Our Winter Solstice Celebration!

This year was our first year to celebrate the Winter Solstice/Yule.  I really wanted to make it special.  We started off making sure we were celebrating the Re-birth of the Sun and Thanking the Earth for what it has provided us.  We decided make some grapevine wreaths. One we decorated for us with pine branches.  We also made one that we wrapped in popcorn for the wild birds to eat and hung it from a tree.  We gathered pine cones and slathered them in peanut butter and rolled the in wild bird seed for the birds also.  We hope to help the birds throughout the rest of  the winter.  We lit candles to represent the Earth, the Sun and Family.  Ryan picked out the colors he thought represented all of those things best.   We had a wonderful candlelight dinner of venison, carrots and rutabagas.  We tried to make the dinner something that was a bit seasonal.  I also made a cake that looked like the sun!  We had a great time and will continue to celebrate the Winter Solstice/Yule.

Beginning our Solstice crafts after gathering everything on our hike.

Putting the peanut butter on the pine cones.

Our finished pine cones for the birds.

Ryan with our popcorn wreath.

And finally the wreath for the house!