When is too much too much?

It was time to choose which  house to stitch next for the Calendar project that I'm making following Melisa of Pinker and Punkin's delightful little house patterns, I was torn between these two different ones:

Both photos copyright  by Melisa Vandergriff from her blog.

The one on the left is called "Strawberry Saltbox" and the one on the right is called "Ophelia Manor on Punkin Holler Lane".  Melisa has designed and generously shared an entire season's worth of stitcheries over on her blog Pinker n Punkin Quilting and Stitching.  You really must go take a look for yourself. 

After having made 3 saltbox style houses for previous months, I was interested in trying out the Manor house on the right, but in order to represent the month of June, I wanted to surround it with strawberries instead of pumpkins.   So, I literally cut and pasted (well, taped) two patterns together to see if I could manage it.

While I was at it, I also switched out the two brown birds at the bottom of "Strawberry Manor" and used Melisa's bluebird's from her Spring Sampler.  (It seems that once I opened Pandora's Box and start making changes there was no stopping me!)

After a week of somewhat obsessive stitching as I raced to finish and see how this all turned out, I had this:

I absolutely loved seeing Ophelia Manor done in shades of aqua with the red shutters.  I probably should have quit while I was ahead, but it seemed off balance to me.   I felt that the bottom section with the birds was a little off center from the top half and that the strawberry over on the top right was hanging out too far.  

Again, I should have quit while I was ahead, but instead I decided to add a few little vines over on the left to help balance things out.

I could have stopped here, but no, I wanted to fill in that space above the right side of the house.  Melisa's pattern has a kind of sunshine-ey star to stitch there, but I knew the white would just get lost on my white background.  So I played around a bit, and came up with this filler:

Now....is there too much going on?  I feel like maybe it's overcrowded.  And, I hope Melisa doesn't  mind my playing Frankenstein.

Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching