I'm back!

Hey there!

Its been a while! Looking back at my last blog post I've realised its been over 4 years! Woah! Where does time go? Well, I'm back and just wanted to fill you in on a little of my story before beginning to share some creativity with you once again.

So, a lot has happened in life, a lot of heartache and pain and sadness. I've been in a long battle against anxiety. I lost grip on a lot of things in life and in my fierce battle to keep my head above the surface and keep on treading water I lost for a period of time who I was. Looking back at it now I realise I should have asked for help sooner. But I'm getting better and regaining pieces of myself one by one.

In the last few years I've moved house twice, firstly back in with my parents and then back in October I became a home owner! I am so proud that this has become a reality, for a long time it seemed like it would only ever be a dream. Then in December I finally passed my driving test! 2018 was a busy year!

I've done a lot of work to the house already, and encountered a lot of trials, but I've made it through and its feeling more and more like a proper home. I'll give you a brief run through of the work we've undertaken thus far.

The first major thing to do at the house was to deep clean the carpets - the previous owner had 3 cats, so the carpets were caked in cat hairs! Out came the hoover, and carpet cleaner. My allergies to cat hair caused me to find this job particularly challenging!

Next was decorating the bedroom and building the bed. The whole house was painted cream so while it wasn't in desperate need of painting I was already feeling bored of beige everywhere! The walls were painted a pretty duck egg blue colour. At this point we could move in which made working on other bits of the house much easier as there was less travelling to and from after work.

Once I'd moved everything in and got the bathroom and kitchen stuff into a workable state I could focus on more painting and an trip to IKEA.

We got the office painted - a couple of shades of blue, desks assembled and computer installed pretty quickly and without too much of a hitch.

I then cracked on with decorating the lounge diner. Its a huge room with 2 french doors out onto the garden. I decided as it was such a large room it could handle some bold wallpaper. I had never wallpapered before this point and very much doubt that I ever will again after the ordeal that I went through. If I had realised how much trouble wallpaper would be I more likely would have stuck to painting. However, now that its completed it looks beautiful and I'm very happy with it. So, the two end walls are papered in a dark green with large palm leaves over it. The two side walls are a light green colour.

I bought some dining chairs from IKEA that went well with my table that I'd pulled from a skip 6 or 7 years ago. While the chairs were lovely the grey seat pads weren't really do it for me so after finding some palm leaf fabric that complimented the wallpaper beautifully I just knew that they needed to be recovered!

By this point it was Christmas so work on the house kinda came to a halt. It was so lovely to have a house to decorate for Christmas and to really call mine. I'm looking forward to adding to my decorations and making more bits for the house for next year!

As January rolled around I joined the "Junk Free January" challenge that Serena at Thrift Diving was organising. I knew I needed to tackle the craft room which at this stage was just a room crammed with so many card board boxes it was almost impossible to move in there. If I'm honest, entering that room filled me with dread and panic but I knew I needed to face it in order to make a usable space. I had been collecting ideas on pinterest ever since having the house offer accepted so had so many ideas of what the room could be. I knew I wanted it to work for sewing, papercrafting and also work as a space not only for some solo crafting but also having friends over to craft.

I started off by drawing out a to scale floor plan. This allowed me to move around furniture ideas I'd been looking at at IKEA and also a collapsible table I found on Amazon. Once I had the plan nailed down I got to taking boxes out of the room to sort - I've had quite a purge of things I was holding onto for "someday". I hate purging, how about you?

Once the room was cleared I could begin painting the room. The walls that have my desks against them are white so that there's no colour interference. The other walls are painted a bright turquoise colour! I also got a light fitting where I can move and adjust the lights depending on where I need the lighting facing in my room.

Pretty much all of my furniture it IKEA. I have a Kallax unit that houses all my papers. Along the wall I have a corner table that is predominately for my sewing machine - I love how much space the corner table gives you. and then following on from the corner table is a straight table sat on an Alex unit that houses all my essential go to paper craft supplies. Above the tables are 2 peg boards. I've been dreaming of having peg board for years!

All my less used crafting supplies and envelopes and fabric are stored in the 2 large built in wardrobes behind me. Between the 2 wardrobes in a shelving unit that was already there when #I moved in - I think it was designed for DVDs however it fits the Stampin' Up stamp cases perfectly!

So, January was pretty busy getting the craft room done, its almost there but I have taken a break from home renos to just enjoy my craft room and make discover the joy of crafting again!

Last week I took the step to sign up as a Stampin' Up demo again. I'm not sure where the journey will take me this time. I'm planning to start out small. I have a group of friends that used to come along to my card club I ran back before life got in the way. So in a few weeks time I will be having them over for a crafty morning to make some cards and chat and enjoy the new room! I am really looking forward to having a room that actually works for what I want it to do - my old room never quite got to that stage as I never took the time to properly plan it out.

The next house project will be to work on getting the garden fixed up, but that can wait for warmer, nicer weather. In the mean time I'm going to take a little break and get back into crafting.

I've just realised that this has gotten very long and thank you for bearing with me if you are still reading at this point.

I want to start blogging and sharing some makes with you on here again. I'm also thinking of trying out vlogging and putting more content on my youtube channel again. There's a very sad 6 or so videos on there currently.

So for tonight I will sign off, but I'll be back soon with more creative bits. And some photos of the house!