Roses are romantic, but a terrible cliché! There are many other flowers that spell l-o-v-e –

Bluebell
constancy and everlasting love

Ironically enough, it is thought to be unlucky to walk through or bring home. The Latin name for this flower is Endymion who was the lover of the moon Goddess, Selene. The goddess put Endymion into an eternal sleep, so she alone could enjoy his beauty.

Carnation
betrothal, love and fertility

This flower was believed to be an aphrodisiac, hence its popular use at weddings. Due to its association with love it was widely used in wreaths. Gentlemen began to wear carnations as a button hole, Oscar Wilde developed the fashion with a dyed green carnation.

The various carnation colours can mean different things: white - love; yellow - rejection; pink - I’ll never forget you; red - aching heart.

Forget-me-nots
true love and remembrance

Mythology describes this as the flower chosen by a brave knight for his sweetheart before going to battle, as he knelt to gather the tiny blue flowers he fell into a river and was swept away, calling to his love, ‘forget me not’.

Honeysuckle
devoted love

It is said to protect your garden from evil. It is known as the ‘love bind’ - symbolizing a lover’s embrace in its clinging growing habits. The heady fragrance of the flowers was believed to induce dreams of love and passion. If the bloom is brought into the house a wedding is said to follow within the year. But – the honeysuckle’s berries are poisonous!

Hyacinth
constancy

Mythology tells how a handsome youth, Hyacinthus, was loved by the god of the sun, Apollo, but Zephyrus, god of the west wind became jealous and blew the discus that Hyacinthus was playing with and killed him. Flowers sprang from drops of his blood and so became known as hyacinths.

Pansy
loving thoughts and attraction

Also known as ‘heart’s ease’, this pretty flower was believed to heal love problems. Anyone wanting to ensure they were loved by their sweethearts would carry a pansy.

Primrose
first love

Its name is derived from the Latin ‘primus’ meaning first, due to their early spring flowering. The primrose is the sacred flower of Freya, the Norse goddess of love and was used in rituals giving honor to her.

Violet
faithfulness and modesty

During mediaeval times violets were believed to provide protection from evil spirits, and the leaves were used on wounds as healing plasters. Napolean Bonaparte sent Josephine a bouquet of it every anniversary and apparently wore a locket containing violets he had gathered from her grave. In medieval times the violet was strewn on the floor as an air freshener due to its sweet perfume.

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So you have an office sweetheart. You know your job would be on the line if your boss got to know and you have to spend Valentine evening with your spouse, but you’re too much of a romantic to wait for work hours to get over before you give your flame a gift.

Well, there are ways to get around your exuberance, and here they are –

• Give everyone a small potted desk plant; hide your sweetheart’s real gift inside. Keep it sweet and small, or tiny and expensive.
• Post the gift with a Secret Admirer card. If this is for your girlfriend, make it obvious, she’ll love the attention! If it’s for your boyfriend, no matter if he insists otherwise, he’ll love the attention too!
• A photo frame may not be considered a highly interesting gift, but it is reasonably inexpensive to buy one for each colleague … and the one you give your sweetheart could be a special one. Any raised eyebrows? It is just a photo frame, after all! Slip a romantic card inside, meant for his or her eyes only.
• Buy a gift and keep it ready for your sweetheart at the store. Email the link to the store website to him or her and give a glimpse of what’s waiting after office hours – he/she will leave with a bounce in his/her step.
• Get to work early and leave a bouquet or a gift on your girlfriend’s desk – no note, no explanation for the office, but she will know it’s from you
• Similarly, leave your gift at your boyfriend’s desk and hike the curiosity quotient of the office.

Valentine’s Day in the office when your relationship is supposed to be under wraps is quite a task, but with a few cautionary tactics you can stop it from becoming Land Mine Day. It’s all about presenting something special to your flame while in the public eye without arousing suspicions. Though it is very tough to hide – the world loves a lover and a lover can be spotted a mile away!

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Sensitivity is the new buzzword in corporate circles these days, much like Friday Dressing and Power Lunching. Today, building solidarity with your employers and colleagues go way beyond mere efficiency on a project – showing team spirit is as much about caring through thoughtfully-chosen gifts as it is about doing overtime with everybody else. Building quasi-friendly relationships in the workplace goes a long way towards making the atmosphere light, stress-free and easygoing, which studies have proved lead to better output. While office decorum insists that V-Day celebrations be kept discreet, there’s no rule that says the celebrations must pass you by!

