Valentine's Day Is About Love Not Lovers

When you think about Valentine's Day, do you feel pleasure? Grief? Anger? If you are single, Valentine's Day, along with New Years, are the two most hated holidays. Too many singles say they "hide out" on February 14.
Valentine's Day, though, is not about lovers; it's about love. It has become commercialized for lovers, but it's really a time to connect with people you care about. In the midst of the hearts and flowers that have become associated with this day, the origin of the holiday is lost.
In fact, there is no agreed upon origin. There are numerous stories about the man Valentine and the holiday of love. They range from Roman days to honor the god Lupercus, to Emperor Claudius forbidding marriage, to Pope Gelasium turning a pagan game of romance into a game about saints.
You can choose which version of the origin of the holiday you prefer, in the same way you can choose how to relate to Valentine's Day. It can be a day of shame because you do not love and are not loved by a special person, or you can honor this day by acknowledging those people who make your life better. Valentine's Day is not about lovers, it's about love.
Here are some tips for how to make this a special day.
1. Send cards to everyone you love, male and female, young and old. Not only will the recipients feel cherished, you will be reminded how blessed you are to have so many special people in your life. For a fun flashback to your school days, buy a pack of the colorful cards you used to pass out to classmates, or make them yourself.
2. Honor the service people who make your life better. Give cards to people in your everyday life, showing how much you appreciate them. It might be the person who cuts your hair or cleans your home. It might be the bank teller who helps when your checkbook gets out of balance. You don't have to wait for Christmas to let your mailperson know you appreciate the effort made to bring you 30 mail order catalogues a day. Think about the people who make your life easier; this is the day to remind yourself (and them) that you don't take them for granted.
3. Spend it with friends. Specifically choose February 14 to spend with people you appreciate but don't tell often enough. Take a favorite co-worker or office assistant to lunch. Or have a Valentine's dinner party for good friends.
4. Send flowers to yourself. Rather than mope or feel sorry for yourself that there is no man in your life to send you flowers, send them to yourself. Flowers are the love letters from Mother Nature.
5. Monitor your music. If you are likely to have a hard time on February 14, make sure for the few days leading up to the 14th you aren't listening to love songs or songs about longing for love or about brokenhearted love.
6. Don't hide. Don't pretend it isn't Valentine's Day. Say Happy Valentine's Day to everyone you see. Wear a pin with hearts or at least wear red and white.
7. If you are blue, don't fight it. Give yourself permission to be sad there isn't a loving man in your life. Give yourself an hour, even two, for your "Pity Party." Then stop. Move on. Be careful you don't drown your unhappiness in excessive alcohol, drugs, or food. There is no reason to be self-abusive just because you are alone and sad.

10 Best Valentine's Day Gift Ideas For Both Men and Women

Valentine's day is fast approaching. Love birds have already started dreaming about the sweet moments they are going to share that day. Though everybody is eagerly waiting to enjoy V Day, most of us are not able to decide the gift to be given to our loved one that day.

Every one wants to give a special, unique and creative gift to that Special Person. Many do not know where they get such gifts. Cost factor also matters while choosing a gift. That is why I have listed below 10 websites that sell not so costly Creative and Unique V day gifts for both men and women for this Valentine's day 2008.

Click on the links to read detailed review of each V day gift idea.

A custom designed T shirt with own love messages, designs and photos.

A Cute Bottle cradling a touchy personal message

A Sexy lingerie to your girl which will be a great gift to your eyes too.

A gift that both of you can enjoy in privacy. Many of us do not know where to buy these gifts.

Sexy Bedroom costumes

A cute small gift like ring, pendant, bracelet, or even vine glass which is engraved with a lovely message

Beautiful jewelry with Diamonds are available at up to 65% discount for this spacial V day from one of the famous company

Fragrance to turn on both of you on this V day. Give Perfume which will remind your love the time you spent together on your V day every time she/he uses that. May it lead to many more V days in the year.

A Beautiful Watch. Let your love start counting down for Next V day

If he/ she enjoys romantic card games with naughty themes leading to great enjoyment get such cards and enjoy your Romantic and exciting V day party with your Partner.

I am sure, all of you want to send a Personalised Special V day Greeting Card inspite of the gift that you are going to give. Here is a site that has innovative wonderful personalised greeting cards which is definetely going to be a challenge to other E- greeting card sellers.

Valentine's Sweets to Wear on You, Not Your Hips

Valentine's Sweets to Wear on You, Not Your Hips

Look cute enough to slay cupid in a sugary pink Mulberry dress, with colorful accents.  Of course, a dab of impossibly romantic fragrance on your pulse points (and wherever else your imagination dictates) doesn't hurt your chances, either.

