Say Cheese!
A while back, I found this project on Pinterest:
Originally I wanted to make this to hang in your nursery. Then, I decided it would be a cute decoration for Kim and Tommy’s photo booth.
To begin, your tía went to Home Depot and took a lot of paint chip samples. Side note: Apparently, there are a lot of projects you can do with these colorful freebies.
Tommy said he was embarrassed that Kim pilfered all those samples.
For this project, all you need are paint chips in your preferred color and a heart punch. Mine cost $10 from Michael’s. Your tía was going to buy it since it was her project, but I paid since I wanted to keep it for you 
Update: The punch broke after two more uses. Boo heart punch from Michael’s.
Then, choose the colors you like and punch, punch, punch…
Once we finished this part, we went to Michael’s to get the rest of our supplies: one sheet each of orange and fuchsia foam, large needles, and some embroidery floss. I think we spent $5.
Instead of a sign that says “Photobooth” Kim wanted something cuter so we decided on “Say Cheese.” I planned out what I wanted the letters to look like.
Then I planned out how much foam I’d need for each letter – I didn’t want to run out. I cut up the foam and labeled each piece with the letter that was supposed to be cut from it.
Then, I simply started cutting. I cut the big letters first – S and C. Then came the lowercase letters.
After 25 minutes, I had this:
Then, I added the little hearts in complementary colors:
After threading the letters together… ta-da! It was tricky getting the letters to stay flat but after re-threading and turning the C upside down, it turned out lovely.
By the way, this is the night before tía Kim leaves for Hawaii tomorrow morning – 11:30 pm to be exact. Last minute much?
Adventures in DIY Extermination
I loathe rodents. Who doesn’t? They are twitchy, dirty, and disgusting.
Sunset Park, like most parts of NYC, is mice-infested. Lovely, I know. Here are the main issues -
- Our landlords do not maintain their property. It is an old property that’s riddled with holes. It hasn’t been renovated in years. We moved in right after our landlords’ daughter moved out and they didn’t do anything to it except clean. Despite this, the price and size make it a great value though.
- Mice enter from the environment. Since there are so many mice in the neighborhood, they come into the house using exterior holes that we don’t know about/can’t see.
- There are already mice living in the house. For every mouse you see, there are probably 20 that you can’t. So, since I’ve seen 3, we have a big problem.
Me and the mice in our apartment have an unspoken grudge against each other and try to one up the other every chance we get. I am vigilant of mouse holes to the point of paranoia; the mice only reveal themselves to me – seriously. I was sitting in the kitchen one day while ST was at work. All of a sudden, this little gray guy runs from the living room, under the fridge, and along the kitchen cabinets to get to his hiding place.
After freaking out perched on a stool for 3 minutes, I realized this was war.
My first plan of action was to call the exterminator again since we have a 2 year guarantee with him. He came and did his thing. We found that the mice had chewed through the white foam he used initially. Mice eat everything. This time, he went over everything with caulk.
The next night as I’m getting a glass of water alone in the kitchen, I SEE ANOTHER HOLE. Oh, HELL NO. You will not play me again, mice. I immediately texted the exterminator but he told us a bunch of excuses why he can’t come until next week. Perfect.
So, I checked the patched holes and found that those pests have been busy undoing all our work.
I did some research on the web and formed a plan of action:
- We can’t just set traps. Since we have a serious infestation with unlimited access outside the house for mice to enter, simply setting traps is like putting a bandage on a gaping, infected wound. We need to come at this problem with both traps and by patching holes.
- Mice eat white foam. These nasty, highly-adaptive creatures seem to actually like eating expanding white foam, which is what our exterminator used. What is recommended is triple expanding yellow foam.
- Steel wool doesn’t work. Our exterminator plugged up holes with steel wool. This was obviously ineffective. Rocks and pieces of glass are recommended to deter mice from coming back to their holes.
Tons of Last Minute Wedding Projects
T-minus 4 days until we leave for Hawaii!
That means it’s wedding crunch time. Last night, we completed several projects on Kim and Tommy’s to do list. Okay, my to do list. 
On the agenda was starfish escort cards and program fans.
For some reason, whenever do wedding stuff, we watch Harry Potter (your dad tapes the movies whenever he can). Last night, we got through the Half Blood Prince and half of the Order of the Phoenix. It helps the guys focus.
There was lots of cutting… Side note: Your tías bought me this Xacto paper trimmer with a laser two years ago and I’ve used it for every paper project since.
Ribbon-tying…
Hot-gluing…
And in general, things were chaotic.
But we got it done!
Onto the next project