Saturday, April 3, 2010

Home Invasion

All of my cute mid-century Better Homes and Gardens say nothing about being invaded by ants. Of course not, I'm sure those nifty suburban homes never had ants! They never had dirty laundry or dirty dishes either, right?
I came home from work yesterday, walked into the kitchen to pour myself a refreshing glass of water and Agh! The sink! It was full of ants!! Fortunately only two rinsed breakfast bowls were the victims so it wasn't too bad and none of our food is stored nearby. They hadn't ventured into the pantry yet, whew! I was thinking about taking a picture but it was pretty disgusting and I didn't really want to relive this moment again.
I have nothing against ants but I do when they are crawling around my house so a bunch got washed down the sink. I learned a cheap and easy way to stop these critters while living in our basement apartment. Borax and Syrup. Mwahaha. Borax costs like $3 for a giant box in the laundry section and it doesn't take more than a teaspoon. Plus it is a bit like Baking Soda so it does have multiple cleaning uses around the house without stinking stuff up with toxic fumes. And syrup, everyone has sugary syrup. Just pour some syrup on a small scrap of cardboard, mix in some Borax and the ants are all over it, collecting it and bringing it home with them. It works similar to the official chemical ant poisons but at a small, small fraction of the price. I sprayed the rest of the area down with vinegar so they lost their track to the sink. It usually takes a couple of days but this morning I only saw one ant. WooHoo.

We had another invasion this week as some of my trolls finally got to escape their boxes!

Yay, my first set of troll shelves is up and running. Oddly, the most fascinating thing to people is my chain of Cincinnati clippy trolls. Lets just say there was a lot of left over store stock when the troll craze ended in the 90's which I fully took advantage of with the help of my mom. I think I paid $1 for all of those guys plus 2 cute ropes with a round cardboard troll toppers to display them with. I'm not really a Cincinnati fan and apparently neither was anyone else!

The tall one in the back I got when I was about 10 and my mom paid either $20, maybe $30 for it at an auction. One of her arch nemesis' was bidding against her so she got all flustered and was bound and determined not to let her have it! I was horrified (despite the fact it benefited my collection) and I felt guilty because I though she paid way too much for it! I think I have seen only one since and it was priced way higher plus we do have a good laugh about it on occasion.

Troll Barbie in all of her 90's glory.

Ahh, vintage Moon trolls. They creep everyone out, teehee.

A huge troll cave couple. A normal size troll is in the lower right.

The teacher troll with the molded on molester-stache is probably one of my favorites. I don't know why except it makes me laugh whenever I look at it.

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