Modify date format and remove picture in Birthdays web part

Introduction:

I am new to SharePoint development and node.js. I am trying to implement an employee birthday calendar on SharePoint using the web-part here https://github.com/pnp/sp-dev-fx-webparts/tree/main/samples/react-birthdays

I was able to successfully package and deploy the web part, however the date format is currently in a European format. Additionally, I don't want to display user's pictures in the web part and would like to remove the empty picture bubble.

I believe that the code that controls the date format is located in the SPService.ts file: https://github.com/pnp/sp-dev-fx-webparts/blob/main/samples/react-birthdays/src/services/SPService.ts