I’m writing this in haste, because the lights keep flickering and I’m fairly sure we’re going to lose power any minute now.

Thanks to Sandy, we all stayed home today, and I finally got Teddy’s new room all cleaned out! (It was an unused “bonus room” that had become the repository for everything we couldn’t find a place for. I don’t know about you, but I’m incapable of having a clean house without having at least one junk room). It literally took us months to get it all cleared out. To celebrate we decided to tackle a project that we’d been meaning to get to for a long time, which brings me to…Junks I Collect No. 3: Paper Balloons.

Kami Fusen are Japanese balloons made out of paper. They look like this at first:

You blow into a little hole to inflate the balloon so that it ends up looking like this:

And then you can do this:

Or this:

The big red fish balloon is from the Japanese Tea Garden Gift Shop in San Francisco, which I wrote about here.

If you’re in NYC, you can find paper balloons in one of my favorite stores of all time: Pearl River. You can order from them online too.

The best selection of Kami Fusen I’ve found is online at UGUiSU.

The other fabulous thing that happened today was the well-timed arrival of the “BugZooka” that I ordered from amazon to help us deal with the trifecta of stink bugs, ladybugs, and ants that have descended on our house.

This could just be the greatest thing ever invented! It requires no batteries. You “cock” the BugZooka by compressing an accordion-like air chamber. You aim it at the bug, press a little red button, and ZHOOP! the bug gets sucked up into a chamber. If you’re a total dork like me, you can really hurt yourself if the air chamber expands into your chest when you push the trigger button. You can catch and release, or flush those bad boys right down the toilet. So simple. So satisfying. So beautiful, really. It kept the kids entertained all day, and there’s nary a bug in sight now.

So Teddy’s room is clean and decorated. We’ve eliminated every bug we could find. Now what am I going to do about this?

My bedroom is the new junk room. Yay.

Stay safe, friends.