Years ago, Jim and I moved halfway across the country to a city we didn’t know at all. We ended up spending a month in a two-star hotel with breakfast on a corporate rate. In the end we found a place to live, even though we only brought one car and Jim worked 1/2 hour away from the hotel. So if I wanted to find a place to live I had at least a two-hour commute every day and otherwise I had no car and there was a really crummy grocery store next door as well as a drycleaner and fast food restaurant. Yuck.
No matter what time of day I decided to take a shower, the maid knocked on the door. We had an apartment-sized frig for sodas and fruit and vegetables, and brought our own herbal tea but the routine got old, fast. When I didn’t have the car I walked to errands like grocery and bank and cleaners for Jim’s shirts. Then I went nuts. So, I got myself a craft project. Christmas was coming up so I got three differently-sized polystyrene balls, a hot glue gun and glue sticks, and found non-dyed pistachios from the grocery.
Also, coming into play was an on-sale melamine bowl with Santa on the bottom and several gold ornaments. I spent hours hot-gluing pistachios to those balls to make a holiday ornament for our “space.” You glue them open-side out and must keep track of sizes. And they all go bad in a month. So at least 12 solid hours went into these temporary ornaments but what else was I supposed to do sitting in a hotel room? Yes, we did bring my computer and sometimes I had internet access.
I say this because I just got a floral foam cone and cranberries. Place a straight pin through the cranberry at the stem, roll in whisked egg whites and roll in sugar. Attach to the cone from the bottom up. Again, sizes are important. I believe this 12″ cone will be our Christmas tree this year. It will be placed on the mantel.
Yes, I go to lengths to please the ones I love. I don’t like crafts because I’m no good at sewing or anything else but have a few I’ve perfected over the years. They’re like snow-people, they disappear because nuts and cranberries go bad. My recipes aren’t difficult, but the techniques to get there may be.
So I cook every day and perhaps do two craft projects per year. I still remember sitting in that corner chair in the hotel room for hours gluing pistachios to a styrofoam ball. That’s when we both knew we had to get a larger place to live, with a real kitchen. Cheers, Dee
Cooking with Dee 
Have you ever done oranges studded with cloves? Sounds like your kind of thing. Ha. They might even get dry in your climate, here they would just mold I think. Considering the price of regular cloves, they would be too pricey to be worth the trouble unless one just LOVED cloves.
Might that be called a pomander? Dee