STUNNING
Keri Ackling, 46, from Sandhurst, Berkshire, and her husband Tom create real life winter wonderlands...
Putting the finishing touches to the Christmas tree, I felt a buzz of festive excitement.
‘It looks great this year,’ I beamed to my partner Tom, now 44.
We were both crazy about Christmas, filling up our baskets with new decs at the garden centre every year and going all out.
‘Look what I got,’ he grinned back in December 2008, producing a can from behind his back.
‘Snow spray?’ I groaned. ‘I don’t want tacky little dots on the window...’
‘Where’s your festive spirit?’ Tom laughed.
As he cracked open another beer, I stifled a yawn.
It was an enchanting yuletide scene
‘I’m going to call it a night,’ I said, heading upstairs to bed. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid with that snow spray!’
Cosying up under the covers, I wondered what snow-capped hell I might come down to in the morning.
But when I went into the kitchen the next day to make a cuppa, my jaw dropped.
‘Tom,’ I exclaimed in awe. ‘This is really incredible!’
He’d drawn an enchanting yuletide scene across our kitchen window – a beautifully delicate snow-topped cottage on a hill, complete with festive fir trees, etched out of snow spray.
‘Not bad, eh?’ he grinned at me.
I knew Tom was creative, but I never realised how talented he was –not a hint of tackiness in sight! And from then on, snowy window scenes became a festive tradition for us. Friends and family thought it was incredible, too, and often asked Tom to adorn their windows – and he became popular on social media.
But I knew there was more to it.
‘Why don’t we make a business out of this?’ I said to Tom in 2015.
I had a background in marketing, and paired with Tom’s creative talent I knew it was something that would be a huge success. And so we started Snow Windows!
A year later, I entered a competition on the Chris Moyles Show, to create adverts for businesses if they donated to the Make Some Noise charity – Snow Windows was selected and Chris asked Tom to go in and spray the studio windows.
That led to Jamie Oliver asking Tom to spray his windows, then Kirstie Allsopp, Zara and Mike Tindall, plus other celebs and businesses like Coca-Cola – from there it snowballed!
Our kids Rae, 13, and Isaac, 11, have never known any different – they’ve grown up with quirky snow-covered windows, so now they’re a bit blasé about it.
‘Mum, when I grow up, I want to play for Arsenal and be a hairdresser,’ football-mad Rae told me when she was seven.
‘I’m not sure that’s going t
