Rainbow igloo helps brighten winter for Spanish family in Saskatoon

A Saskatoon family has used some food-colouring, a little imagination and a lot of perseverance to build an igloo in their front yard.

Antonio Benedicto, his partner, Valerie, and children Hugo and Maelia built a rainbow igloo outside their home.

Originally from Spain, the family has found a way to brighten up the long Saskatchewan winter by completing an annual sculpture project.

Last winter, they built a snowman drinking a cold beer at a picnic table. The year before, they sculpted a family of upside-down snowmen with their feet and socks in the air.

Fun, challenging project

Benedicto said the igloo project was a major undertaking, requiring about 400 bricks dyed with food colouring.

The fluctuating temperatures presented challenges.

When the family started making the bricks in December, it wasn't cold enough to freeze them all the way through.

"When the temperatures started to go down and to really freeze, that kind of bubble inside exploded and the bricks were completely damaged," Benedicto said.

With nine-year-old Maelia as the colour director, the family started again and enlisted the help of some friends to create hundreds of bricks.

They initially tried to stack the bricks on top of each other but realized they needed more snow, forcing them to wait for another change in the weather.

Celebration of winter

Despite the work required to build the rainbow sculpture, Benedicto would recommend others give it a try.

"It's a funny, funny thing and it's a challenging project that changes depending on the weather," he said.

Last week's warmer temperatures were not kind to the sculpture.

Now, with its warped shape and rainbow colours, Benedicto joked that it looked more like something designed by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi.

He hopes part of the igloo will survive so the family can rebuild it and sleep inside it for at least one night. Benedicto said it would be a celebration of his family's last winter in Saskatoon.

"When you come from a warm country to Canada, and to Saskatoon, what you expect is to have very cold winters, to be the hero in Barcelona," he laughed.