Tag Archives: Christmas

Official start to Frosty

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rough shaping of Frosty

Today I made an official start on my candy sculpture for South Jordan‘s “Something Sweet” Christmas window displays. For those of you who were lucky enough to grow up in the Salt Lake area during ZCMI‘s famous Christmas window displays you will be excited to know that the city of South Jordan is working to restore that Christmas tradition. After a google search I came up with this link to a few images from Christmas 1998.

When ZCMI was sold the new company didn’t have the in-house designers to continue the tradition and then Provo City Arts Council started sponsoring candy windows in various Center Street businesses. I got involved with that project in 2001 and continued making windows for them until 2007 when I started to raise puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Provo had candy windows in 2008 and then with the change in focus with the new Covey Center for the Arts the Christmas candy windows in Provo came to an end.

Last year South Jordan approached me about doing a candy sculpture for them to kind of get things started on reviving the Candy Window tradition. Because I would love to see this wonderful holiday event make a come back I said yes. You can see my “Christmas A to Z” project here. This year is the next step in bringing back Candy Windows. South Jordan will have 4 candy window sculptures in the Town Center Drive area just off Redwood Road and south of 104th South. I’m also excited because one of the candy artist comes to us with experience doing the original windows at ZCMI. My sculpture will be in the Cold Stone Creamery. Our theme is Christmas Carols and with my window being in an ice cream shop “Frosty the Snowman” seemed like the perfect match.

So here are a few photos of Frosty starting to take shape. We gained a lot of expertise from Gary’s many years at ZCMI and he let us use his big hot-wire cutters to cut the rough shape out of big blocks of Styrofoam. This is so much faster than how I’ve done it in the past. Bill is planning to make me a smaller hot-wire cutter but he hasn’t had time yet. So much more to do and after I get Girls Camp finished this project will have to take some priority.

Gary and Bill making the first cut to shape Frosty

making the second cut on Frosty

 

the second cut finished

 

close-up of the third cut on Frosty

 

nearing the end of the fourth cut

cutting out Frosty’s legs

more rough shaping of Frosty

Frosty strapped into the back of the pick-up for the trip to our house

 

 

50 for 50 #25 – Knocking Out Teeth

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Me with my missing teeth

When I was three years old I knocked out two of my front teeth while playing on the swings. Here is what my mom wrote in her diary:

Our three-year old Raelyn recently tried to copy the big kids by jumping out of the swing before it stopped. Result: She is eligible to sing all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.

It is funny how memory works. I thought I was swinging on my stomach and fell out face first. But that note of my mom makes it sound like I was trying to jump out of the swing and didn’t navigate the landing. Now I wonder what really happened. Usually the closer to the time something happened the more likely correct. I also thought that it was my two front teeth but the one photo I found it show one front tooth and then the tooth next to it. I guess this is also a lesson in how facts can get shifted around in time.

I also remember getting really sick and tire of the song, “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth.” It was several years before my permanent teeth came in so every Christmas it was the same old thing.

I did have celebrating this incident in my early childhood on my 50 for 50 list but I thought that I would celebrate it by finding a swing set and having a swing. But instead I knocked off part of my tooth eating a sandwich with crusty sourdough bread. At first I thought that somehow a rock got into my bread. But the truth came out a few bites later when I realized a chunk of my tooth was missing. I think the dentist called it number 12. So my 50 for 50 this week was getting a crown on tooth #12. I’m guessing it was a lot less painful this time around.

Photos from Florida

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Apex at the Office with a Christmas tree

I love it when I see that I’ve gotten mail from either Apex or Banta’s handlers. Tonight I had one in my inbox from Florida. It was photos of Apex from Christmas. We sent all the puppies in our lives a nylabone wishbone. As puppies they all loved the wishbone shape the best. In a previous email Sue said he was enjoying the bone but was mostly tossing it around and chasing it. Banta’s handler said that she really liked it better than another nylabone she had because it was smaller and her mouth fit around it better. Well anyway Sue sent photos of Apex with his wishbone and one at work with a Christmas tree. So here they are.

Apex on the couch with his wishbone
Apex chewing on his wishbone

Candy Sculpture Class

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Tonight I taught a class at the Gale Center. The purpose of the class was to expose potential candy artists to the basic principles of creating a sculpture out of candy. We ran into a couple of challenges. There was no requirement to register so we had no idea how many people would come. We prepared for 20 and about twice that showed up. The second was the kids. We had lots of kids show up. Actually most of the participants came as families. There was lots of scrambling to get the needed supplies and power to all of the glue guns but everyone seemed to have a good time. There was lots of chaos and all thoughts of teaching how to make the little snowman step by step disappeared after the first set of instructions. The students all seemed to have trouble with getting the snowflake sprinkles I had to cover the Styrofoam balls to stick. But they were all very creative in how they did their hats and other parts of the snowman. I think we will be doing more classes in the future but we will require registration and have separate classes for adults and kids/families.

