A sweet Christmas idea

Back about fourteen years ago a friend approached me to design and build a new Christmas display for his greenhouse business. He wanted it to be so spectacular that it would bring customers one hundred miles to buy his poinsettias. the display needed to be ready in one week. That was a tough challenge for the bright red flowers are sold in hundreds of other stores. But I had a sweet idea.

We rounded up a truckload of sugar cubes and I began to glue them together as fast as I could. In four days they were stacked as high as the store's fourteen and a half foot ceiling would allow. We estimated there were 14,762 cugar cubes in the structure when I was done. The castle made national news and brought people from near and far to see it. They bought the beautiful poinsettias too.

It's Christmas at last!

While many families like to decorate early in the Christmas season, at our house we have a different tradition. There is a flurry of birthdays through December with Phoebe's being the last. She turned twelve yesterday and it was celebrated with appropriate fanfare. Only then it is time for Christmas. Phoebe (with a little help from grandma) art directed the tree this year. It was decided the colours would be silver and gold with predominantly white (or mostly white) ornaments. As always, only hand made (by family members) ornaments grace our tree, some dating back almost forty years. There are so many wonderful ornaments now they couldn't possibly all fit on our tree. Each ornament brings back so many great memories of events, celebrations and people. Christmas is all of these things and much, much more. It's Christmas at last.

BZZZZZZZ

Today I was out front of our yard pushing some old snow away from the parking area when a van I recognized pulled into our driveway. I had never seen the van nor met the driver previously but I had designed the artwork on the sides of the vehicle. The owner excitedly greeted me and enthusiastically gushed about the artwork. It turned out I had done the work for his previous partner who had moved on to other projects. The fellow in my driveway had lost track of the paper work and had been looking for me for some time. The designs for the van had been done with a full dimensional bug in mind. It looks like we may yet build the bugs and that would be fun!