Summer Solstice Preparation, Tuesday June 25th

What does the Summer Solstice team have in common with the honey bees and the mason bees in our garden? We are all busy preparing delicious, beautiful, inspiring, fun and colourful surprises for the guests who will be attending this year's Summer Solstice Celebration on Thursday!

Solare spent the morning up to her ears in flowers, arranging beautiful flower ornaments and creating a colourful welcome sign for our event!

Solare's beautiful flowers! 

Solare's colourful and artistic welcome sign, which will greet our guests as they enter the garden.

In order to ensure that our guests can find the garden, Bethan has been making directions signs! On Thursday morning, we will put all of the signs in waterproof holders (just in case it rains) and place them strategically along the road so that visitors will know that they are heading the right way to the garden. 

Bethan's direction signs will help ensure that our guests find their way to the garden!

Steph has been creating small homemade instruments for the children. She has been making the instruments out of apple sauce containers, dried beans and rice, and elastic bands!  These instruments will be used by the children as they parade into the Orchard Garden! What fun! 

Steph is creating instruments out of homemade and reuseable materials.

The children will be given instruments to use as they parade into the garden! 

This morning, Stacey took a stroll along the beach, where she collected some loose parts for our sensory table. The loose parts included some small bits of driftwood along with a lovely eagle feather. She also found some stones that have been smoothed and rounded down by the ocean, which will be perfect to use for our gratitude rock activity! 

The smooth rocks that Stacey found at the beach today, which will be used for our gratitude rock activity.

The beach materials that Stacey found, which will be used for an activity at our sensory table. 

Later on when she got home, Stacey had some fun making some good old fashioned play dough! In honour of the summer solstice, she decided to make her play dough a bright and sunny yellow colour. She hopes that the colour will bring us some sunshine this Thursday! The children will be able to make impressions in the play dough using natural materials, and create their own summer solstice story! 

The children will be able to create imprints in the play dough using natural materials! This will be one of our activities at the sensory table! 

Stacey also made some beautiful bouquets for Thursday's event using flowers from her garden at home! She also put them in some recycled glass milk containers for a more rustic vibe. 

Steph's beautiful bouquet of sky blue hydrangeas! 

Steph's flower bouquets!

Denise started creating a wonderful herb booklet for our adult guests to look at during their visit! Each page will explain the health benefits of each herb and its culinary uses, as well as a simple recipe that guests can try out! So far, she has written out a page for mint and lemon balm. When the booklet is done, there will also be a page for rosemary, lavender, and fennel as well!  This will be used to complement our "tea" station, where adult guests will be invited to create tea out of ingredients from our garden, along with some lavender that Denise will bring with her on Thursday! 

The "mint" page of the herb booklet Denise is creating. 

The "lemon balm" page of the herb booklet that Denise is creating. 

Kathleen has been busy finding old cooking utensils and materials that we can use in our mud kitchen! She has gathered lots of materials that the children can use to "cook" with while they are in the garden. She also has an old plastic table and chairs that the children can sit at while they explore their newfound culinary talents! 

Today, Joey collected children's books for our younger visitors, as well as some books that our older guests will enjoy! She has found some great books that can be read aloud to the children. When the adults and older guests arrive, there will be a basket filled with books for interested teachers and garden enthusiasts! Tomorrow, she will give us more details about the books she has found for the event! 

As the blogger for today, I spent the day getting updates from the rest of the team and editing the blog together. Everyone has been hard at work, and it makes me excited to see how much progress we have made! During the afternoon, I started my next task for the day, which was to find tea bags that would work for our herbal tea station. 

Caitlyn visited Murchie's Tea to find compostable tea bags for the herbal tea station.

I was very happy to discover that Murchie's Tea sells fully biodegradable tea bags! When our guests create their tea out of freshly picked herbs from our garden, it will be nice to know that we can compost the tea bags, as we want our event to be as environmentally friendly as possible! 

Fully compostable tea filters for our herbal tea station. 

When I got home, I had fun creating inspirational words and designs on some rocks, which we can use as examples for the gratitude station. I have a number of different coloured permanent markers, and had a lot of fun figuring out which ones will work. Although the yellow marker doesn't show up super well, some of the brighter colours (such as orange, pink and red) did work out quite well, along with the blue and green permanent markers! 

Caitlyn's "be mindful" gratitude rock she made at the beginning of this year, along with several other rocks she made today. 

Way back in September when the UBC Education program began, each person in my cohort was given a rock and asked to write an inspirational message to ourselves. We were supposed to choose a word, phrase or idea that we wanted to keep with us in order to stay motivated and inspired during the rest of the year.  I decided to write "be mindful" on my rock, and it always reminds me to be present and enjoy the beauty of every day.  I know that our guests will love creating their own gratitude rocks during the Summer Solstice Celebration and I can't wait to see what Thursday's event will bring! 

Tomorrow, we will be cooking lots of tasty treats for our guests to enjoy at the event, along with finishing up any other tasks before the Summer Solstice Celebration begins! We will have lots of exciting things to share on the blog tomorrow, and can't wait to share them with you!