good avail. Do not forget about bait – for greedy leprechauns coins will be the best baits, either real or sweet chocolate. There is no guarantee you will catch this mysterious elf, but you are sure to have much fun!

Besides, as far as the story goes, St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland and into the sea. He did this by beating on a drum. It was believed that snakes were a symbol of evil and by driving them away St. Patrick helped to rid Ireland of evil.

You are sure to have heard about Blarney Stone, haven’t you? The amazing news is that it does exist! It is set in the wall of the Blarney Castle in the Irish village of Blarney. You can visit and kiss the Blarney stone, but it is not an easy fete. To reach the Blarney stone, you must lie down on your back and bend your head backwards and downwards to reach it. It is said that kissing the Blarney Stone will give you the gift of blarney, or speaking convincingly to all you meet! If you want to try your luck, do not allow anybody stop you!

Apart from symbols of this holiday you also should know what basic meals of the holiday are and what people in Ireland will eat this very day. Most will start the day with a good old Irish Breakfast: fried rashers of bacon, fried sausage, fried black pudding, fried tomato, and a fried egg. If that's not enough, you can always go one step further and have an Ulster Fry. It's the bread that makes it special: fried potato bread made out of yesterday's leftover spuds and fried soda farls to boot.

Irish stew is part and parcel of holiday menu in many restaurants and homes, as broths and stews are the cornerstone of Irish gastronomy. There's no disputing that it is still one of the best casserole dishes in the entire world.

Everyone knows that the Irish are fond of the potato. They talk about last year's potatoes, this season's potatoes, great potato vintages--people in Ireland talk about potatoes the way the French talk about wine. Potatoes dishes such as Colcannon and Champ, therefore, are always popular choices.

Colcannon (from the Gaelic word cole, meaning cabbage) is made of cabbage that has been cooked in milk and blended with buttery mashed potatoes. It's traditionally served in a fluffy pile with a sort of well in the centre that's filled with even more melted butter for dipping each forkful into. Champ is more favored in the Northern counties of Ireland. It's equally heavenly in taste; the only difference is it's made with scallions.

So you my cook some of these dishes and enjoy St. Patrick’s Day as if in Ireland! Have fun and enjoy the holiday!

Add more light to your party!

If you are tired of all ordinary methods of decoration, you may go ahead with some new ideas. The market offers thousands of ideas for party decoration. Each of them, however, needs personal approach and your own creative interpretation.

Why not, for instance, use glow sticks for your party decoration? Instead of ordinary balloons you may activate a glow stick and place it inside the balloon. Now you don't just have a balloon, you have a balloon that also glows in the dark. For getting the desired effect you may use the same color of the stick and of the balloon. Perfect for decorating the walls and ceilings and they will still be glowing well after your guests have left.

Besides, if you have brought some glow bracelets in tubes of 50 you should find that the end caps from the tubes double up as glowball connectors. You may make up some glowballs using the connectors and use them as table center pieces or as lanterns and hang them from the walls or ceiling. These will add your party cool atmosphere and won’t leave your guests indifferent.

Another idea for table center piece is to use a larger glow stick, pop them into a candle holder and you have an instant table light. They not only look great and give out a nice relaxing glow but they are safer than candles too. If you don't have any candle holders try using some tall slim glasses. Use a blob of play dough on the end of the glow stick, pop it into the glass and stick it to the bottom.

Just a bit of your imagination will help you to make a nice surprise for your guests and enjoy your own work immensely!

Never part with your sweet-hearts…

I know people, who claim that St. Valentine’s Day has nothing to do with romance and love due to its pagan origin. I am not much of a historian, but frankly speaking, I am not even interested that much in direct meaning of this holiday. Perhaps, some one will criticize me, but I’m glad to have this holiday and to celebrate it with a person I like and care for.

Isn’t it wonderful to awake your sweet-heart by a romantic message (if you are not with her at the moment) or present her with a bunch of flowers, or cook breakfast for her, or spend a couple of hours looking for a gift or… I may continue this list for hours.

Do we really need to analyse the roots of the holiday, searching for more and more details??? What for? Can’t we simply enjoy this excellent opportunity to say “Darling! I’m so happy to be with you! I love you so much!” and to here the same words? Isn’t it worth living for? Can’t this be the sense of our life, but not money, endless attempts to earn more and more?

I wish this holiday could be celebrated more that once a year. Unfortunately in this every day struggle we tend to forget about more important things, which really make our life filled with deep sense. Job can bring us money, money can bring us power, fame and other privileges, but it can not make us happy and loved. And without love we cannot be happy! As pathetic it may sound, but I really think so and live according to this principle.

