Do you have a favorite season?

For me?

Without a doubt.

Spring...

SPRING just has a way of making us want to renew, refresh, and restyle. We want to clean things out and spruce things up. We are suddenly motivated to throw the windows wide and banish the dust bunnies.

This feeling that Spring provides even makes some of us want to build things!

We are not alone in that feeling...

One sure sign that Spring has really sprung at my house is the truly astounding increase in the bird activity. Those birds are seriously busy and they are highly affected by that urge to build...

I get so much enjoyment from watching them - and as you can see, I encourage them to come and live in the yard with a variety of houses. A while back, my son drew a picture of a birdhouse and recently he and my husband took the drawing and turned it into a real birdhouse! I love that he added a small side porch for the birds to relax(?) on.

Can you guess what I did with it when I got my hands on it?

These boards are leftover scraps from when we built our garage a few years ago. The rough cut lumber makes for a lot of character in a birdhouse though getting the milk paint into all of the nooks and crannies took a little extra doing. Since the wood is plain and untreated the paint soaks right in like a stain - and it will NOT chip at all. After 2-3 coats, the color is very rich and vibrant. I'm not going to put any top coat on the paint at all. I'm sure it will wear and weather quite a bit over time - but I like that kind of thing. I'm interested to see how it does out there in the weather. Here's the final product...

That's MMSMP Boxwood and MMSMP Ironstone.

With the addition of a door so that the birds can actually enter the house, this place is move-in-ready!

Oh, boy! I REALLY hope you have made it down to the bottom of this post. Read on for the BEST part of the story...

After I finished drilling the hole for the door, I carried the newly finished birdhouse out to my garden and placed it on the gate post so that I could get some pictures of it out there (for this post). I settled the birdhouse on the post, and turned around fetch my camera... Before I even reached the back deck - birds had arrived. I ducked into the house, grabbed the camera, and watched as a pair of little brown birds approached the new house,

tried out the little side porch,

and in less than a minute,

went right on inside!

Welcome HOME!(it's not even attached to the post yet!!)

Happy Spring, Everyone!

and...

Happy Nesting!

-breida