Top 10 Christmas Decorating Mistakes

Submitted By: Sylvia Stevens
Pick a color scheme and stick to it. Many people make the mistake of being too “loud” with their decorating colors and end up with a chaotic mess instead of a calming holiday effect. Of course, when there are children involved, there are more knick-knacks and decorations that won’t exactly fit in, but that’s the fun of youth. However, for adults who want to pull a seasonal room together, carefully think what decorating you really need and if those items gel harmoniously.

Keep Decorations Balanced in the Home:

Again, when placing the tree, wreathes, centerpieces, and religious icons around the interior and exterior of your home, keep a tasteful balance. Many light up the night sky with far too many lights around windows, around porches, and sometimes on the roof. Make a more prudent choice and go with a more minimalist approach. Plan out where fairy lights and the tree will go in relation to the picture window neighbors can see through. Keep a close eye on the distance put between items on mantles and table. You never want to create a more chaotic look which makes any room feel less comfortable to occupy. That’s not what you want for those who visit your home.

Keep Inflatable Ornaments Out of Your Yard:

If there are children in the home who fall in love with a Frosty the Snowman snow globe the size of your home, perhaps it’s nice to appease them. However, make sure that the ornament is securely attached to the ground due to high winter winds or an unexpected storm.

If you do not have children, the wise choice to maintain a sophisticated look is to avoid these type ornaments like the plague. It draws away completely from any tasteful decorating you may have hung. No one is looking at the handmade wreathe you spent hours putting together. Neighbors see only the Santa and reindeer that are perpetually inflated by a loud generator will make all your creativity moot.

Choose Lights and Related Illuminates Carefully:

Not only does this apply to the lights on your tree matching those on the porch outside, this includes such items as a string of icicles across your roof or around a column. These icicles could be light up, or reflect that the light. It’s not a bad idea to have a tree outdoors, again have a theme going with the lights you use.

Never Half-Finish a Job:

Even though life can be fast-paced, especially those with children, have a million different events to prepare for as well as attend. When you choose to decorate, perhaps have grandparent look after children, or if business keeps you away, schedule one, free day to devote to decorating. This can make sure everything is done in-whole, and all the stress of getting it done is behind you.

Don’t Hide Your Christmas Tree:

Many make the Christmas tree the focal point of all interior decorations. Don’t hide this prized-decorating item in a corner, but in front of a window which adds cheer to those who drive by.

Avoid Using Candles:

There are many, tasteful, natural-looking alternatives sold in decorating stores to prevent one from using candles at all. When decorating a home, many candles were lit and placed on windowsills. This proved to create many house fires due to the heat igniting holiday cloth window treatments.

Carefully Choose the Wreath for Your Front Door:

When looking at the exterior of the home, many eyes are drawn first to the wreath adorning your front door. There are a plethora of fun, adventurous, or traditional looks to meet any personality. However, be mindful of how this wreath corresponds with the other decorations.

Pick the Right Time to Put Up or Take Down Decorations:

It seems that Christmas decorations go up earlier and earlier every year. Where many didn’t break out the tinsel until the first week of December, however, during current years, many Christmas trees go up before Thanksgiving.

Likewise, there are a few who don’t seem to want to let go of Christmas, let those lights keep blinking well into January. Think before you put up decorations and remove those decorations no later than New Year’s Day. This marks the time of a new year, and another time to put the last holidays behind us.

Avoid Mixing Religious Icons:

The basic problem here is that the mixing of religious icons can be seen as disrespectful to some of varying faiths who visit your home. It can also project the idea that you have a scant knowledge of religious traditions and prove embarrassment.

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The Glamorous Indian Wedding Gowns

Submitted By: Sean Goudelocks
Every woman wants to have a special wedding day with his knight and shining armor. She wants to have a perfect wedding ceremony from rings, the guest list, foods and of course the wedding gown. Every bride will try her best to make it the best, unforgettable and stylish event. It’s every woman’s dream to wear the most beautiful and elegant wedding gown on her most special day, her wedding day. It is really a challenge to choose the best dress to be worn on such special occasion. One of the most glamorous, cheerful and colorful dresses that can be worn on the d-day are the Indian wedding gowns.

An Indian wedding ceremony is known for stunning costumes, decorations, and ornaments. It is the reflection of the culture, customs and traditions of India. In every country, the clothes show and depict the personality of the people, the status in the society, the profession, the location, the climate and the economy. India has a rich heritage that can be seen through their dresses especially wedding gowns.

