Solstice Night

If I had remembered to shut off the flash when I took this shot it would have been so much more spectacular. For that matter, if I had moved the parm cheese out of the photo it would have done rather a lot for shot composition!  LOL  Oh well, I am lucky I remembered to take the photo so I shan't complain.  I have had a rotten cold and feel sort of cloggy and brainless.  Rob's girlfriend said I should make tea and curl up in a snuggie.  I drink tea and we own snuggies, but I never curl up like that unless I am dying.  And never on Solstice Night which is special at our house.

The shortest day of the year.  From here on out the wheel will slowly turn giving us more and more daylight.  In our home we welcome that by first embracing the darkness. We eat without any overhead lights on.  I use a lot of battery tea lights these days as I feel safer with the kids, but I also do have a big Yankee candle jar that has a shade that goes over it. That too is lit.  Our table was decorated with a couple of home made crafts that looked much nicer than they do in the picture. The ornament balls are a cool 15 minute craft that I found somewhere on line.  You take a glass ornament and pour a little floor way (yes you read that correctly) into it. Coat the inside thoroughly, then pour out the excess.  Then pour in a little glitter, shake it up, and voila! You are done and they look amazing.  We did blue and white, the color of snow and the deep winter that is ahead of us.  They captured and reflected the lights of our candles and were stunning.

The other craft is a little tissue paper luminaria.  I saw this on someone elses blog too and again, I forget whose which is really horrid.  But I did mine differently so maybe it doesn't matter.  I took a tiny lampshade, covered it with plastic wrap and sprayed it with non stick spray. Then I painted the whole thing with Mod Podge and covered it with the patterned tissue paper.  The original crafter used white tissue paper and then cut gorgeous tiny snowflakes that she layered on.  Remember the 15 minute craft thing?  That is my time frame.  It is how much time I have before something else requires my attention so most everything gets pared down to that magic number.  Using snowflake patterned paper (which we had on hand as we used to count tissue paper for our piece work job) made it easy and quick. It was stiffened with another coat of the mod podge and let to dry.  Then I carefully sliced it on one side, and took it off the shade.  It set beautifully on the table with a battery tea light inside flickering softly.

So blessed Solstice everyone!