Bluebird nests are very tidy grass nests unlike sparrows & have blue or white eggs. You can check them regularly if your box is hinged to clean out sparrows, etc that start building. Birds have no sense of smell so scent near nest is a big oldwives tale. When I ran a Blubird box trail for a park we would check them each week, remove undesirable things from box, and log progress of active boxes each week (they didn't mind at all). If a nest has a failed attempt or destroyed remove old nest and often they try again. Sparrows have sloppy nests, wrens are of twigs, also chickidees and tree swallows may use -one has moss in nest and one lines with feathers. Keep an eye on nest b/c one species will often kick out another if allowed - just remove repeatedly if this happens-the other will give up. I used to have 3 boxes at my last house and as soon as blubirds moved into one, I let the wrens have the others-mine were probably too close to support more than one (possibly 2) bluebird families-they like space. Abbey

My 86 year old Aunt gave me a triple strand of Bluebird Pearls for Happiness (as it says on the box) last June 2006. She said that her late husband and my father (brothers) had given the pearls to their mother, who left them to my Aunt. I have looked at pictures of my grandmother wearing them and estimate that the pearls are from the 1940s. My uncle was a Navy pilot in the Pacific during WWII and Daddy was in Italy. I am wondering if these pearls were made available to soldiers during the war for gifts. They may not be of value, but they have much sentimental value for me. I wore them them for the first time this year on Christmas day. (excuse me if this is posted twice).

I bought mine from ebay. I believe it was from myhomehardware. I was pleased w/ the weight and quality of what we recieved. There was 1 pull that I'd bought for my kitchen that was too litte, it appeared to be chunkier or thicker in the picture (at least to me) and didn't have a big enough appearance once I got them. But I rearranged the others I'd bought and put those on less important cabinets. I've just recently finally sent back some and need to get some others. I don't know if that will come through or not. Hope so though! If you ever go to Canton, TX First Monday they have a couple hardware dealers there that have the same stuff that's on ebay for pretty much the same price.

We bought our Oil Rubbed Bronze (ORB) kitchen cabinet hardware on eBay and got a great deal (around $1 each for handles and less for knobs) on heavy, classic, non-painted pieces. I did spend about $30 ordering samples from two other eBay stores but found that the quality and style didn't fit what I was looking for. I second the recommendation on posting a few that you are looking at and seeing if anyone else has used the same ones in their kitchen (or ordered the samples) and can provide some feedback. We definitely saved over $100 (or much much more) on our hardware by using eBay. I couldn't find anywhere near the quality in my local stores where the prices were around $4+/piece.