Snowmasters

There is a show on the Travel Channel called Sandmasters.  It is a group of 5 or 6 adults who travel the world and create awesome sand sculptures for clients.  Mark and I have watched the show, and one episode took them to California to do a new Lego Star Wars sculpture.  After watching it, we knew the kids would like it so we saved that episode for them to watch.  They became fascinated by the show, and watched every episode they could (thankfully they had a marathon soon after that we dvr'd).  They have grand plans for sculptures they plan to make this summer, either in the sandbox or at the beach.


After one significant snowfall, we had gone out to play and discovered that the snow was good for packing.  We started talking about what we could make, and Kara said that she had never made a snowman before.  How could this be?!  So she and I set out to make a snowman.  We had a lot of good snow in the back yard, so we rolled the two bigger balls and put them on the sled to transport to the front yard.  After getting the snowman situated and stabilized, we started talking about making its face, etc.  I was looking in the garage for things to use when Kara picked some dead flowers of the ground and said she wanted to use those.  That led to scavenging the landscaping for supplies.  She very systematically went through the yard and found items and declared where it could be used, and then placed them on her snowman (who had by this time been declared a snow lady instead).

Using a plastic spoon to make holes for the pine cone eyes.

Adding hair - I had to get the gardening shears out to cut those - can't wait to see what those bushes look like in the Spring!

Kara found lots of red twigs on the ground and used them for her mouth.

The only non-natural item Kara used where the paint brushes for the arms.  Cole had that idea because Kara wanted her to hold a bouquet of flowers and they stayed in the bristles.

How does this tie in to Sandmasters, you ask?  About halfway through, Kara declared that she was Morgan (the artist who specializes in sculpting people), but that she had Sue's hair (irrelevant but funny - Sue does have beautiful long curly hair).  Then it turned into a paid show where she was making her snow lady for her client at a ski resort.  Later, she was told by the client (me) that she needed another element to her sculpture (which is what usually happens in the show - the client decides to add something else at the last minute) so she made a snow kid and placed her by the snow lady (picture a snowball with no shape).  The client was so pleased with the sculpture that she bought Morgan/Sue/Kara lunch!


And what was Cole doing during Kara's work on her snow lady?  Cole turned into Chris (the artist who specializes in animal carvings) and was working on an elephant and tent for a circus sculpture.  Don't look to hard for those things (you won't see them) - just enlarge the pictures to see Cole's Chris' intense expressions.  Just like in the show, there were several tense moments as he was making a cut through, but was able to exclaim 'I see daylight' (from the show), or when he had the inevitable collapse.  Like a good Sandmaster Snowmaster, he soldiered on and was able to complete his work by the deadline.  Chris/Cole also received lunch for his hard work.

Finished!

Ironically, it was so warm that by the time we had gotten back home with lunch, the sculptures had already collapsed!  Thankfully the client had taken photo's to document their hard work.  While we ate lunch, Cole asked if we could go to a snow carving competition.  I told them about ice carving competitions and they were excited to see some of those instead.  Sadly, we had just missed two that were pretty close by.  But good detective Mark found a new show called Ice Brigade that is about a Grand Rapids company that make ice sculptures, and has recorded that for them.  It's only on once a week, so they have to wait awhile to see it, but it also is a really cool show.  So far, we've seen them build a real working piano, Han Solo frozen in carbonite, an air hockey table, and a DJ booth, all out of ice.  We'll see if they start asking for plastic knives and ice cubes next...