It was -10F this morning (yes, there is a minus in front of that number)and I think it is hovering around 0F right now. It is supposed to get really cold tomorrow. Low of -21 cold. Brrrr.

I like it, though. Makes me feel tough to live somewhere that gets more than just chilly. Plus, it's 63F in our house all winter, so it's no big deal.

Follow up:

My almost-three-year old and I went for a walk yesterday when it was zero-ish. Bundled up and in snow boots, we did ok. I might need to find him a face mask for cold days when there is a little wind. It's the wind that gets you and where we live must be one of the windiest places on the planet. There are winter days when kindergarteners don't get recess because they get blown over and scrape up their knees. Semis roll over on the highway. You see my point.

I'm kind of blabbering on here, but what I'm getting at is that it is cold. In other words, it is the perfect time to make ice ornaments.

Anders and I found a handful of plastic containers (humus holders, sour cream saucers and the like) and filled them with water (about half way). Then we added a little food coloring (Anders loved this part of the activity).

Next we grabbed some items from his nature collection and dropped them in there. We submerged the end of a long piece of yarn in each container, loaded them on a cookie sheet and left them outside.

Adding food coloring.

(You could easily put these in the freezer if you aren't blessed with sub-zero temperatures. Plus, they'd be fun to watch melt after you hung them.)

Soon we had some lovely ornaments to hang outside our house.

Our rainbow of ornaments.

Pine cone in yellow.

Rock in the blue ornament. (This was the first to fall, glad no one was underneath!)

A few things we learned:
1. Use twine or something strong to hang them. My weak yarn broke after a day and our ornaments fell and shattered. That was kind of fun, too, though.
2. The smaller ornaments are less likely to fall down. (Maybe twine would have taken care of that problem).
3. If you have to stand on a ladder with no gloves to hang these things, you'll be happier if there aren't twenty of them.

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