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!

Catch Up!

I've been mainly in two places this month (where I've written nothing), either by Dan's side or in the yard working any spare moment I could take because we also had family visiting, a graduation, an accident, and a couple birthdays.   Here's some of the excitement that occurred outside of the yard - the yard will be tomorrow's post!

A couple days after Dan had his second knee replaced, he was walking perhaps a bit too distractedly through the dining room to greet people coming in the kitchen door, when he lost his balance, even with his walker in front of him and he fell hard and split both knees wide open.  I had just pulled up in the driveway, filthy and sweaty from a church property spring clean up, when my daughter Gabe and her hubby Mark came running out the door, yelling that Dan had just fallen!  Gabe had been home with Dan while I was gone and she and Mark were getting ready to leave for a lunch date with Grandpa Deane who had just arrived as well.  Panic ensued, Gabe and Mark called doctors and 911, Grandpa Deane provided comfort and humor, and I ran around grabbing towels to wrap Dan's knees and wipe up blood, shaking and trying not to look directly at his torn, bleeding knees.  Dan sat quietly in shock (after his initial scream) and apologized for falling and creating all the chaos.  An ambulance ride and reparative surgery followed, (no fractures or damage to the new implants fortunately) and Dan spent the next 11 days in a rehab hospital.

Here he is with a little grin after his doctor told him that nothing was broken or damaged except for a lot of tissue.

 Although I had cleaned up all the blood off the floor and rug, I found his life's blood on the door a week later when I was on a birthday scavenger hunt through the house following those paw prints.  Poor guy!  I must have been distracted by the company we had all week to miss that blood while passing by that door dozens of times every day.  Jeepers.

All my kids and their spouses were visiting and together during Dan's fall and rehabilitation time to celebrate my middle child Heath's law school graduation.  He's now a Juris Doctor specializing in intellectual property and will practice as a patent attorney in Boston.  Dan had to miss all the festivities like the commencement and family dinner (two family dinners) but Heath visited him at rehab before the ceremony while donned in his cap and gown.  Below is a scene from one of the family dinners at the Soucy's house and then the rest are graduation pics.

 Heath and Emma

 My beloved offspring.

 My three kids, two with spouses.

 Heath with siblings and parents.

 In honor of Heath's wonderful accomplishment, I made him his favorite cookie - sugar - a soft buttery kind with a bit of chew too, topped with cream cheese vanilla butter cream and lots of sprinkles.

When Dan got home from his long stay in rehab, I made him his favorite cookie too, my version of the famed NYC Levain Bakery chocolate chip walnut, and as he loves raw cookie dough, I brought him a bite to enjoy before baking them.

The day after Heath's graduation was my birthday and I woke up to this, which made me laugh out loud.

 When I got home from church, I found this note taped to the front door.  Hooray!  A scavenger hunt!

 I truly followed dozens and dozens of paw prints on all four floors of the house that lead me to little notes typed with things my kids and hubby liked about me.  It was so fun!

 It ended in the master bathroom to a card that said this.

 The little notes I found which I taped to the original instruction sheet.  The best present ever!

 During the night when I was all alone in the house, I woke up to find that some of the balloons glowed in the dark!

Another event that took place right after Dan's second surgery but before his fall and the arrival of all my children was an auction at our church where the Young Women's organization put on a spaghetti dinner and dessert auction to raise money for the girls' attendance at this summer's camp.  They served us dinner and each family was asked to bake yummy desserts to be auctioned off.  Dan had to miss that event too.  I made these two desserts and I'm pleased to say that they each got the highest bids of the night  $65 and $70 - bippity!

 The top is the famous Raspberry Goddess Pie and then a Strawberry Cream Tart.  The girls made over $1000 dollars that night from desserts - so fun and worthy.  One plate of just four cupcakes with gummy worms on top went for $48 - people were really generous.

 I provided the center pieces for the tables at the dinner/dessert auction and I brought them home after and we enjoyed them all week right there on the island.

Well that's the scoop on May for far.  For my next blog entry, I plan to write about all the pretty things going on in the yard with lots of pics too - hopefully tomorrow!