Importance of Halloween : Halloween custom discount 2008

Importance of Halloween
by Synapse India

Halloween is a holiday celebration with lots of fun, partying with mouth-watering candies, night-long parties dressed in different theme Costumes. But, do you what is the origin of this festival? In this write-up, we’ll try to highlight why do we celebrate Halloween?
The festival of Halloween is generally celebrated on October 31 every year. It is said that the origin of Halloween comes from imported immigrant traditions. It is believed that the festival has Celtic roots and related to ancient Celtic known as “Samhain,” most recognized in the parts of Ireland and Scotland. It is a harvest festival that announces beginning of a new year. To mark the celebration, Celts used to burn heaps of fruits, vegetables, grain, and animals as the gifts to gods for gaining their blessings for a productive and happy new year.
It was also believed that the dead could walk back to the life and people can actually enquire about their future year. To scare bad and evil spirits, people used to wore animal heads and other costumes, which has become an integral part of the festival.
After the popularity of Christianity to the Celtic lands the festival of Halloween was gracefully accepted. To memorize the spirits of saints and martyrs, “All Saints Day” or “All Hallow’s Day," hallow referring to sainted ones, taken up the place of old meaning.
Current Status of HalloweenHalloween is one of the widely celebrated in the US, Ireland, Scotland and other parts of the world. The day is commonly marked with carving out turnips and lighting them at homes and other party areas. People also like to dress differently and carefully chose their Halloween costumes. Besides scary dresses, people like to wear romantic, funny and other types of dresses and enjoy the festive season. Halloween costume can be designed and stitched as per desires.

Have A Look At These Cake Decorating Halloween Themes : Want to Buy Halloween custom online

Have A Look At These Cake Decorating Halloween Themes
by Muna wa Wanjiru
Cake decorating Halloween themes can be a blast. The cake actually has become an essential part of our celebrations today. May that be a birthday, wedding, anniversary, homecoming party or a house warming ceremony, with the festive food you will find a decorated cake on the dining table. So when it is Halloween time you will find a cake to match the festivities.
The tradition of Halloween dates back thousands of years to Celtic rituals. People believed that on once a year the human world and the other dark world of the spirits and ghosts overlap. It is possible for the spirits to return to earth. The date was fixed as October 31.
In the olden days the Celts celebrated their new year on November 1. Which was a official day marked as the end of summer and beginning of cold and dark winter in Ireland. Over the years two Roman traditions were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration. The first tradition was commemorating the dead and the second was to honor the Roman Goddess of fruit and trees called Pomona.
The modern day celebration of Halloween is the mixture of the ancient beliefs and now it is celebrated to have fun.
The surrounding imagery for Halloween is a mixture of old customs and traditions and of course American filmmakers and graphic artists. They have come up with amazing characters. The common theme is dark and mysterious. It also involves skeletons, ghosts, mythical monsters. Bats, Owls and crows along with haunted houses and pumpkin men, black cats are very common things that are associated with Halloween.
All of these things are to be found on a cake decorating for Halloween. The house is decorated to resemble to the haunted house or for Dracula's castle and the cake is decorated with spiders, black cats or bats.
You can get cake toppings with figures associated with Halloween. The figures could be that of Grim Reaper, or Halloween witch. You can have fun with these cake toppers. Cake decorating Halloween can be a family fun activity. If your children can join to decorate the cake the entire family can have lots of fun.
You get many more things to decorate your Halloween cake in the market. Few of them are Halloween Skeleton and hands that you can stick on the cake. You get some spooky looking rings that can be placed on the cake to add to the spirit of the season. 3D Halloween Luminaries Picks can add another dimension to your cake. The predominant color of the season is orange and black. If you have black icing on the cake and it is a chocolate cake and if you stick orange illuminated sticks on the cake it will really blend in with the atmosphere of Halloween.
Cake decorating Halloween can be a fun filled activity for the entire family and it can be a very enriching experience for all the members of the family.
Muna wa Wanjiru Has Been Researching and Reporting on Cake Decorating for Years. For More Information on Cake Decorating Halloween, Visit His Site at CAKE DECORATING HALLOWEEN

Why Halloween Cake Decorating Is Fun For All Ages : Want to Buy Halloween custom ( save Discount customs)

