Be gone, wretched ants!

Disclaimer: If ants make you squeamish...move on.  Just look away and come back later.  

You've been warned.

I hate ants.

When I see them in my house, I get so angry!  I've officially declared war on any ant that dares cross my threshold.

This year, though, they came with a vengeance.  And it wasn't just the little itty-bitty sugar ants; it was those great big carpenter ants.  Have you seen those suckers?!  They're huge!...and, yes, I've told my landlord.

Anyway, I was losing the battle...big time.  For every 1 I'd stomp out, 5 would come back.

Then, I found this on Pinterest: 

Hope.

(Here's the link.  You should know it makes A LOT!)

I used Borax instead of boric acid. 

Now, I did this right after dinner.  I poured the mix onto some cotton balls in the lid of a jar.  I set it up by the kitchen sink (where kids can't reach it) and set about cleaning up the daily mess.  I kept a close watch on it, though, but no ants partook of their special drink.

So, I put my girls to bed and started my work, trying my hardest to put the ants from mind.  

A few hours later, I walked back into the kitchen and turned on the light and saw this:

This picture doesn't do it justice, especially since they all started to scatter once the lights came on.  But my counter was covered with ants and I could follow 2 distinct lines from the places they were apparently coming into the house and back to the bait.  

They fell for it!  It was beautiful!  

Here's a close up...gross, but, still kind of awesome. 

They were all over those cotton balls!  That stuff must taste like chocolate to them!

So, I quietly turned off the light and left the kitchen for the night, leaving those huge ants to their huge party.

In the morning, they were gone.  

And they haven't come back.

*SMILE*

How to host a fruit fly party

Do you have a problem with fruit flies in the summer?

I do.  They are all over and they drive me ca-ra-zy!

I can't remember where I first saw the idea (I'm thinking it was on The Idea Room somewhere, but I couldn't for the life of me find it).  Get an old jar (cleaned out), put some fruit in it, and roll a piece of paper into a funnel. (I'm sure you could use a real funnel too.  I'll have to try that.)  Place the paper in the jar and watch the flies come flocking to the party!  For some reason, they can get in, but not out.  Silly bugs.

That doesn't sound too hard, right?  So, I decided to try.

Then, Mister came home and was super impressed with the idea, but wanted to experiment with it a bit.  I had an apple in mine, he used a banana and some canned fruit.  He also used a shorter tube.

We set out both jars in the same place to see who threw the best fruit fly party.

It's kind of hard to see in this picture (because they are so itty bitty!) but there are hundreds of flies in this jar.

My jar has maybe 20 flies in it.  

Now we know.  They like bananas (they rot faster) and fruit cocktail and the shorter the journey to the party, the better.  Also, we've learned that it can be productive to let the husband build on our ideas.  =)

P.S.  I read recently that it works to put plastic wrap on top of the jar, secured with a rubber band, with holes poked in the plastic wrap.  Maybe we'll try both and see who wins that party.