I love birds and bird feeders.  I have hummingbird feeders in Nashville and at the cottage.  Unfortunately, we did not get a single hummingbird in Nashville.  I am not really sure why.  I looked at the migration maps and put out the feeder when they were near our area but I did not have a single one.  Thankfully, I have them at the cottage.  They are so much fun to watch.  They bicker and fight and chirp at each other and sometimes act crazy.  I love watching them.

I also love cardinals.  I buy the Black Oil Sunflower seeds for them in Nashville.  I don’t put out bird feeders with seed at the cottage because I read they attract rats, and well, as much as I love cardinals, I dislike rats more so I only enjoy them in Nashville.  Only this year it was a bit crazy.  There were tons of cardinals, grossbeaks, blue jays, etc but the feeder attracted the craziest squirrels I have ever seen.  They were such pigs and made a big mess.  There was a family of them.  You could tell there were at least two young ones.  When I did not fill the feeder in time, they would come up the deck and scratch at our door trying to get into the house.  Then they started climbing the window screens and I thought they would break them.  I have to say this freaked me out a bit.  I ended up taking the feeder down the last month we were there.  Hopefully, next year there won’t be any baby squirrels around.

Anyway, this is one of the reasons I purchased this stamp set called Garden Birdhouses.  I thought it was fun and quirky.  To make this card, I first stamped everything in Memento Black Ink.  Then I used a very large variety of Stampin’ Up! Blends to color them.  The colors includes, Balmy Blue, So Saffron, Pale Papaya, Pumpkin Pie, Fresh Freesia, Mint Macaron and Highland Heather.  Oh yes, and Soft Suede for the posts and Smoky Slate for the birds.  I stamped the grass using Soft Succulent ink.  Then I used a Water Painter to add some Balmy Blue ink to the background.

Wish me luck next year with those crazy squirrels!

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