Indian brides can choose from different options such as gowns, Saree, Salwar Kameez, Churidar suit, Shararas, and Lehangas. These can be designed in various styles and patterns. There are different factors to be considered when designing a gown such as depending on the time of the wedding. Designers must be aware as well of the latest trends in Indian wedding customs to design appropriately the gowns at the same time the gown is still stylish and elegant. These types of gowns have lively and bright colors with different patterns and well decorated dresses. Most of the colors used in Hindu weddings are yellow, gold, red, blue, green, orange and maroon. It depicts the traditional custom of India. These gowns can be worn with crystals, jewels, hand made flowers customized to match with the gown.

A type of wedding gown is the Shararas which is an elegant long, ankle length skirts with blouse. Another one is the Lehengas that can fit in any body type that can be created in different styles and patterns that will suit the bride. This amazing gown boosts the natural beauty of the Indian bride. In this modern time, brides are can choose a Lehenga off the rack.

Another extremely elegant dress that can be worn as a wedding gown is the Saree. It shows the beauty and the femininity of the Indian women through its prints and colors. Most designers apply modern patterns that fit the new generation of Indian brides. Sarees can be expensive depending on the materials used. It can be made of satin, tulle, chiffon, lace or silk with embroidery.

The use of gold with Indian wedding gowns is usually worn on such special occasion. It is believed that ornaments made of gold have the power to purify all that it touches. Adornments in the form of other metals and gold can be combined with precious and semi-precious stones, beads and gems. By tradition, these Indian ornaments are economic status symbols which are worn both men and women. These ornaments play important role in the wedding ceremony because it is usually given to the bride at her wedding from her father.

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Want to Know the Origin of Body Piercing? Go Back in Time

Submitted By: Stewart Wrighter
One might think of piercing as an invention of modern age. But the history of body piercing can be traced back to thousands of years. The practice has suddenly resurfaced and grown more popular in the modern era. With sterilization pouches to sterilize ornaments and scales or a digital scale to weigh them, the process has become speedier. However, in ancient times, it was not this fast.

Perhaps, it was due to the plain reason that the practice was common in jungle tribes. Some of the religious castes in India and the Pharaohs are also known to have a deep indulgence in this practice. This means that it was mostly a part of some religious ritual. Apart from this, body piercing is a means to reflect personal expression.

Besides, it was carried as a symbol to distinguish the royals from a common man. In recent times, it is more of a style statement than any discerning element. As for the Egyptians, this was an exclusive privilege enjoyed by the royals. If anyone apart from the pharaohs attempted to get their navels pierced, they were punished.

Only the wealthy Egyptians had the right to get their body pierced. It was a means to exhibit their power and highlight their beauty. Moreover, they were interested in wearing elaborate enameled and gold earrings as they are the elements of nature.

It was not just the Egyptians, but the Romans were also involved in the art of body piercing. In this case, the reason was not just appeal, but to show commitment. It was a mark of loyalty that the centurions showed towards the Roman Empire which helped in uniting the army soldiers. Even Julius Caesar got his body pierced to show his prowess.

Also the Aztecs, Mayan civilization and a number of American Indians were involved in tongue piercing. It was basically a part of their religious ceremonies. According to them body piercing was a means to please their gods. In this regard, tongue piercing became an important ritual to show closeness to their gods. Moreover, the process of piercing was also a kind of ceremonial blood offering.

Another unique form of piercing was prevalent in some primordial tribes of New Guinea and Solomon Islands. They used bones, tusks and feathers as ornaments to beautify their bodies. This kind of piercing was conducted in a grand manner.

Even today, the girls in some African tribes get their ear, lip and nose pierced. This enables them to wear some sacred ornaments which are believed to protect them against evil spirits. It was also an identification mark to show an association to their tribe.

Some tribal cultures also employed this practice to get their ear lobes and ear rims pierced. Piercing of ears was, and is still common in North India, Egypt and African tribes. In Africa, for instance, some girls wear lip plugs when they get married.

To wrap it up, history is replete with examples that reveal the existence of body piercing in various cultures. However, today it is part of fashion. In any case, if you wish to get your body pierced, make sure the person knows the art.

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Tiwanaku Alien and the Nazca Lines

Submitted By: Morten St. George
A few years ago I saw a directory listing with a description of something like: "I was abducted by aliens last summer. It really happened." Though I had a lot of interest in aliens, I did not even consider visiting that website. Of course, if this person was genuinely abducted by aliens, I would want to read about it but I have learned from experience that there was almost no chance of this being a true story. In some ways it is wonderful that humankind has advanced to the point of ignoring all the nonsense and quackery. On the other hand, if anyone really did have contact with an alien, it would be almost impossible to get any attention.

