Birdhouses for sale

ABOVE: A birdhouse depicts a scene from the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz, where a wicked witch is crushed by Dorothy's house falling back to the ground after being picked up by a twister. This is just one of more than 80 bird houses for sale to raise money for the Relay for Life program to benefit the American Cancer Society. BELOW: While loading up more than 85 hand-decorated birdhouses, Relay for Life chairperson Linda Shelton and Paul Graves pause Tuesday to examine one of the houses that is a replica of the Octavia Felin Library in Gallup. The birdhouses are up on display at various businesses around town, as well as on the internet at www.gallupbirdhouses.com. [photos by Jeff Jones / Independent] MORE PHOTOS
By Leslie Wood
Staff writer

GALLUP — Residents can bid Saturday for one-of-a-kind birdhouses created by local artists and community members as part of a fundraiser for the upcoming Relay For Life benefit on June 20.

The 80-plus birdhouses are currently displayed in a gallery on the Web site www. gallupbirdhouses.com and can also been viewed at several local business located in downtown Gallup.

Organizers said the birdhouses would make a wonderful and creative gift for Mothers’ Day on May 11.

“It’s an opportunity to buy work from artists at a much lower price than usual,” Event Organizer Linda Shelton said.

Residents were challenged this spring to embellish and reinvent standard wooden birdhouses that would be auctioned off Saturday at 8 p.m. at Sammy C’s Sports Bar and Restaurant. The event will be held in conjunction with the May Art’s Crawl.

Proceeds from the auction will go toward the Gallup/McKinley County Relay for Life event that raises money annually for research, education, advocacy and cancer patient services, Shelton has said. The benefit is the major fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

Locally, participants would like to earn $100,000 this year through Relay for Life fundraisers.

The Web site was designed to display the handcrafted birdhouses and features multiple views of money of the houses.

Many of the houses fall in line with the local Relay for Life theme “There’s No Place Like Hope,” a play on the famous phrase from “Wizard of Oz.”

Local business employees, organization members and artists helped create the birdhouses. The youngest participant is 3 years old.

Shelton said Sammy’s C’s has also agreed to donate $1 to Relay for Life per every special that is sold at the restaurant from lunch to closing the day of the auction.

For more information about the auction, contact Linda Shelton at (505) 722-2175.

This lion is actually a hand-decorated birdhouse for the Relay for Life birdhouse auction to raise money for the American Cancer Society. [photo by Jeff Jones / Independent]