Meet Russell Scarecrow!!!

We've got a bit of a deer and bird problem at our house when it comes to our garden and berries. Don't get me wrong we love watching the deer from our back patio, but we'd rather them not eat all of our plants. So we decided to see if a scarecrow would do the trick.

I'm not sure how scared the deer will be of him, but Russell has sure scared the snot out of Ryan quite a few times when he walks through the kitchen and looks in the backyard, or while he mows the lawn and forgets that he's there.

To make him was pretty simple. Ryan nailed a 4 foot 2x4 to an 8 foot landscape timber that we had so that it was in the shape of a cross. Then I went to Savers (like Goodwill) a second hand shop and picked up a cowboy hat, bib overalls, and a flannel for just under $14.

To put some "meat" on Russell's bones and make him feel whole we crumpled up pages of old magazines in plastic grocery bags, tied the bags, and then stuffed them in his clothes. The reason for the grocery bags is so that it not only keeps the paper from blowing away in storms, but it also helps that they're plastic so that it protects the magazine pages from the rain.

His head is just an old t-shirt stuffed with grocery bags and a face painted on.

To make sure his outfit is all tidy and fits nice Ryan used a staple gun to make sure everything stays into place.

Then....voila, Russell Scarecrow lives!!! You can add other accessories to spice your scarecrow up a bit. We added gloves to give him hands. I was also thinking about giving him a flag or pinwheel to hold on to for fun, and for extra movement to scare the deer.