Why Halloween Cake Decorating Is Fun For All Ages
by Muna wa Wanjiru
Halloween cake decorating is fun for all ages. Halloween is all about haunted houses, carved pumpkins, and edible eyeballs. The spirit to honor the dead and trying to make sense of life after death has found its way into the Halloween spirit. The American film makers have helped the haunted spirit and spooky figures of the Halloween a lot. Bats, black cats, ghosts, spiders, crows, witches and ghouls, everything that is spooky can be an ides that find its way into the Halloween cake decorating.
Vampires, aliens, zombies, mummies, werewolves, demons and mystical monsters these are some of the popular Halloween characters. But the symbolism in the modern times is inspired by the classic American films. They deal with fictitious characters such as Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolf man.
When you are baking a cake for Halloween party you can be very creative. You can make the haunted house. If you are throwing a kiddy party then you can bake a chocolate cake. Cover the cake with black icing. You can pipe in white icing to make a spider web. If you can manage a big spider on the top, try or you can go in for artificial spider to complete the picture. The kids will live it.
Halloween cake decorating is fun if you are making a cake for elder children. You can be as graphic as you want. You can use different molds to bake the cake and make them look like human body parts. Use red, orange and black colors to decorate your cake. You can use readymade Halloween figures that are available in the market. Green monsters, spooky looking aliens can also make your Halloween cake decorating all the more spooky.
There are many superstitions in connection with Halloween. Bats and black cats are a major part of superstitions. One of the superstitions is if a bat comes in the house on the Halloween day that means that it is a sign. It is a sign of spirits and ghosts are near your house or they are already in your house and they let the bat come into the house. If you spot a spider on Halloween it means a dead loved one is watching you.
All these superstitions will help you to Halloween cake decorating. You can cut a flat cake into a bat shape. Use black icing use red color for the eyes and paint white teeth. Put those on the cake.
Halloween cake decorating can be fun to do. There are lots of things particular to Halloween such as the carved pumpkin, lanterns and the popular ghost stories. You can pick up any idea. Bake the cake, at times two or three different cakes using different molds. And you can create the entire spirit of Halloween on the cake. Make use of readymade Halloween figures that you get in the market or just be creative and make some figures yourself. It does not matter they do not look perfect. All the aliens that we see in the cinema or read about in the books are never good looking. The messier the look the better, so just go for it.
Muna wa Wanjiru Has Been Researching and Reporting on Cake Decorating for Years. For More Information on Halloween Cake Decorating, Visit His Site at HALLOWEEN CAKE DECORATING

Tips for a Great Halloween Photo Card : Want to Buy Halloween custom "Discount Halloweencustoms" new release new model 2008

Tips for a Great Halloween Photo Card
by Charles Carter

Copyright (c) 2007 Charles Carter
Halloween photo cards are the perfect way to show of your growing children to family and friends. Here are some ways to capture the perfect Halloween photo.
1. Costume Photo
A snapshot of your child in their Halloween costume is a very popular choice for a Halloween photo card. What could be cuter than dressed up babies? To capture a great shot of a small immobile baby lay them on a solid colored blanket as a backdrop. This will ensure there are not distraction objects in the photo. For older babies and children shots taken outdoors work great.
2. Pumpkin Patch
Colorful pumpkins make a festive backdrop for Halloween photo cards. Make sure to snap lots of pictures as your child picks out the perfect pumpkin. This is also a great setting for family photos to be used on fall cards or a holiday photo card.
3. Face Paint
A unique idea for a Halloween photo card is to feature a photo after your child has had their face painted at a fall festival event. Close ups work best for this type of photo.
4. Fall leaves
If you live in a cooler climate rake up those leaves and let your child have a blast playing in them. These shots are great for both Halloween and Seasons Greetings photo cards.
Focus on the photo - Photo cards are becoming a popular choice for girl birth announcements, boy birth announcements, birthday invitations and other events. Holiday cards will be included in this trend this year. We are predicting that consumers will seek out collage photo christmas cards or cards that focus on one unique photo. We will be seeing more families choose a creative or artistic photo rather than a traditional family portrait.
Custom Cards - Stylish families will seek out a unique custom card vendor such as Addie Kate Creations to tailor their holiday card in their own unique vision. Cookie cutter designs offered by large realtors will be passed over in favor of a more unique look. Discerning customers are looking for a more personal experience and are seeking out vendors that create a custom holiday card to suit their taste.
Simple Messages - Long verses and text will be forgone in favor of short and simple phrasing. This year's designs feature simple greeting such as "Peace, Hope and Love".
Simplicity is key this year when it comes to the message on your holiday card.
Retro Design - You will find many cards that feature traditional elements with retro color schemes as well as modern characteristics on this years holiday card offerings.
Elegant and Simple - Elegance is always in style. This year there will be many consumers that opt for simple clean lines and an upscale elegant look.
Whatever idea you choose to incorporate, remember to take lots of shots and have fun!

