With Christmas over, a new colourful front yard attraction is catching people’s eyes in Melfort.
Instead of getting cabin fever, Sharla Mamer and her family decided to follow an idea she first saw on Pinterest.
“We just moved here Easter break so this was kind of our first winter in this yard, so I thought it would be kind of a fun new memory for the kids to have,” Mamer said.
The colourful ice igloo appealed to her husband Keith and three children since they all like spending time outdoors, she explained.
The project started out with a trip to Sarcan to pick up about 250 used 2L milk cartons. The family then filled the cartons with water and food colouring and left them outside to freeze.
The kids thought it was pretty cool except “when they had to carry out jugs of water out to the deck, they complained a little bit because we weren’t really seeing a result yet, and it was really cold,” Mamer said.
This all began in early December, but the family had to take a break during extremely cold days, “so we had about 200 milk jugs sitting on the deck,” she said with a laugh.
Once the cartons were frozen, they cut them open and used the ice somewhat similarly to bricks. The family laid the ice down in the snow as a semicircle.
The family then mixed snow with water to create a slush to put into the grooves between ice blocks so that they would freeze together.
The igloo, which is about four feet tall, was finished last week.
It’s gotten quite a bit of attention in the community, even spurring a visit from her son Marcus’ Grade 4 class.
“We only live a block and a half from school so they came. And there’s a few kids have been coming over to see it. And a few other people have asked to come and see it… It’s kind of crazy how it has taken off. We had a friend of ours from Wynyard, our past town, she messaged us and said there was a picture of our igloo on the Regina news the other night,” Mamer said.
The project took about 12 hours altogether.
claskowski@panow.com
On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk
