I love a great birdhouse! So, when I received a call about making a Mar Jennings birdhouse, based on my home to auction for charity, I was delighted to hear more about this opportunity. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but when I’m imitating my own home it’s simply an honor.
This week, I’m excited to announce that Rosebrook Gardens will be recreated as a functional birdhouse to benefit Project Return’s 19th annual birdhouse auction on April 5th, 2014. Project Return is a wonderful organization here in Westport that empowers girls to rebuild their lives, one day at a time. Their description says it best: they create a safe, structured, and nurturing environment where adolescent girls and young women in crisis can heal and grow. By providing unconditional love, encouraging resiliency, building self-esteem, and teaching life skills, Project Return inspires girls to hope and realize their dreams.
Rick Benson, a local real estate developer who built my home in 1996, is (in a wonderful coincidence) no stranger to creating detailed, small-scale, one-of-a-kind birdhouses – and he will be building mine. I’m in great company: the birdhouses he has created in the past for Project Return have fetched the highest dollars. Some of his designs have included the Westport Country Playhouse and Town Hall. 100% of the proceeds will benefit this wonderful local charity.
I’m playing an active role in the design of the birdhouse. Each of my own details added to the house over the years will be recreated in mini scale. I’m busy with my own renderings of this project to assure the bird “holes” are located in the best visual location.
So when the auction begins I’ll be nervous, no doubt bidding on my own birdhouse among the hundreds of attendees. I’ve found comfort knowing that should I not be the highest bidder of the Rosebrook Gardens birdhouse, I’ll go home knowing I live in the real thing, and helped to raise money to support such a worthy cause.
Want to join in the fun? Project Return is still looking for artists and submissions. Or do come bid alongside me on April 5th.at the Rolling Hill Country Clubin Wilton and help the charity feather their financial nest. For more information, visit their website. www.projectreturnct.org
