Ice-Cutters Christmas

After Thanksgiving, we decided to check out an event that was called 'The Ice-Cutter's Christmas".

It's a family who open up their ranch to the public, and decorate it with christmas lights, and ice-sculptures. T.Jay Maclaskey has been an ice-sculpturer for many years, and now uses the sculptures as their own Christmas decorations. They manufacture their own blocks of ice, instead of buying them, and their ice-sculptures have been published in 'Country Living Magazine'. You can see more of their ice art here.  But here are a few I took myself..

 We went on a hay ride around the ranch to look at all the Christmas lights, and the kids had a go on the illuminated bungee-trampolines (what a mouthful...).

And then, we were treated to a display of how this huge block of ice gets transformed into a delightful toy soldier. He had us mesmerized, and made it look so easy. We were all itching to have a go, if not to just hack at the ice with the chain-saw!! And it looked like such fun!

This was the final product after he put a blow-torch to the sculpture, to give it a perfectly transparent and crystal clear appearance.

And to top off the evening, all the leftover ice shavings (which now resembled snow), gets loaded into big cooler boxes, and the kids get to have a snowball fight! We didn't go prepared for this however, and after about 2 minutes, I had 2 moaning kids holding out their frozen, numb hands, complaining that the snow was too cold?????

Anyhow, it was a great evening, and we'll definitely go back next year.