GENERAL POINTERS:

• Pick soft shades of warm colours like a delicate pink, muted orange, a discreet red, a pale yellow etc, and deep (not bright) shades of cool colours like a sea green, teal blue and mature purple. Warm colours tend to be too eye-catching and distracting when selected in their vibrant shades, and cool colours tend to be cold and hard when chosen in their bright shades.
• Keep the roses on the backburner – they’re too mushy and traditionally smack of love, but you can always stick other flowers in vibrant shades in your modern equivalent of an ink-hole and gain an aura of old-world charm.
• Pick shapes that are slim and curved like a tall, willowy floor vase or an extra-slim watch

GETTING DOWN TO SPECIFICS:

• Calendars: The only real option you have here is picking one with themes. Calendars come in a variety of love themes from raunchy K-S positions (strictly not recommended for the office!) to historical facts and figures about Saint Valentine would reduce any romantic feeling to dust. Select one that is easy on the eye, un-embarrassing to the recipient and gets the romantic feel across without giving rise to office gossip.
• Watches: Keep the straps slim, the dial delicate with diamantes embedded in it, and pale colours for women. For men – go the traditional way with bulky black straps; after all, men have to be men!
• Clocks: They come in various colours other than the usual black and brown ones, and in interesting shapes and sizes. Stay away from the ones whose faces are painted with hearts and teddy bears though as well as musical clocks – they are too distracting in a workplace.
• Chocolates are the least fussy gift one can give to a person at the workplace – and the most innocent of all Valentine presents!

Celebrations are about marking the passage of time, but each need not be a raucous, loud expression of excitement. It is easy to set the right Valentine mood at the workplace without becoming unprofessional. However, it is always wise to find out from old-timers what the office protocol is, and then take it from there.

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It is not a complete surprise to see corporate offices planning a Valentine bash for their employees. Being an official event of sorts, it is important that the party does not cross the limits of the unwritten code of office behavior.

You can add a dash of naughtiness while sending the invitations out, though – a sprig of mistletoe inside the envelope never did anybody any harm and lets the recipient know that the party is about, after all, having fun. And Christmas was only a little over a month back so it’s not too late to use the cute little plant! Carry the thread of humour forward with funny romantic cards and ironic quotations about love kept at various spots in the room.

Refrain from using mistletoe at the actual party, however, and skip the clichéd roses to find fresh flowers signifying love and friendship like the bluebell and pansy and primrose. Remember, flowers draw attention to a space so they should be displayed in attractive vases in key spots and should be well-lit.

While surveys do show that the Indian workplace is ready for Ally-like romantic intrigues, a game of Spin-the Bottle would be highly out of place, as would skimpy clothing and going overboard on the booze.

A post party, thank you gift could be as simple as a box of chocolates to a unisex piece of clothing (read funky tee shirts), a decorative item for the home to a useful item for the workplace. A small bottle of liqueur is a great parting gift too. Whatever it may be, it should be wrapped well, thereby displaying your professional ease with everything and everybody.

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If you and your spouse work in the same office you must have already been teased about upcoming Valentine’s Day. It is a special day that should be celebrated even if in a modest way. And considering the average workplace – it should be kept modest.

FOR MEN

With some good-natured office nudging about this day, you are sure to remember Valentine’s Day and get something special for your wife.

You can never go wrong with flowers, but flowers are just the basic prelude to the real gift. It doesn’t have to be big, or flashy or expensive, but it has to come from the heart.

There is a basis for saying that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. If you’re saving up for the real thing for your anniversary, buy a trinket made with her birthstone. Skip the usual earring or neck piece if your wife is confident about experimenting, and get her a delicate waist chain to wear with her sari or anklets. A sari, of course, would be the simplest piece to choose, considering that you cannot go wrong with the size, but instead of getting her the usual kind she normally wears, buy her a Gara or a Marathi sari or a South Indian style that she has never worn before. A woman prizes her sarees like men do their cigars. Remember that while it is great for you to receive something handy and useful around the house, a woman prefers something fun, decorative and something that sends her flying to Cloud Nine, like a pair of sexy shoes or a classy handbag. You may not understand the craving, but give in to it.

If you’re good with your hands, create a labour of love. A book shelf that she has long wanted just so and cannot find in the market, or a shoe rack.

But nothing spells love like being gifted a priceless, long-forgotten heirloom, for women value gifts which carry the weight of a sentiment. Like procuring a pearl necklace which belonged to her great grandmother or the last perfume her mother used before she passed away.

Bear in mind that a woman appreciates the time and energy spent on making the right choice and surprising her only adds to the excitement of opening a present.

FOR WOMEN

There’s simply no excuse for your husband to forget this special day now and he must have already kept your gift ready … at least he should have, and if he hasn’t then you can always pick up some handy tips from How to Kill Your Husband… on how to fix him. But though it is traditionally the man’s job to get the gifts and the woman’s, to receive them, it doesn’t mean that you can’t pick up some nice gifts for your husband or boyfriend too.

