WINTER WHITE

18 INCHES

We're always dreaming of A white Christmas...this year we got our wish in spades. It seems Madison was the epicenter of a huge snowstorm that blew through the Midwest just before Santa was to glide through on his sleigh. Seems someone thought he needed a very cushioned landing pad so they spilled eighteen inches of the kind of snow every kid dreams of and every snow shoveler dreads. It was eighteen inches of the best snowman making variety, the kind that bonds together so you can easily roll a small ball into a giant one but if you have to shovel it it's like a fifty pound bag of slush with every scoop.

I shoveled, by hand, six times that day and by the last shoveling I was throwing those fifty pound loads to a height even with the top of my head. We've decided a snow blower is more than likely in our future.















WHITE

The snow inspired me to think of white in design (after all, white is all I've been seeing for the past week) and because of the holiday and the limited amount of time I have to but into the blog this week I'm going to just let you look at the beauty of white and keep my pithy comments out of the way this time. For all of you who didn't get to enjoy a white Christmas this is my gift to you.

THE HOLIDAY PARTY

Last year it was the ugly sweater competition, this year my sister came up with idea of hats that represented either a Christmas movie or song. Let the cleverness commence.

My brother-in-law didn't exactly but a lot of effort into his hat nor was it one that took us a lot of guessing to figure out but it was very amusing and Dan is nothing like a Scrooge. My mother's hat on the other hand had us all thinking for quit some time until we put the pieces together like a pictograph and realized the three bells and a rock read as, "Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock".

Our daughter's approach was a little more destructive. She tore the leg off of a Barbie, drew a fishnet stocking on it with a magic marker, fashioned a yellow lampshade with black fringe out of construction paper

and turned out the perfect iconographic image for the movie "A Christmas Story".

But the winning hat belonged to my sister who put together the makings of, "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go". The trick here was realizing that the picture of the house on her head was actually our own Grandmother's house. I was not looking forward to this challenge but it actually was a lot of fun. Hope everyone had a joyous, humorous holiday filled holiday with as much laughter and good cheer as we did. Happy Holidays to all.

THE GALLERY

White Christmas, 2012

Emmy Shaver/Melahn, photographer

Represented by Pleasant Living