Mental health alert … I’ve been doing housework!!

It’s been an interesting few weeks, with not a stitch happening in this household except for Mum’s stitching while I’ve been busy doing things she can’t help with.  Rather we’ve been pulling out cupboard contents and chucking old things out and doing a general decluttering – all in readiness for when I start advertising for a new flatmate, or in readiness if I have to parcel things up and put everything in storage and move out.  Without going into too many details, I can only say that the last couple of weeks have been incredible not feeling like I’m walking on eggshells at home, and I feel a lot less tense at home.  It’s just a shame I have to get someone else in to live with me, ‘cos this is definitely a feeling of bliss I want to continue.  Oh well, maybe I’ll have to start buying Lotto tickets!

Anyway, a fortnight ago we had the lovely opportunity of meeting Cathy who was over visiting from WA – while I’ve been following Cathy’s blog for a number of years now, this is the first time we’ve met in person.  It was really lovely to finally meet up, and she managed to survive the day (and car trips) with me and my crazy Mum, so she’s pretty resilient! LOL.  We drove down the coast and met up with our other stitching pals in NSW and spent the day at Kiama – as always it was wonderful company, and we had a great day stuffing our faces with munchies and laughing the day away.  It was a really great day, and I’m already looking forward to the next one! I’ll ‘steal’ one of Alison’s photos from the day to share here … which stupidly sparked a tirade of hatred from a cousin in the UK on Facebook … I won’t go into details here, but let’s just say it was ‘interesting’ to say the least!!

While we were at Kiama I didn’t get any actual stitching done, but I took a pile of ornies that just needed to be stuffed and sewn up, so Mum and I did a shared job of it – Mum did the stuffing and I stitched their bottoms up.  Here are the results – there would have been a few more, but we ran out of stuffing 🙂

I also mentioned in my last post about an exchange that I’d received – this is what I received from Karen at The Stitching Post.  Funnily enough I’d only just been thinking about her recently, and I was surprised when an envelope arrived in my mailbox with her name on the back!  Karen chose a Blackbird Designs ornament for me, and the theme was “birds” for the exchange so it fit the bill perfectly!  She also included some extra little goodies that will come in handy.  Thanks Karen for a lovely exchange 🙂

And on that note it’s time to get back into cleaning and decluttering mode – we need to get everything finished by Monday at the latest so I can get carpet cleaners in to clean the carpet in Katie’s old room … it looks like she’s thrown up or something in there at one point, and is an absolute disgrace.  Bless Mum for offering to come over and help to clean things, as we’ve ended up doing everything again in that room.  Oh well, that’s all a part of history now … time to move on … and I have to admit the decluttering has been really cathartic 🙂