Orange and cloves

For me, a lot of Christmas has to do with smells. Fresh and endless baking, the scent of a Christmas tree, a mug of hot gløgg, all the spices that just smell like Christmas... the list goes on. One of the best "instant Christmas" smells for me, though, has to be oranges and cloves. And when we decided that my Scentsy wasn't cutting it anymore, Nick and I sat down and defaced two oranges for our olfactory pleasure.

Let me give you the incredibly simple and obvious recipe:

You will need:
- as many oranges as you want to decorate. An arrangement of even numbers looks more formal, odd numbers are more organic. Ha! (OK, that was actually slightly insightful. I amaze myself.)
- Whole dried cloves.
Method:
-Shove the spiky cloves into the orange. I've seen people do amazing patterns on these, mine did not quite fall into this category. Next year.
-Enjoy the insanely Christmassy smell. Especially on your fingers.

One of these is probably good for about two weeks. It won't go bad if you leave it for longer, the orange just starts looking a bit sad. In fact, oranges with cloves are traditionally used as advent calendars in Norway: you add 24 (or 25, if you celebrate on Christmas Day) cloves to your orange, then remove one each day until Christmas. It's a very sweet tradition, but the thought of keeping an orange full of an increasing amount of holes sitting around for over three weeks kind of gave me the heebiejeebies.

But that smell! Amazing!