Christmas Day

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Sinclair wearing a Christmas collar stretched out between Bill’s legs

With Christmas being on Sunday, church was the first thing on the schedule today. We were singing in the choir so Bill and I both had puppies with us. They both did just fine. After church we had some food to prepare for Christmas dinner. Christmas eve was with my family and Christmas day was time will Bill’s family. So we packed up the car with Yakira and Sinclair along with food and some Christmas gifts and made the hour drive to Tooele. No puppies to play with at Bill’s mom’s house but the pups were good. We took along the fold-up kennel and the two of them did good hanging out in there together for quite a while.
After dinner we use the carol books to sing Christmas songs again. This time we had Deon to accompany us on his guitar. I didn’t realize that he could play the guitar that well. It was really fun to have the added dimensions of his guitar. The carol books have been a good success. There are some words on a few of the songs that are different that what we normally sing so I’d like to fix those before next year.
We have never had two family days back to back quite like that before and I thought it might be a bit much but it turned out to be a nice way to spend the holiday. But we were all tired by the time we got home tonight. It is Sinclair’s last night with us. Lindsey is picking him up tomorrow so he can spend some time with her before his family gets back into town. I think Yakira will miss him, but we have plans for her to do a puppy swap with Osaka on Tuesday so she has a busy week ahead.

Christmas Eve

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Danny, Clifford and Jacob on Christmas Eve

We took Yakira and Sinclair with us to my sister’s house for Christmas eve. She had Clifford (a career change black lab) so the three pups had a great time playing together. The humans and a good time eating dinner and chatting with family members. Then we gathered in the living room to read the Christmas story using their nativity to illustrate. Last of all we sang Christmas carols. This year I put together a booklet with words from all the familiar Christmas songs. It was fun to get to sing songs that we know but can’t remember all the words without a little help and other songs that have verses that we had never sung before. Sinclair is much more adjusted to being with us but he is a high maintenance puppy.

Yakira

Sinclair and Jacob

Christmas Packages

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Yakira

Today I sent off Christmas packages to all of our pups except Casey. We don’t have a way to send anything to her right now. We will have to give her a gift at her graduation. Each puppy got the same thing, a nylabone wish bone. All of them loved their wish bones as a puppy. Well with Waffle it was hard to tell because Casey was always the one actually doing the chewing on Waffle’s nylabone. Along with the bone a sent a large jingle bell with a red and green loop that I wove on my inkle loom. I hope they all enjoy their bones. I also have a wish bone for Clifford too and one for Bill’s brother’s dog Jazzy. Those we will deliver in person next time we see them.

Trip to "Our House"

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Our local cub scout pack has a tradition of going to a local nursing home called “Our House” each December to decorate their Christmas tree and sing carols with the residents. As part of my job as the cub scout committee chairman for our pack I go along. So Yakira came with me. We all had a good time singing. One of the boy’s mother is a rather talented piano planner and I put together carol books so we would know the words. The funniest part was when one of our boys picked “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” to sing. I had never really paid attention to the words before. So there we are singing about Grandma being dead with a bunch of old “grandmas”. They seemed to enjoy the song anyway. Maybe they enjoyed the humor of the situation.

Bringing Home the Tree

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Yakira in the parking lot

My family has the tradition of going into the mountains to cut down our own Christmas tree. We like to go the Saturday after Thanksgiving. There wasn’t much snow down in the parking lot but it got deeper as we climbed the hill to our favorite area to find a tree. Yakira had a great time. She got a little cold when we got off the beaten path and the snow was deeper than her legs. I sat down on a log and picked her up, cuddling her inside my coat until she warmed up. Meanwhile Bill got our tree cut down and headed off to help Eric and Danny get their tree down the hill. Our tree is rather little because we put it up on a trunk. This keeps the tree from being too tempting to the puppies. But my sister’s house had 16′ ceilings in their living room so their tree is much bigger and is hard to get down the hill. I was really impressed by Yakira on our trek back down the hill with the tree. She just plugged her way along, keeping a steady pace until we got back to the car.

After the trees were all back to the cars we ate baked potatoes with chili, hot chocolate and other yummy treats. Yakira was very tired after her tromp through the snow and slept on the way home. She loves to put her chin in the notch in the folded up seat in the back of our station wagon.

Yakira sleeping in the back of the car

A to Z installation

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Bill and I at the Gale Center with Christmas from A to Z

Today was the day to take the tree to the Gale Center. I picked up a cold last week and didn’t quite get the green finished on Saturday so I had to finish this morning along with a few touch ups. Finally it was ready to clean off all the hot glue threads. With that done I gathered up my supplies and waited for Bill to come to help me get it moved. It wasn’t too heavy, less than 50 lbs. I would guess so it wasn’t too hard. We put couch cushions in the back of our station wagon and it just fit. Once at the Gale Center it took a few minutes to get the table set up and then move the tree into place. It was too tall to go on the stage but the table fit on the step down so the stage area still worked fine. We played around with how to best arrange the packages etc. that go under the tree and then we glued them into place. Last thing was to make sure that all the new hot glue strings were cleaned off. Bill went the extra mile and took the heat gun over the whole tree again.

It will be on display at the Gale Center along with their annual Gingerbread contest through December 2nd. The Gale Center is at 10300 South Beckstead Lane. ( Beakstead Lane is the first light east of Redwood Road.) They are open from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. But they are closed for Thanksgiving from Wednesday to the end of the week.

It feel so good to have this done. I still want to use the images to make a children’s picture book. I’ll have to squeeze that in between other projects that have taken a back seat while I finished this one up.