Sylvanian Snow Day!

We don't have snow in South Africa. :(

Well, let me re-phrase that... We don't have snow in most areas of South Africa.

I have seen snow in the distance on the Drakensberg before, but I have never seen snow up close before. (Not real snow anyways)

We do, however, have heat here... LOTS of heat and it isn't strange to have a 40 degree (Celsius) day in summertime - which is most of the year, since we only have a few days of autumn and a few days of spring around here.
The rest of the time, it is summer, summer or winter. (Oh and did I forget to add summer?)

My poor polar critters are finding it pretty hard to survive in this heat due to the extended summers and total lack of snow! So, I have decided to remedy that for them even for just a little bit.

So, in the 38 degree heat, I made it snow in Rooibosch Hill... ;-)

It has been an idea that I have been playing with for a very long time, but it just never worked out for me. Fake snow is really expensive and I couldn't get my critters to stand / sit still on the quilting fleece stuff from the fabric shop! So, it has never snowed in Rooibosch before due to my lack of imagination...

But today was the day! I picked up a bag of white sugar from the grocery store and tipped the lot out onto a tray, collected my camera and some arctic critters and happily snapped away. The results were much better than I anticipated and overall I think the photos came out pretty well.
The critters enjoyed their snow day and even my little terror had some laughs watching is crazy mother play in a really big pile of sugar! (2,5kg of Huletts pure white sugar to be precise!)

Now it is time to clean this mess up... O_o

You can all probably guess what everyone is getting for Christmas presents this year, huh?
Say it with me - Sugar Scrubs!!!

Little Dolly Polarstar does not look too happy with this sudden cold weather...

Perhaps a ride on the sled will cheer Dolly up?

At least the rest of the family seemed to enjoy the snowball fight!

The polar bears couldn't have all the fun, so the De Burgh penguin family decided to join in too...
These critters are quite tricky to photograph, since they don't really "do" much and they are in reality nearly stark naked... O_o

♫ ♪ ~ Do you wanna build a snowman... Uh... Iglooo? ~ ♪ ♫

Penguins, penguins everywhere!

A Frog he would a-fishing go.

I had some time on my hands today and decided to spend some time with my Sylvanian critters.  

This is the first of five photos that I took today for a local Sylvanian Families photo competition hosted by Pegasus Toys on Facebook.

I was originally thinking of using something cute and cuddly like the other entries (and WAAAY less green...) for this particular photo, but then I walked past my display cabinet and saw these little guys just staring at me with those AWEFULLY-FREAKY-HUGE-EYES!!! @_@

To be honest, I usually turn the Bullrush frog family around to face the back of my cabinet (Yes, yes, I am terrible - I know...), but since we were hit by a mini-dust storm recently, I have been cleaning out and dusting my figures bit by bit since Monday. Inevitably I felt a little bad for my poor froggies and decided to turn them around to face the outside world like all of my other critters. 

The Bullrush frogs are OK as long as you don't stare into their eyes for too long and you have to turn them at a little bit of an angle for a photo, or else they stare right back at you through the camera lens and steal your soul... 

@_@