Traditions in 1st day of the year

Sliding, in the morning:

 

  

Watching New Year concert of the Vienna philharmonic, at noon:

I love:

- wonderful flower arrangements, made in Sanremo

- it make me dream that Ilaria may become one day a Viennese ballerina

- they give for everyone the possibility to participate at next year's concert, by subscribing yourself to the drawing: http://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/2011_drawing.html

Happy New Year 2011!

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Saint Nicholas in 2010

Sweet memories from my childhood are linked to Saint Nicholas, the discreet and generous Saint.

I remember once we were waiting for him; it was pretty late and he was not coming. At our parents' suggestion we went to our neighbors to see if Saint Nicholas visited them already. For us it was a senseless idea - how could Saint Nicholas come to them and to us not yet? We were so close to them. We went there and - surprise - he already left the presents for them! We couldn't imagined what trace did Saint Nicolas follow that year: he was already to our neighbors, but not to us and when we left our flat we didn't meet him on the stairs. Strange...

I was very disappointed, thinking that maybe that year he would skip us; maybe we weren't good enough to receive anything from him. Imagine our surprise when we turned back home and we've found the door half opened and gifts were there, in our boots. And of course Saint Nicolas was again so silent and discreet that our parents didn't even notice that he already visited us!

This year was Ilaria's 1st experience with gifts in boots. Of course she is still too young to expect anything yet, but I hope in future she will feel emotions at least so intense as mine when I was of her age.

She received books, sweets and toys (farm animals); and of course books were her favorites: 

Next day I thought it would be nice to go to church so we would have listened once again the beautiful story of Saint Nicolas' life. For nowadays it is a too great expectation to think that on Saint Nicolas day you would hear the priest talking about Saint Nicolas life. There were some more important things to be discussed there, in that particular day, when lots of people gathered there to celebrate Saint Nicolas (4% of Romanians are named Nicolae or Nicoleta). The priest read Metropolitan's Laurentiu Streza sermon and then he additionally spoke freely mainly about the great danger that is about to happen with orthodoxy: a new church is about to arise - the "stylist" church, formed by orthodox priests which refused to change the calendar, which still keep the "old style calendar" and now they are building churches of their own.

For me everything sounded like a bad advertisement, desperately saying "keep staying with us! they aren't as good as we are!". It was even said by the Metropolitan: "They don't have apostolic succession and therefore their religious services are not accepted by God."!  For me it was a shock to hear such words outspoken by a priest, while in Bible is stated:  "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:20).

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I think also Ilaria didn't agree with their ideas, so she interfered with priest's sermon twice, covering his voice for few seconds, of course, with people around starring at us. Both times the pacifier saved us!

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Happy Halloween!

(project inspired by Country Living magazine. See here: Pumpkin Decorating Ideas)

This blog turns to be helpful in knowing each other better ( me and... Adrian :-) )

He was surprised to read here that during my childhood I was carving pumpkins; and I just found out from him that this tradition wasn't popular everywhere in Romania!

I think, in my native countryside this custom was borrowed still from Americans, but long time ago. Many Transylvanians from my grand-grandparents' generation have worked in America in the beginning of the 20th century. They turned back home with money for purchasing lands and even with names for their children - my grandmother (84 years old) is named Virginia.

@Adrian: thank you for driving so far (Hornbach), just to buy the black acrylic for my project.

(That's one of the reasons why I lately call this guy "our local hero" - since we have Ilaria, he started to love shopping for us, girls ;-).... OK, maybe lot love, but at least his shopping headaches are gone)

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Decorate this!

This happened in the morning when I asked Adrian that, additionally to the common shopping list, he should buy from the market also a pumpkin to be decorated for Halloween. My bad, as I specified on the list only "pumpkin big and round" and this one fits exactly my request.
Tough job to decorate such a pumpkin, isn't it? :-)

In Romania, Halloween is a tradition recently taken from Americans. We do not have in our calendar such a Holiday. There is something similar: when we were children, at the end of our summer Holiday (middle of September), in countryside, we were decorating pumpkins with classic scary faces

and we were putting them on the gate's pillar to thrill people on the street. But that was all. We didn't know that in some other part of the globe this custom has a name.

After around 15 years since I left behind the tradition of carving pumpkins, this year I want to revive it for Ilaria. I was having in mind to do something like this:
 

but with the pumpkin chosen by Adrian, I think we are forced to be a little more stylish :-)
Until now I have found this model and I think it goes right even with little stars.

Or maybe it would be good to eat this one and to invest again in a more decorable one!? ( yesterday I've cooked a delicious pumpkin pie and maybe Adrian tries to be discreet and still send the "I want some more" message :-) )
Do you have any other ideas how this can be decorated? Or you agree with the idea that it should be turned into pies, without regrets?

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