Bet You've Never Seen One of These Before

A couple of weeks ago, my company sponsored a snowman-decorating contest for its 600ish home office employees.  The actuaries in our company usually aren't known for their creativity in such pursuits.  This year, a few of us decided to form a team and try to change that.  Ideas were floated around before the actual day of decoration as to how we should decorate our snowman.  These suggestions ranged from the more traditional to the rather inventive:

• Snowman with a sled
• Snowman in a penguin costume
• Snow angel
• Snow bunny
• Actuary snowman
• Cowboy snowman
• Beach bum snowman
• CEO snowman
• Sumo snowman
• Repunzel snowman
• Fire-breathing dragon snowman
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle snowman

The winner: fire-breathing dragon snowman!  Can't say we won't get points for creativity.... if we can do it in such a manner that anyone else will know what it is, that is....

This is what we started with.  Austin wasn't at work the day we picked up the snowman, so it ended up in his cube when he got there the next morning.  As you can see, he's no small snowman!

The notes on the snowman particularly cracked me up.

Some of the competition.  I never knew so many snowmen wore vests!!!

Here's what we ended up with.  I was quite impressed!  If nothing else, we certainly win the least-traditional-snowman award.  He wasn't quite completed in this picture, but it's the one where you can see his head the best.

The completed fire-breathing-dragon-snowman, complete with a few unfortunate competitors on the ground in front of him. Oops, must've gotten a little too close.

Unfortunately, with 30-some entrants, we did not even make top 3.  This year, we worked on the creativity end of things.  Next year, we'll work on making more friends so they can vote for us :)