When we were first assigned with this project, the first thing we thought was “what is innovation?” So we did what our teachers always tell us to do; we looked it up. According to the dictionary, innovation is “the introduction of new things or methods”. Keeping this in mind, we started to brainstorm. At first, we came up with nothing. However, after several minutes of intently staring at our Dixie cups, we threw out an idea and went with it.  Even if this sounds extremely unprofessional, it was the best thing we could have done. After all, it is always a good idea to go with your first instinct! Our final result: the SparkLights! The SparkLights are specially designed to take boring, old Christmas lights and turn them into beautiful, dazzling, any-season party lights! You can use them for any occasion whether it’s a birthday party, an office party, or even just a get-together with your friends! They can be elegant, yet funky and fun! However easy the thought process seemed, the actual construction was painstaking. We worked in an assembly line fashion: Anna on the cutting station, Corinne on the gluing station, and Joyce on the glitter station. After Anna cut rim of the cup into strips and cut an “X” in the bottom, Corinne spread white glue onto every petal of the cup. Once the glue was evenly spread, Corinne quickly handed the cup to Joyce to sprinkle our precious silver sparkles onto the petals of the cups. And finally, we all put the cups on the light string together. After the initial frustration of trying to figure out what to do, the rest of the creation process was a breeze. We were excited at how pretty the flower-shaped cutouts were and when we brought the glitter in, the fun really began. As a matter of fact, we had a little too much fun. Imagine being trapped in a room for four hours with a bottle of glitter. Now you know how tempted we were! Let’s just say we had a lot of vacuuming to do when we finished. A normal teenager would respond with something along the lines with “Vacuuming?! THIS SUCKS!” but not us! And why, you ask? The vacuum in our technology plaza just happens to look exactly like the machine they used to catch ghosts in Ghost Busters. When we were done, we threw more glitter on the ground just so we could clean it up, and that’s when we realized what value is, taking a simple, everyday object and turning it into something you can have fun with. We definitely had fun making the SparkLights and they are actually very useful. Plenty of teachers offered to buy them and turn the conference room into a party room.