My snowman disaster

Today I had a snowman disaster. We haven’t had much snow this year and I haven’t built a snowman in years, so I decided to go for it. I put on the gloves, the sunglasses because the sun was wicked bright coming off that snow and I headed out the door to build a snowman.

The snow was perfect for packing today. I started out with a small ball and rolled it around to form the three round parts of the snowman (you can see the path in the photo on the right). Since there wasn’t much snow left really, the parts were laced with leaves. But I attempted to fix that by packing the parts with clean snow…it didn’t quite work. But I did give it the college try.

Next, I looked around the yard for the snowman’s arms. A nearby bush yielded exactly what I needed. They were a little too long, but hey, they worked.

Naturally, the snowman needed eyes, nose, mouth and buttons. I was feeling too lazy to look around the yard (and did around in the snow) for rocks and I don’t happen to have any coal handy. So, for the nose, I used a piece of bark that I found near the wood pile. I thought for a few minutes on the rest of him — food coloring! Bam!

I went into the house and dug around in the baking drawer — boom. Gel food coloring. I grabbed my favorite color — red. Because red looks great on white, right? By now I’m sure you can see where this is possibly going.

I realized the error in my thinking as I was applying the first eye. First, GEL. Second, RED. He was starting to look like a bloody mess! Literally! By the time I realized how awful this was going to look, it was already too late. So I kept going. And things just went downhill from there. I applied the eyes, the mouth and the buttons. He looked like something out of a horror show. By this time, I was laughing so hard at my unintentional axe-murderer snowman.

To make things worse I decided to use some old sprinkles I had in the baking drawer to make “hair.” Thus, the colors on his head and on the ground next to him.

Things only got worse as the sun warmed my snowman. The gel food coloring continued to run. The red color spread. It truly looks like a snowman’s worse nightmare in my yard.

Perhaps I shouldn’t quit my day job and built snowmen for a living. Or perhaps maybe re-think my color choice next time.

Either way, it provided a fantastic laugh, a fantastic topic on social media and I had a great time making it.