Alex's Birdhouse Adventure My youngest son, Alex, is in Cub Scouts. My husband handles the heavy lifting, like building the Pinewood Derby car, but he works second shift, so a lot of the smaller items fall on me. This year, one of the requirements was to build a birdhouse. I absolutely fell in love with Barry McKenzie's birdhouse featured on the cover of the last issue and knew that was the one I wanted to build with Alex. My son, Alex, proudly displays the chip-carved birdhouse we created. I started searching for white cedar. After several fruitless experiences, I called a small lumber yard in my hometown. He didn't have white cedar, but said he'd be happy to order a piece for me. I was quite disappointed a week later when I went to pick up the wood. In my mind, I envisioned beautiful, white, smooth wood. The board he offered me was grey, unfinished and ranged from ¼" to ½"-thick across the 8" width. I didn't have to take it, he told me, but heck for five dollars I figured I could do some sanding, or Alex could anyway. Well it turns out Alex hates to sand. And I actually knew this from watching the Pinewood Derby ordeal, but thought I could talk him into it. No such luck. So I sanded, and I sanded, and I sanded some more. Next we went up to the shop to measure and cut our pieces. Then we measured and drilled the holes to accommodate the dowels for the front door. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the reduced width of the stock into consideration, so I drilled the holes a second time. We glued the birdhouse together, and you know, it didn't look half bad! Now for the next dilemma. Alex wanted to paint it blue–he's a huge Patriots fan. I, on the other hand, did not want a blue birdhouse in my yard. I'm happy to say I won that battle. We painted the birdhouse green, just like Barry's original and then carved the design. Those little round berries are tricky, some of them were conveniently omitted from the final carving. We hung the birdhouse on a fence post where we can see it from the front porch. It's nowhere near as beautiful as Barry McKenzie's version, but Alex and I are pretty darn proud of it. He keeps asking me to open the front to see if anyone has taken up residence. My mom saw it and asked me to make her one... I'm not sure I'll be undertaking that project again any time soon, but if I do make another one, I'll plan ahead and order planed wood from one of the vendors on page 93! Shannon Flowers