DJ Premium Valentine’s Day Outfit Ideas

Nothing to wear for V-Day?
Check out Fashion Bomb friend DJ Premium for red hot frocks, stilettos, and more:

Happy Valentines day 2011 wallpapers Printable

Happy Valentines day 2011 wallpapers Printable

Download wallpapers free : Happy Valentines day 2011 wallpapers Printable
Valentine 2011 image : Drawing of two kids , two teddy bears, two red hearts and two balloons
Valntine 2011 msg : Happy valentines day

Download wallpapers free : Happy Valentines day 2011 wallpapers Printable
Valentine 2011 image : One big red heart
Valntine 2011 msg : Be my Valentine

Download wallpapers free : Happy Valentines day 2011 wallpapers Printable
Valentine 2011 image : blue background, white hearts clipart, Two fish kiss
Valntine 2011 msg : Happy valentines day

Keep Visiting Our . Download High quality wallpapers of High resolution of sizes 1600 x 1200 , 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600 . New Wallpapers of Latest Movies , Actors , Actress , festivals are uploaded regularly. We will try our best to Provide you best wallpapers for Free.

Valentine’s Day Devkit

Just in case you haven’t noticed yet - tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. So don’t forget to get some flowers, a cute present or a nicely designed Valentines Card for your sweetheart… So make sure you grab the Valentine Devkit and get started.

Have fun and Happy Valentine’s day to all of you.

Inter-twined Lacy Hearts

Two hearts intertwined! Perfect for a Valentine greeting! It's even dressed up with a lacy trim. You might call it faux rick-rack...but whatever it's called, it is super-easy to make! This Paint Shop Pro X tutorial will show you how to create the trim and the intertwining hearts effect. Use the finished image to create a Valentine, to frame a couple of photos, or maybe make a sig tag. Jump to Step 6 to preview image as a frame and Step 7 for a couple of other ideas.
What you need:

This tutorial was written for Paint Shop Pro version X but any version with vectors can do the job! Actually, with a few more steps, hearts can be created without vector tools...so any version of PSP will do!
You'll also need a Preset Shape in the form of a heart. If I remember correctly, no heart shapes are provided with PSP X. My shapes for all PSP versions are grouped together in the same folder and I can't remember for sure which shapes came with which version. I've included one here for download...just in case! This heart shape was provided by Jasc in a previous version of PSP. Download and unzip into your Preset Shapes folder. This shape is in the new .PspShape format. PSP 7 and older won't recognize this format.

Step 1. Create First Heart Shape

Open new image, 400x400 pixels. Use either a colored raster background or a transparent background, your choice.
Select red for stroke color. Set NONE for the fill color. We'll be creating a heart with nothing in center.

Select the Preset Shape tool. Select the Heart-1 shape from the Tool Options palette shape list. (Heart-1 is the heart you downloaded from above and unzipped into your Preset Shapes folder.) Check 'Create as Vector' and 'anti-alias'. Line style 'solid' with a pixel width of 20.
Draw heart in upper left area of canvas. Size of heart shown here is approximately 200x200.
If you plan on using hearts as photo frame and want to create it larger, consider increasing stroke size in this step and all following steps. If you can't fit 2 larger hearts side by side, you will also have to increase canvas size.
Important: Heart is positioned in upper left quadrant of canvas to leave room for 2nd heart. If your heart is in the middle, move it now. From this step on...do NOT change alignment of the hearts except as described in following steps.

Step 2. Create heart layers

Duplicate layer 2 times for a total of 3 hearts. Layers>Duplicate (twice).
Let's hide visibility of top layer to get it out of our way for now. Click the "eye" button on the layer palette to hide the TOP heart layer (heart #3).
Select the MIDDLE heart layer (heart #2) on Layer palette. Select heart shape with Pick tool. Select Properties from Tool Options.
Change stroke to 3, stroke color to white.
Change line style to 'Opposing Arrowheads Overlap'.
Click OK. You should now have a lacy-looking white pattern in center red as shown in this image.

You may have a gap in 'lace' pattern at top of heart (at the point). We'll need to touch this up using Paintbrush. First, convert this layer to raster layer (Layers>Convert to Raster), then touch up any pattern flaws by adding a few white pixels with a small brush in area outlined in above image. Zoom in on your image to see better.
Next, click the 'eye' button on the layer palette to show the top heart layer (heart #3), Select the top heart with Pick tool. From Tool Options, select Properties. Change stroke width to 7. Click OK.
Note: If the Properties dialog is showing white for stroke color...you forgot to select the top heart first...heart should be red!
Convert this layer to raster layer. Your heart should look like the one shown below (except you won't have any drop shadows yet).

