That Friday Feeling...18/11/2011

I always find this time of year a little magical... the fast approach of Christmas, the turn from Autumn into Winter, the days where you go home in the dark and it's only 4pm. So this week's shout out is a fairytale shout out. Just in case a handsome prince is around to rescue us from those long winter months!

Love this print by HidenSeek

woodland necklace by Shalotte. Very magical...

Cute little wooden blocks by SparrowPrimitives

What fun bits of information shall I add today? 

• Cinderella's Glass Slipper was probably made out of squirrel fur not glass - somewhere along the line there was a mistranslation and the glass slipper sounded more romantic.
• The Brother's Grimm wrote some really dark and horrible fairytales - I couldn't believe them when I finally read them: as a child we think that fairytales all end happily ever after but not in Grimm's tales! As they were originally adult tales there were a lot of sexual and violent references. Grimm took our most of the sexual references, often replacing with violence, while the Victorian Era is what really toned fairytales down to the child friendly versions we have today
• The oldest known fairytales come from Egypt around 1300 BC, but the origin of fairytales is fairly obscure as they were traditionally told orally rather than written down.
• The numbers 3 and 7 are prominent in fairytales as numbers that have particular magical properties.
• In the original story, Pinocchio saves Gepetto from the belly of a shark - Disney thought that was a little too violent so changed it to a whale. 
• Snow White wasn't quite so lovely as she is in the version we know - the evil queen traditionally falls off a cliff for us, but oh no: Snow actually made her put on red hot iron shoes and dance as punishment until she fell down dead in the original. And Sleeping Beauty? Well her prince didn't tell his parents about their marriage until they'd had 2 children - because his mother was an ogress who liked eating kiddies for breakfast!