Remember those felt candies from the last post? Here they are all laid out in a pattern so that we would know how to thread them all on since we make red and green ones. This was Xman’s work. He simply began placing two reds and one green and it worked out perfectly. It measured 5 feet long! I figured we could thread 10 beads between each candy and L said we would need 500 beads. Oh my! Luckily, we had 550 so we were good to go! 
I cut a 12 foot piece of quilting thread and started adding the candies then beads as L then pushed them down to the end of the line where Xman took out the pins from the candies and pushed the beads against them to keep them closed. It was great teamwork and in less than an hour we had our garland with some left over! I haven’t taken a picture of the garland on our bannister because it was too dark by that time but you’ll just have to believe me that it looks great – or at least we think so and we really enjoyed the process together.
Next came my job of grating the beeswax for our solstice candles for today. I only scraped one knuckle. Not bad for my track record. 
I tried hanging the wick line with a clothespin attached to the bottom to help straighten it out but this didn’t work. The wick had been rolled in a ball for so long I almost decided that there was no way to straighten it out so it would sit in the middle of each candle. I decided to take my chances and just added a bit of wax to the bottom of each dixie cup and then place the end of each wick piece in and let that dry before adding more wax. Once the wax was dry I gently pulled up the wick and straightened it out by clipping a clothespin to each wick then resting the clothespin on top of the cup.
We were now ready for Solstice!
We also decided to begin a new tradition. I find that the holiday season goes by too quickly. Once the frenzy of gifts is over, we rush off to relative’s places for visits and dinner and then suddenly it’s time for home and bed. So this year, we decided to have small gifts in the boys’ stocking for every day up to Christmas beginning with the Solstice. A nice way to celebrate the shortest day of the year and the holiday to come. The boys were so surprised to see a gift in their stockings. Oh, two gifts!
These pocket microscopes are wonderful portable magnifiers and the boys were thrilled. They can zoom 20-40x, have a focusing lever and an LED light. Not bad! Next we would open the geodes and look inside, but first, mother must go off to work so the geode breaking would have to wait.
Once I arrived home from a very busy workday we lit the candles inside our previously made lanterns.
We then each took a turn in saying what we have been thankful for during the past year. L decided we could light four candles today, three tomorrow, two for the 23rd and one for the day before Christmas. Sounds like a great tradition! Happy Solstice to all!