Step 3. Add Some Drop Shadows

Your first heart is complete except for adding a little drop shadow to the lace for a 3D effect.
Select top layer. Add a slight drop shadow with Effects>3D Effects>Drop Shadow. Settings: Horizontal +2, Vertical +2, Opacity 50%, Blur 2, color Black. Leave 'Shadow on new layer' UNchecked.
Note: You may have to adjust settings for drop shadows to get the same effect on a heart that is much larger.
Select layer that is 2nd from top (white heart 'lace'). Apply drop shadow with same settings.
Click the 'eye' button on the layer palette to HIDE the background-color layer (if you have one) and merge all visible layers (Layers>Merge Visible). If you're using a background-color, you can make it visible again after merging heart layers.

Step 4. Intertwine the Hearts

Select the Merged layer. Right click layer button and select Duplicate. This new layer is probably named 'Copy of Merged' by default. Drag the new layer button BELOW the Merged layer. For ease of explanation, the heart on the right should be the bottom heart.
Use the Mover tool or Pick tool to move the copy of heart to the right and down a little from the first heart as shown in all examples.

Make the heart on RIGHT the active layer (Copy of Merged). Use the Magic Wand to create a selection (tolerance 20, anti-alias checked but no feather). With Magic Wand, click the background space around the heart, hold Shift key down and click the interior of the shape.
Invert the selection (Selections>Invert).
Tighten up this selection a bit by selecting: Selections>Modify>Contract. Enter 1, click OK.
Make the heart on LEFT the active layer (Merged layer). The selection marquee should still be around the heart on the RIGHT but the heart on the left is the active layer.
Select Eraser tool. Size 5-10, Hardness 100, Step 10, Density 100, Thickness 100, Rotation 0, Opacity 100.
Erase the part of heart on the LEFT that we want to cross UNDER the other heart. Location of spot to erase is shown in above image.
Selections>Select None.

Step 5. Add Drop Shadow and Valentine Greeting

Hide visibility for background layer if you are using a background. Merge the 2 visible heart layers.
Add Drop Shadow to merged layer with these settings: Horizontal +3 Vertical +3, Opacity 30%, Blur 4, color Black. This time you can CHECK the box to create "Shadow on New Layer" if you want.

That's it. Your hearts are done. Now you can embellish with a Valentine message or frame your photos or create a sig tag!
Valentine greeting: Create a new layer to add text message of your choice. Add a drop shadow to your text to match heart shadow.
The font used above is "Fiolex Girls". The little heart embellishments are part of the font. You can get it at DaFont.
When done, export your creation as an optimized GIF. File>Export>GIF Optimizer.
Save your original .pspimage file with heart and greeting on separate layers so you can easily change the greeting or use hearts for something else.

Step 6. Double Heart Photo Frame

Gather a couple of photos to frame with the intertwined hearts.
Duplicate the .pspimage version of your intertwined hearts and work with a copy of the original file. Window>Duplicate
Copy each of your photos and paste into image as a new layer. Edit>Paste as New Layer.
Create a new layer for EACH photo and place these layers BELOW the heart layer.
Use the Mover tool to move images around until they fit inside heart opening just perfectly! ;-) If you have to Resize photo, don't forget to UNcheck 'all layers'.
You will probably have parts of each photo extending beyond edge of heart. We'll just trim them to fit inside heart. On your Layer Palette, select the Merged layer...the one containing the double heart 'frame'. With the Magic Wand, click in the empty space around outside of the hearts. Enlarge the selection by clicking Selections>Modify>Expand. Expand by 10 pixels. This will hide the 'cut edge' behind the heart shape.
On your Layer Palette, select the layer button for the photo on left side and then Cut.
Next,select the layer button for the photo on right side and Cut.
Selections>Select None.
Merge all layers and export as optimized JPEG. File>Export>JPEG Optimizer.

Step 7. Animations, Sig Tags and other things.

What else can you make with your intertwined hearts? Here's a couple of ideas....an animation and a sig tag!

In above animation, a portion of the hearts were filled with an animated glitter tile. See tutorial 'Hearts-a-Glitter' for how to create animated glitter effect. In the image below, a reduced copy of the intertwined hearts was used with the "Fiolex Girls" font to create a sig tag.

Hope you enjoy making the hearts! I'm sure someone will enjoy receiving the Valentine!