A Scary Halloween: Bigotry in America : Want to Buy Halloween custom online save cost

A Scary Halloween: Bigotry in America
by Walter Brasch

WANDERINGS, by Walter Brasch For release: after Oct. 29, 2007 brasch@bloomu.edu
TAGS: Halloween, bigotry, racism, Christianity, Islam, Muslim, Inquisition, U.S. Postal Service, 9/11
A Halloween Scare by Walter Brasch
There are a lot of scary things in the world. There's the "fun-scary"--kids who dress up as clowns, monsters, or fairy princesses once a year to get a month's supply of candy, which they'll finish off by morning. There's scary movies, from "Jaws" to "Friday the 13th" to--well--"Scary Movie." The murder mystery genre--in books, TV, and film--can scare even the least gullible. What's even scarier is that there were about 1.4 million violent crimes last year; about 17,000 of them were murders, about 89 percent from firearms, according to the FBI. Poverty, the deterioration of the environment, and Dick Cheney are all scary. But the scariest of all is ignorance, hatred, and bigotry, wrapped within the cloak of fear. This past week, along with a mini-mail list of about 60, I received an e-mail from a friend. She's a nice lady, relatively bright, and active in community affairs. The e-mail has been around for several years, but is refreshed every year between Halloween and Christmas. As is custom, thousands who receive it forward it to thousands of others who are asked to boycott stamps that honor Muslim holidays. The first lines of the e-mail are bold. "How ironic is this??!!" it screams at us. "They don't even believe in Christ and they're getting their own Christmas stamp . . ." The graphics-laden e-mail displays a 37-cent postage stamp. The rest of the e-mail, all in bold type and colors, tells us that we are supposed to remember the "MUSLIM bombing of Pan Am Flight 103," the "MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993," and the "MUSLIM" bombings of the military barracks in Saudi Arabia and American embassies in Africa, the U.S.S. Cole, and 9/11. We are told not only to "remember to adamantly and vocally boycott this stamp," but that buying this stamp "would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors." We are urged to forward the e-mail to "every patriotic American you know." The stamp, according to the U.S. Postal Service, was issued to commemorate Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, considered by Muslims as the two most important festivals in their calendar year. The calligraphy in the center of the stamp translates literally as "blessed festival," or more loosely as, "May your religious holiday be blessed." The stamp was first issued on Sept. 1, 2001, and then reissued in 2002, 2006, and in September this year to reflect postage increases. Although the Post Office each year issues a stamp to honor Christmas, it also issues a non-denominational holiday stamp. It also issues stamps to honor Chanukah and Kwanzaa. Those who write and forward the e-mails of intolerance don't understand, and probably never will, that while some Muslim extremists were at the heart of some terrorist plots, they don't represent Islam or any other religion. If we believe that the few Muslim terrorists represent the entire religion, we must then go to the absurdity of believing that we should boycott all Christmas stamps because some Christian extremists destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City and murdered 178 and wounded more than 800. We would have to boycott the Christmas stamp because God-fearing Christians lynched as many as 10,000 Americans--most of them Black but many of whom were Jews, Italians, and Irish--in the century after the Civil War. We would condemn Christianity because of the Inquisitions of the 15th and 16th centuries. We would blame the Protestants and the Catholics for a religious civil war in Northern Ireland that led to the deaths of more than 3,700 in a four decade period. We would never speak favorably of any German or millions of other Europeans because the Nazis and their collaborators, good Christians all, launched the holocaust that led to the murders of 12 million and a war that claimed more than 50 million lives, most of them civilian. On Halloween, we see pre-teen girls cutely dressed as witches, happily going door to door for candy, and we readily help them get the sugar-kick they expect every Oct. 31. We don't condemn these pretend-witches, unlike Christians of the 17th century America who burned and drowned women because they were "witches." Every religion has its militant extremists who violate laws and commandments against murder, but every religion has people of peace who believe in love and tolerance. Indeed, by condemning all Muslims, we also condemn ourselves to ignorance, hatred, bigotry, and fear.

Bewitch The Neighbors With These 5 "Crafted" Halloween Surprises! : Want to Buy Halloween custom ( save Discount customs) new release new model 2008

Bewitch The Neighbors With These 5 "Crafted" Halloween Surprises!
by Fiona Bradley

