I can fully understand the desire to create a pleasing appearance on your house. On the other hand, I live alone in a rented room on the back side of a rural house totally out of public view and I have not had a visitor since last September so I am not in the least concerned about what others might think of my arrangement. My principal interest is two fold. Since I retired last June my primary hobby is nature photography and 2. Since the weather is too bad to take long nature walks or sit for hours in the woods, camera in hand, it was my desire to find ways to attract birds and critters of all sorts to a point where I could view them from my window. I began with a simple wooden hopper feeder and a couple suet cages attached to a tree about 50 feet from the window, then I decided I wanted something a bit closer so I took an old pipe garment rack and stood it about 12 ft from the window and hung two tube feeders on it. After noticing that birds liked to perch on the metal rail while waiting their turn at the feeders I got the silly idea to punch a couple holes in an old plastic pail lid and tie it on top of the rack to be used as a tray feeder. I then filled all the bird feeders, poured some seed in the pail lid and sprinkled some excess seed on the ground along with a loaf of stale bread scattered on the ground. Since I began scattering the stale bread the squirrels comes down immediately and grabs a slice of bread, runs up the tree and sits on a limb to eat the bread totally ignoring the bird feeders. The starlings, Doves, Juncos and Hosps seem to prefer eating the bread on the ground so I have very little competition at the feeders, and too top it off, this morning they were joined by two huge crows. Oh yes, did I mention that I also have a small flock of wild turkeys and a couple rabbits that show up occasionally? The more desirable birds, Cardinals, Blue Jays,Chickadees, Finches, Tutti's and Nuthathes seem quite content to feed from either the wooden hopper, plastic tube feeders or the vinyl pail lid and while the Woodpeckers are generally on the suet feeders they are equally happy to grab seed from any of the afore mentioned locations. From my experience it would seem that the key is the volume and availability of the food rather than the type of feeder.

That is wonderful! So many spots for different types of birds, and you can watch from just a few inches away! Love it. Martha

It's a free micro-blogging service; see wikipedia definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter I put it on my "twitter" feed at http://itweet.net/web/ where I am "rachelbirder" if you do a search People can sign up on https://twitter.com/signup but usually use other applications. They can get their interests flagged at http://wefollow.com/ or add "hashtags" to make their messages seen to others with similar hashtags, i.e. #birders, #birdwatching, #horses, etc.

I posed a similar query a couple of months ago in the Organizing the Home forum. I purchased a large plastic bin on wheels with a locking lid from PetSmart and it's been really convenient for our needs. One of the solutions suggested was a pull-out low drawer for your pet. Scroll down about halfway for a photo. Here's the link to the previous thread... Here is a link that might be useful: Storing pet food thread