A controlled balloon-busting adventure

I learned a new trick yesterday. :D
Two and a half weeks ago, we hosted a baby shower for friends at our house. I blew up a bunch of balloons, and tied them various places around the living room. All very festive.
Full disclosure: I HATE balloons. They totally freak me out. :eek: It was a HUGE step for me to have balloons in the house. at all.. and I even blew them up!
But....party over and done with. I forgot to hand them out to the kids who attended.
What do I do with the balloons???? I'll wait for them to deflate. They do that over time, right??? So I waited. And waited. And waited. Two and a half weeks, and these things were still fully inflated in all their stress inducing glory. :eek:
Great. How do I get rid of the things?
Well, DH knew a trick all along.
Put a piece of scotch tape on the balloon, and put a pin through the tape.
Huh?? :confused:
But, yowza. It worked!!! The tape holds the ballon from the pop I fear the most. It slowly deflated.
Yay!!! I can now get rid of unwanted balloons!
So....that was my new trick for the week. Thought I'd pass it along. :p

I hate popping balloons too. I'm still traumatized by a party game at Kierney Hoffman's fifth birthday party where we had to SIT on balloons and the first one whose balloon popped won. OMG, that was torture--I had to pretend to sit on mine without actually putting weight on it because I didn't want it to pop, while all the time bracing myself for the inevitable pop I knew would be coming from someone else's balloon.

And now I have a kid who is obsessed with balloons. He hugs them and lays on top of them and wants to sleep with them. I've learned that if you wait a day until they are no longer really tight, you can cut a hole at the bottom of the balloon (where the knot is) and they'll deflate pretty quickly, but without any alarming noises.

I'll have to try the tape and pin trick on new balloons, although that would make my son very sad.

Sarah

You can stick a pin in the end of them too. At the "bottom" where it isn't stretched, the little tail and it won't pop either.