It is holiday party time. And you know what that means.... the age old question of "what should I bring?" This post answers that question with one of my favorite holiday party appetizers...
The Tree
The Tree is actually simple to make but takes some planning. What you will need is:
1 floral Styrofoam cone 12"-24" high, you pick (mine is 24" which makes a BIG Tree)
A LOT of toothpicks (I used 265 for the above pictured 24" cone)
1 disposable plastic plate (paper is not heavy enough)
A variety of toothpick friendly foods. For the above Tree I used:
1 jar of blue cheese stuffed olives
1 jar marinated mushrooms
1 jar black olives
1 package salami
1 package peperoni
3 blocks of cheese cut into cubes (I used cheddar, pepper jack, and Swiss)
1 package grape tomatoes
Feel free to use any combination of foods you like.
Step one, rinse off the cone. I ran mine under warm water. I did not use soap because it would be difficult to get the soap out of all the Styrofoam pours. It took a bit of drying to get all the water out of the cone. You could instead wrap the cone in plastic wrap. Using a fun holiday color like red or green plastic wrap would be festive too.
Step two, hot glue the Styrofoam cone to the plate. This keeps the cone from sliding around on the counter or falling over. If you only have a paper plate on which to glue the cone, you may want to add weight to the plate around the base of the cone like extra cheese or vegetables so the cone and plate do not tip over. The plastic plate I used was heavy enough.
The final step is to cover the cone with food. Stick a toothpick in the food then stick the food to the cone with the toothpick. Start from the bottom and work your way up going around the cone in layers. You can make each layer or ring around the cone the same food like I did or mix it up, your choice. If you start from the top the cone may get top heavy and fall over with a large cone like I used.
The cone will take way more food than you are expecting, especially if you use the 24" cone. My cone used up almost everything listed above. All that was left was about half a block of cheese, maybe half of the pepperoni package and half of the black olives.
The party we went to was a going away party for some neighbors of ours moving out of state. The tree was completely devoured (surprisingly the kids ate most of it). There were a lot of compliments and it made a good conversation piece. Make sure to set out a little bowl to hold all the used toothpicks or they will end up everywhere!
You could easily also do this with fruit. Just pick fruit that will not brown sitting out for a few hours. For a fruit Tree I would suggest red and green grapes, mandarin oranges, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, and similar items. For a fruit Tree you could even add some dried fruit and some chocolate covered berries as well.
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Next each K-Cup needs to be hot glued in place. I glued each K-Cup in four placed like spot welding.
Once all the K-Cups were glued in place, I flipped the box lid over and put the shirt box lid on the shirt box bottom then hot glued the top and bottom together. The K-Cups are slightly taller than the box so once the top and bottom of the box were glued together the cups were held snuggly.
Next I put hot glue around each and every K-Cup on the top of the shirt box making sure to not get any inside the cups. I needed to work fast on this step so there is no photo. The purpose of the hot glue is to affix the wrapping paper to the top of the shirt box. My daughter will be poking her finger through the wrapping paper into a K-Cup each night of Advent. I do not want her to be able to see into the other cups or have the trinkets shift around out of the K-Cups. So glue all around each cup to keep everything in place. Before the glue dries, press your piece of precut wrapping paper down into the glue on the top of the shirt box. Make sure it adheres around each cup.
Fold the construction paper in half where the fold runs the long length of the paper. In the picture above the fold is along the 18" side (not the 12" side).
Mark along the open side one inch from the edge. This one inch strip is the NO CUT zone. You will be cutting through the folded side down to the line.
Start at one end of the line you drew and mark every 1/2". Then do the same thing along the fold. 
The photo above shows all the marked cut lines, 1/2 inch apart, running from the folded edge to the line you made 1 inch from the open edges.
Once all the lines are cut, unfold the paper. You will be turning the paper into a tube lining up the uncut edges and stapling them in place. Roll the paper into a tube with the marked side on the inside. That way no one can see your cut lines (or my writing).
You may want to enlist the help of another set of hands for this step. I did manage it by myself and even took pictures (as you can see in the photo below the cat did try to help). Line up the uncut edges at one end of the paper and staple them together. Start at the edge and then staple further along the uncut edge every inch or so until the stapler cannot reach any more. (See the last paragraph of this post for additional hints I learned making a few more wreaths).
Then do the same stapling to the other end. In the middle you will need to work the stapler between the cut loops to staple the uncut edges together. I found that with the construction paper, the more staples the more stable the wreath (it made a better circle with more staples). With the cardstock, fewer staples were needed. 
