Neglect!

This poor blog has been neglected. There just isn't enough hours in the day to keep up with everything I want to do! I've got a bit of spare time today for the simple reason that we have some tree people in to rip out our garden.... I mean jungle. Plus I have I.T people working on my store computer system. 

I've finished my black and pink cat cross stitch, although I haven't had time to wash and iron it. So I'll leave it for another day. I've started work on a linen piece! My first ever cross stitch on linen!

It's Flip - It Halloween by Lizzie Kate, I started it about 3-4 weeks ago and haven't had a chance to touch it since lol I'll probably forget how to stitch on linen by the time I get back to it! When it's finished, hopefully it will look like the one pictured on the chart.

A while back I bought a Johanna Basford colouring book - Another thing I haven't had time to do anything with lol While the workers were cutting and grinding I decided to pull it out and have a look. I decide on one picture to start on.

I didn't buy the pencils especially for this book, I already had some and I'm not all that happy with them. They don't blend smoothly, they're just too hard. So I found that I was pressing down to get any kind of decent shading out of them. If I continue colouring I will have to purchase some others. I don't know if it's the brand that I have or maybe I've had them too long?

We had some nasty storms here a while back and our fences took a bit of a beating. We wanted new fences when we first moved in as the pickets continually fall off as the timber is rotten, but the neighbours wanted to wait a while. So considering that we were new to the neighbourhood and not wanting to upset anyone, we decided to wait. So 6-7 years on, the neighbours now want new fences. 

We wanted to plant a garden in our backyard when we first moved here, but we knew that would be a total waste of time and money as they would just get trampled when a new fence went in, so we left the plants that we already there in place. This kind of drove us nuts because the plants are near the pool and aren't pool friendly, they constantly drop leaves, seeds, berries and sticks into the pool.

We kept cutting this jungle back and it seemed that as quick as we cut it down it would grow back twice as fast. It was a nightmare and an eyesore! So have a look at the difference:-

Before and After

Now we just have to have the fences ripped out and replaced and we can finally start work on having a garden in our backyard that isn't a total embarrassment. We've waited for so long to be able to do something to our yard it isn't funny. I know it seems like a first world problem, but looking out the windows everyday and seeing this out of control mess of a jungle was awful. They were just overgrown weeds. 

I'm crossing my fingers that we can get the new fences up soon, so that come summer when we look out towards the pool we have something nice to look at.