I am a queen and this is my castle by @elle_rush

Just because I live in

doesn't mean I exist in a world of ice and snow.

Except when I do. For the first time ever, we in the 'Peg we visited by the ice castle fairy. It was created during our brutally cold December, but I got lucky and was able to visit it during the warm (-5) streak we had in the middle of January. This amazing #icecastle was created with over 25 tons of ice and had lights built into the wall, giving it an ethereal glow.

It was spectacular.

You may be saying, "Elle, what kind of date is this?" For most people, date night means fancy clothes, nice hair, and maybe a fireplace. They generally don't mean layering on the long underwear, snow pants, toques and scarves.

But those people don't live in Winnipeg.

For one night, we got to wander through this:

Be jealous, Elsa. Be very jealous.

The walls were made of icicles. There were twenty-foot tall  ice arches to walk under And I don't know how they did it, but they had a fountain made of ice that was actually shooting up streams of water. We went when the temperatures were just below freezing. I don't know if this would even work when it's -20C.  (That's the Museum of Human Rights in the back right.)

They also had an ice slide, but the line was insane. I held mittened hands with my sweetie, and only part of it was because it was really slippery inside. It was freezing and dark and still romantic.

For those of you who are interested, it was down at the Forks, which also had a skating path through the area and onto the river, a skating ring, a toboggan hill, and a crockicurl patch, so it could have been an all day date. But the ice castles were enough for me.

If you haven't had an outdoor winter date with your significant other, I highly recommend it. Bundle up and go for a walk in the dark (it's extra romantic if you do it when there is snow lightly falling.) (LIGHTLY falling, don't do it in a blizzard.) (And shovelling your driveway doesn't count.) Go somewhere with lots of lights that can reflect off the snow, smile with your eyes since that's the only part you'll be able to see of each other, and when you get home, make some date plans for summer.