Halloween is always warm and pleasant here in the Phoenix area, but I remember trick or treating in Ohio when I was growing up, and sometimes, it was seriously cold.  I remember stopping by home for a quick cup of hot cocoa [1] to help us warm up before braving the cold once again to collect more candy.

In honor of that memory, and in recognition that most people won't be wearing shorts to a culdesac potluck like I will this Halloween, I wanted to create a hot cocoa station at my Bat Cavern Trunk or Treat [2].  I already had a beautiful silver plated samovar [3], which I could fill with hot water.  It was pretty badly tarnished, but I thought that worked perfectly for our spooky, haunted Halloween photo shoot.  (It's definitely not because I was lazy.  Definitely not.)  But I wanted something more to make it fit with my Bat Cavern theme.

Have you ever seen that awesome bat headband tutorial [4] from Martha Stewart?  It's been around for years, and I've always loved it.  I love the flying paper bats, and that inspired me to make this variation to swirl around my samovar.

I cut out extremely simple bat shapes in various sizes out of black construction paper.

I then cut three lengths of 22 gauge silver craft wire.  One was longish, maybe 18 inches or so, and the other two were shorter, about 12 inches each.  But I wasn't precise about it, and it really wasn't important.  

I wound one end of each wire around the handle on top of the coffee urn's lid.  Then I just bent the wires so that they gently swirled and spiraled around the top of the urn, and taped the paper bats to the wires.  

Side note:  did you know that a group of bats is called a cloud of bats?  I love learning little facts like that.

I love how it turned out!  Now that I think about it, it's awfully like my swirling leaves cupcake toppers [5], just on a larger scale.