I love garden decorations! You know what I mean: bird houses, bird baths, stepping stones, little cutesy sculptures, stakes with something interesting on top, looking balls etc. I like them for my own garden and yard, but I especially like them for my mom. Her garden is Ha-uuuuge and it’s gorgeous! And there are a LOT of decorations out there hiding in the plants (the best kind are the ones you don’t notice right away, dontcha think?), and they do get worn out eventually from the weather.
Bottom line? Garden decor is a fun gift idea that never gets old because older ‘garden accessories’ are always getting worn out.
So the other day, I happened to wander into the wood-goods (?) aisle at Jo-Ann. There I saw some mini bird houses for…..$1 each! I was stoked! (except I would’ve been more stoked had I remembered to bring my Jo-Ann coupon with me) …..
I bought a few (umm, six?) of them and painted them with various paint I had around. My painting wasn’t super precise because I want them to look like they belong outside.
Then I fished around in the garage for a scrap of beadboard from our laundry room redo, and cut it to size. The cutting didn’t take any precision at all because I could just line up two of the birdhouses with each end, and center the third between them. I used this saw,
which I’m actually not very good with (it jumps around and sticks and I guess I need more practice!) I keep it stored in its sleeve on the pegboard in the garage.
A little bit of Liquid Nails did the trick to affix the bird houses to the backing piece. I also put a little screw through the back of each bird house for extra reinforcement.
I got the idea to just attach my hanging wire to the existing screws, but that didn’t work out so well.
You can tell that I probably belong in Mensa.
So I put in two new screws and tried again:
Not bad, but I don’t like how they still lean forward
Clearly my vehement avoidance of any physics class in high school or college has caught up to me.
I tried AGAIN, this time with eye hooks and some white cotton ribbon to hide the wire.
Success!
With the hanging hardware all done, here’s the finished product!
I think it might be a birthday present …. : )
OH and I made one for myself too! 😉 I even know where it’s going once our backyard project starts this spring. I can’t wait to blog about that one! These birdhouses have OFFICIALLY given me spring fever. And it’s not even March. ugg……I wish I had a cave where I could hibernate.
Happy Thursday! It’s almost Friday 🙂
Burbs & Blooms 