Naperville snow artist recreates Bernie with mittens as a snowman

NAPERVILLE (WLS) -- Naperville's Lauren Finaldi is calling her snowman Brrrnie Sanders, after recreating the Vermont senator's famously modest pose at the presidential inauguration as a snow sculpture in her backyard.

"I don't know how to photoshop, so this was the only way I could put him somewhere. And I could put him actually at our house," Finaldi said, referring to the meme of Sanders which has helped raise millions of dollars for charity.

"A lot of people think he's a snow-cialist," Finaldi joked. "I just wanted to capture his cute posture that he had and the mittens."

Finaldi, a retired high school Spanish teacher, created the entire sculpture in four hours during the two-day snowstorm earlier this week. Her only tools were hands and a butter knife. Although she put in a lot of time, she didn't expect her snowman to trend as much as it did.

"My husband is pretty big on Twitter. So I asked him, 'Why don't you post this on Twitter,'" Finaldi said. "People kept retweeting it, and last I saw it had over 10,000 shares and definitely over 100,000 likes."

On Friday morning, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz commented on the post, "Just showed this to Bernie and he laughed." Finaldi says her main goal had been for it to reach Bernie.

"I feel like I'm having my 15 minutes of fame, and I'm loving it," Finaldi said.