Case in point are drawings coming out of the Andean region of South America and dating from early medieval times. Here I am not referring to the famous lines of Nazca (Nasca) which could have a non-alien explanation. I am referring to the drawings of the city of Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) in the Bolivian highlands. In Tiwanaku, we do not find geoglyphs (ground drawings) but direct depictions of the alien himself. It does not take a lot of imagination to envision a four-fingered creature (the face is clearly non-human) wearing an astronaut's helmet with transparent visor. One engraving has twenty fish-head symbols overwhelmingly indicating that this creature was an aquatic. Indeed, it is easy to imagine that the astronaut's helmet was filled with water. Tiwanaku drawings strongly imply that this creature was a fish.

Enter the cynics: "They ate fish and made a drawing of the local fisherman." Archaeologists have determined that Tiwanaku was an agricultural community but, true, Lake Titicaca is only some twenty kilometers away. Fortunately, not all the depictions of the alleged alien display fish head symbols. In some, the fish heads are gone and replaced with condor heads (symbolic of flight). Hence, this creature was not only a fish, it was a flying fish, whence it became a sky god, the sky god of the Andes. No doubt, the cynics will now counter, with total disdain for the intelligence of the Andean peoples: "They ate birds too, and this is the local bird hunter."

Depictions of the Andean sky god are found not only in Tiwanaku, Bolivia, but also in Nazca, Peru, where he turns up not in the geoglyphs but on their pottery dating from the same epoch. The city of Tiwanaku is much older than the Nazca Lines but archaeologists have noted stages of development. The timing of Tiwanaku's sky-god phase does indeed correspond with the timing of the Nazca Lines, and the Nazca depiction is close enough to the Tiwanaku depiction that we can conclude that these sky gods are one and the same. This has always been the major hurdle for alien theories about the Nazca Lines: lots of ground drawings to be viewed from the sky but no depiction of the aliens. If you want to know for whom they made the lines, don't look on the ground. Look at their pottery.

The Nazca drawing displays a small cross-like instrument (also found in Tiwanaku drawings) on the alien's chest and a loudspeaker-like instrument, perhaps reflecting that the aquatic sky god was able to learn the Andean languages and communicate with them. Looking beyond the cultural boom of the century following the alien's visit, there is reason to believe that the Andean cosmological view of the night sky as made up of constellations of dark nebulae, rather than constellations of stars like in the rest of the world, was a derivative of direct communication with the alien.

But there is one critical difference between the Tiwanaku drawings and the Nazca drawing. In the Nazca drawing, the alien is depicted with human-like feet, though the fish heads just above the feet and looking down suggest that these are not really human feet but fish feet. Nonetheless, no Tiwanaku depiction of their sky god shows the alien with feet that even remotely resemble human feet (feet are seen only in depictions of animal and human symbolization of the alien's qualities, never on the sky god himself) and in fact their direct drawings of the alien display no feet at all. That makes sense. The alien didn't have feet but rather an aquatic tail that dragged behind it and hence was not visible from a frontal view. Thus, the artists of Nazca made the pottery drawing from one of Tiwanaku's frontal image depictions that happened to reach them, and then they merely improvised the feet. In other words, it is very likely that the people of Nazca never saw the sky god directly else they would have known better.

So what did the alien's fish feet really look like? That's easy to answer. While the people of Nazca never saw the alien up close, the people of Tiwanaku sure did and they provide us with plenty of drawings. The alien had an aquatic tail that split into three appendages, and each appendage ended in a pod with three toe-like protrusions. In one drawing, the alien's arms are raised up as it is about to launch itself into the air. Apparently, the displayed hand-held devices are providing the power, likely an anti-gravitational field around the alien as its tail (lighter than the body) is rising first. The left and right pods are displayed upward and outwards while the middle pod of the alien's tail is depicted up above the alien's head. This also explains why we don't find drawings of any type of landing craft. To all appearances, the alien didn't use landing craft. It simply put on its water-filled space suit, grabbed hold of its powerful instruments, and then spiraled down to Earth (the Andeans made so many drawings of spirals that we have to conclude that the alien descended from the sky in a spiral motion, like water funneling down a drain).

The artists of Tiwanaku also made drawings displaying the alien's tri-pod tail intact. These drawings resemble the Candelabro geoglyph found on a cliff facing the sea in Paracas, Peru. Evidently, the people of Paracas believed the aquatic sky god lived in the sea, from where it emerged to take off into flight. However, as already suggested, it is plausible if not likely that the people of Tiwanaku believed the sky god came from the dark clouds of deep space.

The Tiwanaku "on-liftoff" drawing adds more symbolism of note, namely human heads (a symbol of intelligence) attached to the alien's head. The people of Nazca also knew that this fish was intelligent. One of the Nazca geoglyphs displays a human head attached to the head of the fish. But this is just an ordinary fish and looks nothing like the alien. Surely, if they had seen the alien, they could have done better than that. In a sharp departure from what I have stated in the past, I no longer believe that the people of Nazca had direct contact with the alien. More likely, stories about the sky god (as well as the frontal image) came down to them from the mountains and they made those geoglyphs only to attract that sky god to them and to guide it to them. In other words, that massive project in the desert was for a sky god they never saw. But we should not be too critical of them. For example, contemporary Christians are building churches all around the world.