When I was a child in the New Orleans area, my big brown eyes would be popping at Halloween time with vivid images, shapes, characters and colors designed to capture the imagination and transport one into another sense of reality. I recall scary voodoo zombies regaling the windows of storefronts, Halloween jesters staring out from behind curtains, expressive uses of masks with a French or Creole twist, and these visuals combined with music and food would be a fun, frightening feast for the senses.
Now that we've moved into the Northeast and times have changed, Halloween has become more demure and conservative, and in many ways around our neighborhood, barely noticeable. Parents have become spooked themselves about having their children running around trick-or-treating, and small parties - tightly-controlled - have replaced the traditional community experience of Halloween. I can understand why that's happened, but it doesn't prevent me from trying to bring some of that old New Orleans spirit to my adopted hometown; in fact, it inspires me to share some ideas. I'd like to share these 5 with you.
1. Curtains - the Blacker, the Better!
It's really inexpensive to purchase some black fabrics online and spread them all throughout the house; curtains over windows, draped over furniture, hanging in corners or in unexpected places. This alone can give a dramatic "cape of fear" over one's home. Use liberally.
2. Make Strange Costumes!
This is a bit more involved, but rather than buying costumes off the shelf, a little imagination can turn some cheap fabric and some well-glued craft goodies into one-of-a-kind, bizarre costumes with weird shapes and faces. I recommend a combination of black and other ghoulish colors.
3. "Webbing."
Fabric alone can be taken and "shredded" to make a host of scary cobwebs all around the house and especially on the front porch. "Webs" draped everywhere create a sense of foreboding as the children approach the door - creating a spooky effect that "primes" them for the fear to come once they ring the doorbell.
4. Eerie Lighting!
Setting up light bulbs (I strongly recommend red) at specific points of interest can cast ghastly hues and shadows in the windows and on the porch, as well as when you open the door. I like to have a light directly behind me when I answer the door, because it gives the effect of a gigantic silhouette. If this light is red or orange, it completely magnifies the effect!
5. Scary Faces Everywhere!
I purchase a bunch of cheap masks that, when in used in combination with the webbing, lighting, and black curtains, create the illusion of living faces peering out from every nook of the house. If done correctly, this creates the sense of a "ghoul jungle" that is fun, surprising, and never fails to delight the kids - even if there is a scream or two!
I do try to keep away from the bloody, murder-themed stuff - but I like making my Halloween experience as fun and spooky as possible without crossing the line. I may never recapture what I enjoyed in New Orleans as a kid, but every year I try to come as close as possible!

How to Burn Off Halloween Candy : Want to Buy Halloween custom ( save Discount customs) new release new model 2008

How to Burn Off Halloween Candy
by Tim Kauppinen

Halloween means candy. And, if you're like me, you found it hard to resist all that sweet goodness on October 31st.
Whether you dipped into the stash while you handed it out at the door, or sneaked some from your own kids trick or treat bags (or just cut to the chase and bought a bag or two for yourself), you overdid it just a bit. Maybe it's the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that you just can't resist. Or the mini Twix, or Hershey's or Mr. Goodbars. You've created a monster.
Doesn't really matter what it was, if you stepped on the scale and saw a surprise or found your belt a little tight around the middle - you packed on some extra poundage on or around October 31st.
So, what's the easiest way to get rid of that pound or two of candy that's found it's way to your belly, butt or thighs?
A few more hours of mind-numbing cardio? Couple thousand situps or crunches? Maybe starving yourself for a few days is the answer. Truth is, none of these are the best way to drop fat fast.
The real way to beat this post-Halloween curse is to add some interval-type workouts to your routine.
Interval workouts are one of the best ways to burn calories both while you're exercising and long afterward. They can also raise your metabolism and raise the levels of natural fat busting substances in your body. Not only that, the intensity of interval training can actually burn more fat in a shorter period of time than traditional long, slow cardio workouts.
So, how does one go about getting started?
Simply put, interval workouts alternate short bursts of high intensity exercise with longer, slower periods of low intensity or recovery. For example: pedaling as fast as you can on a bicycle for a few seconds, then slowing for a minute or so, then ramping back up to an intense few seconds, bringing it back down, and so on...
And one of the best ways to interval train doesn't take any special kind of equipment - no chrome machines, no heart rate monitors, no fancy digital readouts. All it takes is your own body... and a hill.
Hill training beats other training due to a number of factors. When you do your intervals up hill, you are improving both your strength and speed. You must "lift" or "push" your body up the hill against resistance - just like lifting weights at the health club. The steeper or longer the hill, the more resistance and the more intensity. The higher the intensity, the better your results.
In addition to that, the incline of the hill actually makes it safer for you to train than on flat ground. One way it does this is by protecting your hamstrings. Because your stride is slightly shortened when running up hill, your hamstrings usually do not become over extended - a common cause of pulls. Hill sprints also reduce the impact of running on your lower legs, knees and back. Even a slight grade can decrease the distance your body needs to "fall" with each stride. Less distance means less shock that your body needs to absorb.
And these are just a few of the many advantages of hill sprints.
So, if you hit the candy dish a bit hard over the holiday, give hill training a shot. It's one of the quickest and easiest ways to drop a few of those unwanted pounds - not to mention those few extra inches on certain parts of your bod. Don't let a little slip on Halloween turn into a year-round nightmare.
Besides all that, this training only takes a few minutes to complete. Short workouts, great results. Just the thing to get you into the best shape of your life.