Selfridges

Selfridges & Co. is a wonderful department store in London. Founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge, who got his start at the famous Marshall Fields store in Chicago, he established himself in London and created an impressive store and legacy. While I was in London over this past Thanksgiving weekend, my visit was filled with some really fun surprises I hadn't expected. The Conran Shop, a London-based design store, has opened a branch shop in the basement of Selfridges. I used to work for The Conran Shop when it had a New York an outpost several years ago. On the top floor of Selfridges was a whole hallway devoted to Christmas decorations, stocking stuffers, and presents. One of the most impressive parts of the Christmas section was its personalized wrapping paper counter. Selfridges' window displays were also incredibly clever and chic featuring a sequined Santa getting ready to enjoy the colder weather.

ICE!

While visiting home to celebrate the new year my family took my nephew Tyler to see ICE! at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center. ICE was an ice sculpture attraction for families to interactively discover the story of how Santa Claus became Santa. Honestly the story part was not so interesting to me but the colored and sculptured ice was fascinating enough. The attraction was entirely chilled at 9 degrees to keep everything solidly cold. We were loaned blue coats to walk around in. After meandering through various sections of the Santa story, which included an elaborate town square, there was a culminating ice palace with slides for people to go down on. (I won my race!) The very last scene of the attraction was a large nativity display in clear ice as opposed to the colored ice that was predominantly featured throughout the exhibit. Tyler told me he liked the entire display and not just a particular point. We all had a lot of fun and really enjoyed such an unusual (and cold) activity and such creative uses of ice.