In specific, the Nazca pottery drawing depicts the middle pod up above the alien's head, just like the Tiwanaku drawings, but by attaching human-like feet to the creature they clearly did not know what it was. The people of Nazca had to have been in possession of a Tiwanaku image, perhaps brought to them by a "missionary" from the Tiwanaku civilization.

Some of our scientists would have us believe that the ancient peoples of Nazca flew around in hot-air balloons, hence they made those ground drawings to help sell balloon-ride tickets. Don't believe them!

Archaeological evidence from the Andes overwhelming supports the theory of contact with an alien. There are dozens of surviving images of the alien from Tiwanaku alone. In great detail, these drawings depict the alien's fish-like face and mouth, its reptile-like eyes, its astronaut helmet replete with sunlight reflectors around the visor and air bubbles inside the visor, its four-fingered hands, its tri-pod tail, its front-mounted voice transmitter, not to mention those hand-held instruments that suddenly contracted and split open upon liftoff up into the sky.

Turning a blind eye to all this evidence, our scientists continue to propose one ludicrous non-alien theory after another. I read about a new one just a few months ago. It seems that scientists from National Geographic came up with conclusive proof that the Nazca Lines have nothing to do with aliens: they found that some of the lines point to water sources. I saw just a brief clip so I don't know how they explained the circular-type drawings (which obviously point to nowhere) or explained how the people of Nazca managed to get airborne in order to follow the lines. Nonetheless, this may be the first scientific theory to make a little sense. It is only logical that the people of Nazca would want the lines to point to water. After all, as we just noted, this flying alien was a fish!

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Vintage Men’s Knitwear: Putting the Gran in Torino

Submitted By: Nigel Cooper
Men’s Knitwear. Just the mere mention of the phrase can induce an involuntary smirk on a man’s lips. And admittedly, it’s not without at least a foundation in sartorial ill-advisedness. How many dads have spent Christmas Day in the reindeer jumpers they were bought, only to revisit the indignity every time the photo album comes out? And what about the inelegance displayed by golfers, Question of Sport contestants and dodgy TV chat show hosts of yesteryear? And that’s not to mention those now openly mocked knitting pattern covers where clean cut gents point to the middle distance or sit on a stile modelling their amazing creations.

So yes, extolling the virtues of men’s knitwear is an uphill struggle. But at least you know you’ll be properly dressed when you reach the top.

The trick to carrying off the woollen look is to check your fashion history books. You’ll see that the much maligned aspect of knitwear is only a drop in the ocean, and there are plenty of cool looks that involve knitwear.

First off, it’s utterly acceptable these days to follow your inner geek and throw yourself into tasteless knits, whatever your inner style guru (or the opening paragraph above) tells you. Accompanied by a big pair of glasses whether you need them or not, the look has humour and maybe even courage, and will certainly turn heads.

Withdrawing a little from full attention grabbing, the 1950s preppy look is one that never leaves the style undercurrent. Think Dead Poets Society or Happy Days and you’ll get the image: cardigans and tank tops, tastefully inconspicuous and actually quite cool. Plenty of genuine articles are available in vintage clothing stores if you want to throw yourself into the look completely.

The 1970s gave us a true knitwear icon when Paul Michael Glaser, a.k.a. Starsky, with his partner Hutch (played by David Soul), fought California crime by sliding over the hood of their Ford Gran Torino until they got their man. Sliding was facilitated immensely by the long chunky cream and brown patterned cardigan he so adored, its chunkiness saying “man of action” in a way that knitwear can easily fail to do.

Knitwear made a reappearance in the 1990s with the grunge look. This time the knit was chunky and colourful, designed to keep its wearer warm during festivals and enjoying life as a New Age Traveller. Unapologetically informal, this look was accompanied by combat trousers, boots and dreadlocks for a slightly rugged hippy vibe.

Nowadays, of course, the men’s knitted sweater is everywhere, and has shrugged off the old image of suburban husbands reading the Daily Mail in their conservatories. Shows like Friends helped make light knitwear fashionable in an age of layering, pulled off with equal aplomb by fussy Ross, professional Chandler and hunky Joey. Simple and body-shaped, this style remains in vogue and looks set to stick around.

So there’s men’s knitwear and there’s men’s knitwear. Dozens of looks can be achieved, from sensible to rebellious, and without doubt the knitwear a man chooses says an awful lot about his personality and his aspirations. Just don’t mention Alan Partridge.

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