ResearchHow to Build a Snowman...
There is an unbelievable difference between living where the seasons are evident and living where the weather is mostly the same all year round. Some people prefer a tropical or desert climate, where they never have to worry about slipping on ice or shoveling their drive, and that's all right for them. But once you've had a few years of living where the seasons change, you may tend to fall in love with them. No matter where you are, if you don't get at least a couple of good snowfalls over the Holidays, you will miss the snow.
Conventional wisdom holds that you should only attempt to build a snowman when there's a good packing snow. Packing snow clumps easily and is not too wet. It is easily molded like Play-Doh. That's the best kind to work with, but we'll talk about more than one way to build a snowman.
For the packing snow method, you will easily be able to roll the snow into a ball. Just keep rolling it, adding more snow, until you have a ball that is the circumference of your waist. That's the base. Place it where you want, then add a second ball slightly smaller on top of that. Add the third one even smaller on top for the head. Pack some more snow around the base and in the cracks between each ball to add stability. That's the snowman, and that's the easy way.
For wetter snow that doesn't pack so well, it's a bit more challenging, but possible. Instead of using the "stacked ball" method we're going to use the "sculptor method". Get the snow shovel and make a huge pile of snow where you want the snowman. It won't stack well, so you'll have to make the pile almost as tall as your head. As you're stacking it, go all around with your hands or the shovel blade and manually pack it down. This will condense the pile quite a bit, and then you can add more snow to the pile and repeat.
Now, in the words of sculptors everywhere, simply dig away everything from the pile that doesn't look like a snowman! You'll be packing it in more at the base where it's wide and what you dig away can gradually be added to the top. Non-packing snow is a pain to work with, so don't take it as a personal failure if it doesn't work. Short and wide is the key here. If you manually pack it enough, it will be as firm as beach sand and you can then carve it to make your snowman shape.
Another way is the "box method" for very uncooperative snow. Use a cardboard box with the bottom out of it on the ground and pack it with snow. Add two more smaller boxes to the top of that, also bottomless. Leave it sit overnight and in the morning pull the boxes off carefully, then scrape the corners off and sculpt as before.
You can also add sticks to the middle of the snowman to act as a stake to hold it up. Keep a pile of fallen branches handy for this. Other tips are to make a sitting-down or lying down snowman - there's no rule that says it has to be standing at attention, after all!
Accessorize with whatever you have handy. You can let your imagination run free, here. It's kind of hard to go traditional: a carrot is easy enough, but who honestly has lumps of coal lying around these days? Points for style: a clump of moss for hair, a scarf, a pair of dark sunglasses, a hat. Be sure everything is anchored down so the wind doesn't blow it away.
For the artistic, snow isn't as satisfactory a medium since it only comes in one color. You can fix this by using a spray bottle with water and a few drops of food coloring in it. Spray this on to the finished snowman to add color effects to it's features. The even more driven can use cut-out stencils with the food coloring dye to paint shapes on the snow. Some might be tempted to use canned spray paint, but don't. It's not environmentally friendly (remember that snow will melt and eventually end up back in the water supply), and isn't that sharp an effect anyway.
Have fun, give your kids a day to remember, and be sure to post pictures of your wildest creations on Flickr!