SuperEggplant

Peter is actually a pretty crafty guy, but with all the 10th grade English papers he has to grade, he doesn’t have much time to channel his crafty side. Well, it’s winter break now, so let the crafting begin! He came up with a plan for displaying the holiday cards (apparently letting them sit in a pile didn’t work for him). He decided to use this as a model:

He went out to the hardware store and came home with a bunch of supplies (the whole thing cost under $10 to make):

Most of the supplies he found in the electrical section. He got alligator clips, two types of wire (some thin wire, I think he called it bell wire for telephones?, and some heavier stuff. He suggests 16 gauge solid coated wire), and some suction cups (he got some with hooks on them).
To make the line from which you will hang the cards, first remove the hooks from 2 suction cups then take the thin wire and wrap it around the centers (the part the hook was attached to). I guess you can leave the hook on and wrap the wire around that if you want. Peter used red, white, and green wire, and it was probably 4.5 to 5′ in length (you can always cut it if it’s too long. Peter left long tails so they would hang decoratively off the ends).
So next you need to make the individual hangers. We used many different lengths of wire to create a staggered effect. Take one end of the cut wire and place it between the little metal tabs on the alligator clip. Take some needlenose pliars (Peter pilfered my beading pliars) and crimp the tabs tightly around the wire to secure it:

So then you take the pliars and bend the wire on the other end to create a little hook:

Repeat with the other pieces of wire. You can get creative and make the wires loopy or squiggly or whatever. Hang the wires from the long piece and clip on your cards and voila!

Recently I have become obsessed with surprise balls, those crepe paper-wrapped balls layered with little surprises. When I was in Portland my friend Taya and I were lucky enough to find some on clearance at Sur La Table. We snagged them quickly to conduct some research. These surprise balls generally retail for $20 or more. You’d think for 20 bucks you’d get something really great, but our balls contained toys you’d find in a box of Cracker Jacks. I decided I could try to do better …
So today I made my first surprise ball! Here are some of my supplies:

I had a lot of help from the inifinitely clever Megan and her instructions on making surprise balls. I ordered the crepe paper rolls from Dick Blick and foraged around for some trinkets.
I put a good prize in the center then started wrapping:

The crepe paper is a bit wide, so I cut it in half as I went along. That was kind of a hassle. For some layers I used squares of crepe paper and just wrapped the whole ball in the square. I layered in stickers, candies, little charms, etc. It was actually kind of difficult to get the thing to resemble a ball, and I wasn’t feeling particularly Detail Oriented, so here it is, the surprise blob!

Oh, and thank you all very much for all the soup suggestions! I may try one of the other butternut squash soup recipes. Yes, I think maybe roasting the squash first will help enhance the flavors, especially since I am skeptical of the natural deliciousness of the squash around here. And yes, I did caramelize the onions, but apparently not enough.