Men go for basic stuff that serves a purpose instead of just being easy on the eye, but today with the emergence of the metro sexual man you can get a lot of products that are not only handy but also easy on the eye. Like wallets whose colours diverge from the usual black, brown and navy blue and veer into shades of green, burnt orange, charcoals, and sedate greys – interesting, but still keeping a manly ego in place. Or watches that come with a variety of functions like reminders, calendars, alarms, radio, etc. Men like being gifted things that they can use, rather than just serving an ornamental purpose. They wouldn’t keep a certain clock because it ‘looks good’; they’d rather have something that boosts their image and looks powerful, like a sleek chrome clock that shouts out ‘class’ and ‘I-mean-business’. Or a really thick pen. An i-pod loaded with his favourite songs is a gift that he will love.

While you may love surprises, it is the opposite for men, so don’t make a big hoo-ha about it.

VALENTINE DONT’s

Avoid an office picnic hamper unless you are planning to share it with your colleagues and ready to clean up the mess. Nobody appreciates an employee taking more time than necessary at lunch and no one appreciates finding breadcrumbs in the grooves of the computer keyboard.

Public Display of Affection is a complete no-no – many find it embarrassing, at best, and distasteful, at worst. And no, V-Day is not a good-enough excuse.

Avoid gifting each other hygiene products that imply the other is not clean enough and could cause embarrassment in front of colleagues.

Last, but not the least, there is no need to break the bank for V-Day. Stick to your budget.

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The different legends about Valentine’s Day only emphasize his appeal as a heroic and romantic figure. Let’s know about some more curious facts about Valentine’s Day

1. Today, at least three different saints named Valentinus or Valentine are recognized by the Catholic Church. Incidentally, all of them were martyred.
2. Some think that the day is celebrated to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s burial or death that probably occurred around 270 A.D. Others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine’s feast day in February to ‘christianize’ the pagan Lupercalia festive celebrations.
3. In the UK, the day began to be celebrated on mass-scale around the 17th century. By the middle of the 18th century, it became common for lovers and friends in all social strata to exchange tokens of affection or handwritten notes.
4. Later, printed cards replaced handwritten notes owing to upgrading printing technology. Ready-made cards turned an easy means for people to convey their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s sentiments was not encouraged.
5. Americans probably started exchange of hand-made valentines in the beginning of the 18th century.
6. Valentine greetings used to be popular even in the Middle Ages (written Valentine’s didn’t start to appear till after 1400).
7. The oldest known Valentine card is displayed at the British Museum.
8. Esther A. Howland. Howland created the first commercial Valentine’s Day greeting card in the 1840s in the US.

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What is going to work this year? Well here are a few simple and inexpensive ideas that will warm the hearts of both sides and they work every time. Even though these unique gift ideas are sometimes common it is what guys and girls love to get as a gift for Valentines Day.

Here are some tried and tested gift ideas for Valentine’s Day:-

A well arranged bouquet of flowers

A well arranged bouquet of flowers with a nice note is the safest bet. It always works. Find out about your lover’s floral preferences. Lilies and Tulips are among the more popular choices. And, of course, the rose! Keep in mind the connotations and meanings attached with colors before you pick the flowers.

•    White: Innocence, reverence, purity
•    Yellow: Joy
•    Red and White: Unity
•    Red: Love, respect
•    Pink: Grace, gentility
•    Orange: Desire
•    Two red roses joined together: Engagement or marriage (use it carefully)!
•    Rose buds: Beauty, youth

Silk flowers & plants make a good gift idea since they last forever just like your love for him or her.

Chocolates

This one invariably works since it spells out sensuality. Nothing indeed melts a heart like Valentines Day chocolate. Keep in mind the taste of your sweetheart and whether he or she prefers dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate truffles or nutty chocolate. They all send a message of love.

Jewelry

his is an idea that will invariably work for any women! Rings, earrings, watches, bracelets and necklaces all work! It may be a bit costly but nothing turns on the charm quite as much as a rich piece of jewelry. Opt for a simple pendant on a shining silver chain for a even more elegant look.

Perfumes

If she has a particular scent, find out what that perfume is! Talk to one of her friends on her choice of perfume. If you cannot figure out which perfume she likes, or she usually buys, simply stick to the more conventional, popular brands. Even men love a good fragrance. Pay attention to the perfume bottle. It should be stylish.

Bonsai

This ranks high on the novelty scale. It is synonymous with recent albeit deep relationships. You can also gift small plants etc. Avoid gifting cacti for obvious reasons!

Candle stand

It’s not as inane as it appears. Especially females are fond of candles. You can select some innovative designs on gift stores like those crafted of wrought iron or pewter. It would be a good idea adding scented candles.

A coffee maker

This ranks high on scale of practicality especially if he or she loves a hot cuppa. It’s a perfect gift if your best buddy is living as a paying guest or sharing an apartment with others. This will make sure that your best mate thinks of you with hot coffee every morning.

Hopefully these great Valentine’s Day gift ideas we have provided will help you bring a smile on your lover’s face this Valentine’s Day

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