To cut the long story short, I want to wish all of us love, care, tenderness and understanding. Those who have it all, do not make a mistake and never lose hold of it and those who are still single, never give up – love is waiting for you and is looking for an appropriate moment to enter your life and stay there forever!

Let St. Valentine protect you and your love…

This old nice St. Valentine’s Day…

Do you know any traditions connected with St. Valentine’s Day? This holiday is known for many centuries. In some countries it is one of the most favourite ones, in others it is considered to be pagan and is not celebrated. We, however, do not consider this holiday to be out of place and are simply glad to have one more opportunity to say “I love you”.

If this holiday has long history, it means that it was celebrated in different times and in different places differently.

May be you know, that in Wales wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on February 14th. Hearts, keys and keyholes were favourite decorations on the spoons. The decoration meant, "You unlock my heart!"

It is interesting to know that in the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. Since that time “to wear your heart on your sleeve” means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.

In some countries exists a tradition to present your girl-friend with a piece of clothes. If the girl took the present, it means she is ready to marry you.

Some people used to believe that if a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine's Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry a millionaire. So be attentive and try to notice everything during this day. Perhaps, your destiny has a present for you :-) .

Traditionally, if a young female is curious enough...and brave enough...she can conjure-up the appearance of her future spouse by visiting a graveyard at midnight on the Eve of Saint Valentine's Day and singing a prescribed chant while running around the church twelve times.

In Britain and Italy, some unmarried women would rise before sunrise on Valentine's Day and stand by the window watching for a man to pass. It was believed that the first man seen...or someone who looked very much like him...would be their husband within a year.

In Denmark, it is customary to send pressed white flowers called snowdrops to friends.

For a lady to sleep with a sprig of rosemary pinned inside the pillow on the Eve of Valentine's Day was once thought to encourage dreams of a future sweetheart's face.

These and many others customs and traditions bring us closer to this nice holiday of everybody, who is in love or is eager to fall in love and find his/her better half. In doesn’t mean much, whether you believe in these superstitions or not, whether you will try to find out the name of your sweet-heart (if you still haven’t one) or not. Just try to add to your life more romance, tenderness and care. Another tradition of this holiday says that to be awoken by a kiss on Valentine's Day is considered lucky, thus, do not hesitate and don’t forget to tell your sweet heart about this nice custom. I wish, it were so every day…

Choose presents for him and for her on St. Valentine’s Day

Looking for a present is always a difficult task, especially if you want to do something pleasant for your sweet-heart. The choice of a present needs much consideration and thinking. Even if you know a person quite well, the choice is not less difficult, because you wish to touch his/her heart with your present.

If choosing a gift for him, you may either make it on your own, or buy it, taking into account his interests and hobbies. Sure thing, the present, made on your own, will be unforgettable. So if you can do something of the kind, even don’t think whether you should do it – you should! Moreover, you still have some time! In case you are creative and have the skill you can knit a sweater or muffler, paint a portrait, prepare a memorable photo-album with pictures of you two or trace his life from birth through pictures. This gift will be forever in his memory!
If you’ve made up your mind to buy a present, think of what your boyfriend or husband wants. Perhaps, he has told you about something, perhaps, it is the time you could make his dreams come true… You may go in for general Valentines Day Gifts for men like wallets, wrist watches, shirts, perfumes, chocolate hampers, sweets etc. If nothing good comes to your mind, you may simply organize a romantic date, cook supper, use candles and… your romantic date will slowly move into romantic night. By the way, if men say, that they don/t like romance, they are not quite frank. Just nobody made them feel how great it is! Deep in their hearts they are real romantics…

The case is more difficult with women… Women like nobody else will try to guess what they may get from you for this occasion. Thus, it usually takes much effort in order your choice not to result in abject failure. While choosing a present for her, keep all you know about your sweet-heart in mind! Her favorite color, her favorite accessories etc. Besides, a woman is likely to make a hint of what kind of present she wants to get. Be careful and keep your eyes peeled – she will tell you about her desires. In case you are still not able to decide there are some general Valentine's Day Gifts like jewelry and jewelry box, hand bags, fresh flowers, teddy bears, chocolates and cards. Do not turn buying present into a real torture, do it with pleasure, think how she will be glad to get what you have got for her… Even if you don’t have millions to buy her a star, she will be pleased with a teddy bear. The only condition – you should do it sincerely, with all your love…

Generally speaking, I’d like to say, that it is not so important what present you will buy. More important is that you should be eager to do something pleasant for the person you love, to make a nice surprise, to organize a date of your dream even if you have been living together for 25 years. Your care, tenderness and love will surely do their business…