frosty the what-huh?

today at picture winter, we had to shoot {creatively} our version of "frosty".

tracey gave the example of a cool shot of a beer glass filled to the brim with a frosty brew. in her prompt, she wrote:

today's prompt isn't about capturing a shot of your favorite drink. instead, i ask you to visually translate the word frosty. if that means a mug of beer for you, so be it. but, it might mean something different to you. the translation is wide open today and totally up to you. be creative!

well... i've shot some frosty drinks before... like my green tea lattes from starbucks or this coffee art from a favorite chicago coffee shop. and i recently captured some cool frost on my bathroom window.

i could have shot the whipped-cream topped peppermint hot chocolate i made this morning. but for today's prompt, my mind went immediately to this little guy, so i submitted the above shot. let's just say, frosty had a make-over for 2011! {*wink*}. his new year's resolution?... diet until barely recognizable as a snowman.

this special ornament never gets hung on the tree... or anywhere for that matter. each year at christmas, when this teeny glass ornament {from world market} gets pulled out of the box, he is used to play a little game between the hubby and me.

to explain, let me post a photo and excerpt from an older post in july, 2010:

. . .

here is a little glimpse of something i treasure immensely in my life...

i actually took this photo a while ago, but had not necessarily planned on putting it on flickr or my blog, i just wanted a record of the little glass ornament that my husband and i always hide from each other for fun.

i don't know how or why it started, but one day, one of us decided to hide it for the other to find just to be cute... to give a little unexpected surprise when the cupboard was opened. then the finder reciprocated. then it became a game and a challenge to find creative, hard-to-find places to hide it. back and forth... when one of us found it, it was other's turn to hide it. sometimes it would be months before one of us found the other's hiding place. but what delight it is every time i discover his most recent hiding place. i'm like a kid again.

and when it's missing, i'm constantly asking him, "where's the ducky?" in my little kid voice. i've put it in his suitcase or overnight bag when he goes out of town. he has hidden it in my stack of bills, knowing it will be quite a long time before i find it there {*wink*}. those are just a couple of many, many examples.

we just have a lot of fun with it. it's been going on for about three years. maybe it's just our little way of adding whimsy to our lives until we are blessed with the children we desire to have... practicing for when we do get to have them.

the whimsy and joy this little game brings is itself a treasure, which makes the little glass duck something i'll always treasure. but it's also the added meaning that has come about that i treasure the most. you see... some days, i find this little duck when i absolutely needed it the most. on difficult days. on days filled with worry or anxiety about the hardships life sometimes brings. on days where i'm not feeling adequate. and every time, that little duck is a reminder of how good life is, how blessed i am to have a playful and caring husband.

. . .

well, come christmas-time, insert above text {but change "ducky" to "snowman"} for "mr. snowman the ornament". in fact, the game started with the snowman one christmas several years back.

{b. and i had gone through a really rough patch in our marriage. so we spent our christmas apart. he went to florida to be with his family and i stayed here. because we were on the road to reconciliation, as a gesture of love, i placed the snowman in his suitcase... to surprise him when he got to florida and opened it up. shortly after christmas day, he returned home... with the snowman.}

that was christmas of 2005. when christmas was over and the snowman had to be packed away, the ducky took it's place. but the biggest reason i include an excerpt from my july 2010 post, is because i especially wanted to highlight what i said in the second to last paragraph... "maybe it's just our little way of adding whimsy to our lives until we are blessed with the children we desire to have... practicing for when we do get to have them."

two months after i wrote that, we got pregnant with the child we thought we would never have. i could cry when i read that. good thing we've been practicing these little games for baby-b. {*smile*}

{just have to add one more thing... this year, while straightening a shelf where skinny frosty was displayed, i accidentally knocked him off the shelf... "knocked him off" in more than one way! when he landed, his head broke off of his body! YIKES!!! i beheaded our snowman! but thanks to b. and some super glue, he is once again {{more fortunately than humpty-dumpty}} a whole "man".}

. . .

speaking of frosty, it's going to get very cold here over the next two days... almost down to the zero mark! brrrrrrrr.

i better cut this post off now. it's getting too long, and i have a house to clean for a guest on saturday... one of my oldest and dearest friends will be visiting from texas. i will definitely share more on that when the time comes!!

have a wonderful {frosty... in the good kind of way} day!