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.