Faux-ny Baloney Week, Day 4: Faux Birds

This morning, my husband and I are taking off on a long road trip out to Notre Dame.  The Irish play Stanford on Saturday and ESPN's College Game Day crew is going to be on the ND campus.  Unfortunately, our youngest son is not; he's competing in an Army ROTC Ranger Challenge event off-site, and he's going to miss the game and all the Game Day excitement.  But when the weekend is over, he's coming home with us for his week-long fall break.

Lest you think that the fact that I'm on the road today is going to get you out of being subjected to another installment of "Faux-ny Baloney Week" decorating tips, I'm sorry to tell you that I wrote up the week's blog posts ahead of time so that all I would have to do is push the "Publish" button each day.  (I don't hear groaning out there, do I?)

Today's subject is a fun one anyway: faux birds!  Yes, it's like an Alfred Hitchcock movie around here, but without the terror.  I've painted some friendly birds in both upstairs bathrooms.  I don't know what it is about bathrooms that makes me think, "You know what this room needs?  Birds!"  But apparently, that's how my mind works.

Shortly after we moved into this house, I painted five or six birds on the walls of the master bathroom.  In subsequent years, I painted over some of them when I changed the birds-and-birdhouses decorating scheme; but I thought two of my little feathered friends--a wren sitting on the heat register near the floor and a robin perched on top of the shower wall--were so cute that I couldn't bring myself to paint over them.  I remember when my mother-in-law was visiting once, she said it was good that I'd painted the robin discreetly looking the other way, so that you didn't get the sense that he was watching you as you showered.  That's true, he's a very sensitive robin--that's another reason why I didn't have the heart to paint over him.

Some years later, when I decided to give the boys' bathroom (the other full bath on the second floor) a beach theme, I felt compelled to paint a seagull perched on the top of the shower wall in there.  This seagull, like his robin buddy, is also a true gentleman and looks the other way while people are using the shower.

I don't know if this post will inspire you to paint faux birds on your walls.  Personally, I happen to like seeing birds and all sorts of animals in my house.  Fake ones, though.  Not real ones, like the flying squirrel that dropped in one night when I was all alone.  (The famous squirrel invasion!)  Or the chipmunk that scurried inside once when we left the door open too long.  No, I like the fake ones much better.  We did have a bird fly inside once, and it took forever to chase him around and steer him toward the doorway so he could find his way back outside.  That was a little crazy!   Faux-ny birds in the house are definitely preferable to real ones.

You know, I've been wanting to get a dog, but we just can't take on the responsibility of a dog right now because we're traveling too much...but I could paint a faux doggy companion for myself on the wall, couldn't I?  Stay tuned!