DIY live mousetrap,

At our old house, we had a mouse problem when we moved in,
so I made my own cheap & simple live trap, using a deep (plastic) garbage can, long piece of wood, newspaper, tape, scissors, peanut butter, and (chocolate chip) cookies.
It worked great, I caught 5 mice the 1st night I tried it!
- Lay a sheet of newspaper on top of the garbage can to cover it completely.
- Tape it to the can so it is secure and looks kinda like a drum.
- Then cut a + in the middle of the paper. (The trap entrance). The pointy flaps should be a couple of inches long.
- Smear a bit of peanut butter on each of the 4 tips of the paper.
- Use the piece of wood to form a ramp (lean one end of the piece wood, on top of the garbage can, the other end on the ground,)
- Make a tiny trail of cookie crumbs going up the ramp and leading to the peanut butter. Sprinkle some more crumbs all over the paper.
- Now you just gotta wait! and eat the rest of your cookies.

The idea is the mice will follow the cookie trail onto the paper, when they go for the peanut butter, they fall in and can't get out.

If you are releasing the mice, you have to take them far away,(a couple of miles anyhow) or they'll just come back.
Then I bought a little plug-in mouse deterrant thing.
(It makes a sound we can't hear, but mice can and they don't like it, so they stay away.)
It worked!

Mood beads and glow-in-the-dark bead

I've recently discovered mood beads and glass glow-in-the-dark beads
The mood beads change color to match your mood, but it's actually your
body temperature that changes the colors.
The glow-in-the-dark beads are glass, and they glow green (after being
in sunlight, or bright light).
Anyhow, they are fun to play with, so I've made a couple of
neat bracelets with them.
If you want to see them, go here:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=20906473

Amazing Papercrafts!

I stumbled upon a couple of paper craft sites last night.
There are some AWESOME things you can make.
I just had to try it, so I printed off a couple of paper craft projects,
a parrot, and, get this...
clownfish in an aquarium. http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/2023/aquarium-clownfish/index.html
All you need is a printer, scissors, exacto, and glue (maybe a lot
of patience too...I'll let you know).
They have free projects you can download & print.

The 1st one I checked out is from (surprisingly) Yamaha!
There's amazing paper crafts of motorcycles!!
And animals, and more... Here's the link:
http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/entertainment/papercraft/index.html

The 2nd one is from Canon printers, it's called Creative Park and they had a great selection.
Paper crafts, calendars, cards, they have all kinds of projects!
That's where I found the aquarium...it looks like it may take some time, but
I'm sure it'll be worth it.
http://cp.c-ij.com/en/index.html

I just know there's more sites like these out there. If you have a good one please share!

NOTE: I have always loved paper!
It may be a common item, but there's so much
variety and uses for it that I just haven't explored them all...yet!
I'm inspired to sample this whole new direction, and see where it takes me.