Despite my best efforts, my little collection of snowpeople keeps growing.
I never go out looking for them, but (like a lot of other things) they just keep finding me.
This is the guy who started it all. He was a Christmas gift when I was kid. (You might recognize him as an Avon decanter; he’s still half full of Sweet Honesty, my signature scent in the eighth grade.)
Most of the rest of my little snow family have been picked up for a song at garage sales and thrift stores over the years.
I really like the vintage ones, like this couple of cuties, who are actually salt and pepper shakers.
But I have a soft spot for simple wooden snowmen, too.
This guy even came with a name tag. (Poor Bob. What kind of a heartless monster would dump him at a thrift store???)
The big guy in the center of this video clip is solar-powered. When I first saw him at the St. Vincent de Paul, I thought he was a broken clock or kitchen timer. I bought him anyway. After I got him home and held him up to the light to inspect him, he started to shimmy, and it dawned on me that the panel on his base was actually a solar cell, not a broken LCD screen.
Most years, I set my snowpeople out on this three-tiered shelf before Christmas. This year — as part of my ongoing quest to put off studying for finals and writing the three papers that I have due next week — I decided to document the process.
On the bottom shelf, I started with this chippy red metal plate.
I propped an evergreen branch (trimmed off the bottom of our Christmas tree) up against the plate.
Then I put a ceramic tree in the center of the shelf …
… and added a couple of larger snowpeople to the right. (I used a few checkers and poker chips as risers in order to vary the height a bit.)
I filled in around the big pieces with smaller snowmen and added a few more random pieces of greenery to hide the risers and fill in the gaps.
For the middle shelf, I started with this green metal plate.
An evergreen branch went in front of the plate again.
Then I added a couple of cocoa tins and a vintage battery-powered light-up Christmas tree in the center of the shelf.
I added Bob and another wooden snowman on the edges …
… and then I finished up with some other random smalls.
The process was pretty much the same for the top shelf, except I skipped the plate in the back and just started with some Christmas tree trimmings.
A couple of vintage Gurley candles went next, with one of them on a riser.
Then I placed a couple of bigger guys …
… and filled in with some smaller pieces.
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