A Little Stitching and a Clean Yard

This week was a good balance between getting stuff done and stitching. We spent 2 long days cleaning up our backyard which meant hauling all of the bits and pieces of the old shed to the dump, getting rid of a bunch of other junk in the yard, and raking up all of the leaves and dog poo that accumulated over the winter. We took 2 full trailer loads to the dump and 1 full trailer load to the yard waste place, so we got rid of SO MUCH stuff from the yard. Here it was last week:

And here it is as of now:

You can't see it in this picture, but we also took down a dead Sumac tree and picked up our new shed. We are hoping to get the new shed put up this week so we have a place to store all of the stuff that was in the old one. We still have a long ways to go, but I am determined that our yard will be usable and nice this summer. We did gain about 12 x 20 feet of yard by taking down that old shed. Woo hoo! We could put up a swingset. Maybe next summer... :)

As far as stitching goes, I was able to get quite a bit done but I only focused on Sarah's A Princess Was Born. I got to go to the Embroiderer's Guild meeting on Tuesday which was really neat, and stitch for 2 hours with no little fingers to pry off my work and no putting it down to go take care of one thing or another that always comes up when I stitch at home. Plus the ladies there were really nice and seemed excited to have me. I am pretty positive I am going to join the guild, even though I will only be able to make it a couple times a month instead of every week. Anyway, here is my progress on A Princess Was Born:

Last week:

And this week:

I knuckled down and did the star for the wand with the pearl filament, and found that it isn't actually so bad if you aren't doing partial stitches with it. I watched the rest of Downton Abbey Season 2 while I stitched at home this week, so now I need to get season 3 from my sister. :) Thanks for looking and happy stitching! :)