Grateful and Thankful

        I'm grateful for roses that are still blooming in the yard on November 29 and smell like June!

Do you know there is a difference between those two words in the post title?  I'd never thought about it until I wrote my title out and then I wondered if they meant exactly the same and if I used the words correctly in my daily speech.  I consulted the Cambridge Dictionary among others and now here's a grammar lesson before I tell you about the things I'm thankful and grateful for this week!

According to the experts - we should use grateful to talk about how we feel when someone is kind to us or when someone or something (like a rose) does us a favor.  Thankful is usually used when we express relief or pleasure that what you hoped for has actually happened (or didn't, like an accident).  As in, I'm thankful that I was able to eat as much pie as I wanted to last Thursday and that my jeans still fit  - ha!

I'll now tell you things that have made me feel both of those words with these pictures :

Dan and I were on our own this Thanksgiving which turned out to be super fun because we did things a new way with only ourselves to consider.  I had made our two favorite pies on Wednesday night and the following morning as we looked with longing at the pecan pie on the counter, Dan asked "why can't we eat pecan pie for breakfast instead of waiting all day and perhaps being too full to really enjoy it when it's time for dessert?"  Brilliant!!!  And why not, why in the world couldn't we so that's what we did and it was glorious.  We then decided that all we really wanted to eat besides pie was just turkey, gravy and stuffing.  So we didn't make any other dishes and when the bird was done, we ate our fill of turkey, gravy and stuffing and for the first time in my life that I can recall, I didn't leave the Thanksgiving table so full I couldn't breathe comfortably.  I was just full like regular dinner full - yay!  We then went for a long walk with Scotty, our granddog that we were tending for a few days, and after that we went to a movie.  When we came home, we were ready to eat the chocolate cream pie and we were hungry for it - actually stomach empty hungry - wondrous!!!

 That bird was crammed with succulent cornbread and bacon stuffing with a touch of pure maple syrup - exquisite!  The meat was tender and juicy and the gravy - well I could have drunk it from a cup.

 Super deep dark rich chocolate pie for the real dessert.

It rained on Thanksgiving most of the day - here is Dan under his umbrella trying to catch up with me as I ran after Scotty who was not on a leash of course.

 Scotty waiting patiently for us to get our coats and shoes on.

And, grateful for Netflix - I binge watched both "The Crown" before Thanksgiving and and "Gilmore Girls - A Year In the Life" after.  Oh what fun!!!
Look at this sitting room below in the country house of Winston Churchill from The Crown series.  The yellow woodwork!  The blue and white platters on the ledges!  I took the picture with my phone on my iPad screen which isn't ideal.

I'm thankful that my son Heath asked us to join him and his wife last week to Boston to attend the ceremony where he was sworn in as a Massachusetts attorney.  It took place in beautiful Faneuil Hall.  After the very entertaining (and lengthy, but that's okay because the speakers were wonderful) ceremony, we walked over to the North End where we ate lots of pizza (gratefully) because Regina's Pizza never fails and we were starving.

 Beautiful Emma, Heath, the proud mother.

 Dan was the photographer so he's not in the pictures - sorry Dan!

I'm thankful to have a place all my own with lots of light and space to work and play - a studio!!  Our detached garage has a second floor with a full bath that used to be living quarters decades ago.  We didn't want to remodel it in to a space for living nor did we want it to be the catch all junk room that it was becoming so we hired carpenters and electricians to add a wall, insulate the ceiling and add heat and over head lighting.  Here are befores and afters:

The garage - that'll be me now painting in the room behind the three windows facing the house, and six more windows on the other sides.

 Before - full of "stuff" - we got rid of all of it! (Except the old wooden island we put on sawhorses to made a huge sturdy table for projects and the cardboard Dane.

 I built shelves on the wall that we had installed.  It used to be open to the stairs going down to the garage area.

 Dane's still there and a cast iron tub that needs a new home (it's free and in excellent shape!)

  My first project to come out of the studio is a commissioned painting for my sister Dede, aka PigNose. She asked me to paint a picture for her birthday of a greeting card cover she was crazy about.

 Finished painting.  I'm thankful for paint, and color, and opportunities to play with both.

In a frame and below …

I hung it in the powder room for a few hours so I could enjoy living with it briefly.  Good bye orange bird who became real to me.  Isn't it a cheery painting?  I mailed it off to her this morning.

And lastly, I'm grateful for chocolate which brings me infinite pleasure.  I made some browned butter blondies for a meeting that I will miss while we're out of town but I volunteered to supply the refreshments anyway.

Yeah, I loaded those blondies with tons of chocolate.  Enjoy!