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!

Thanksgiving In The Old 'Hood

I thought I'd better report on Thanksgiving before Christmas gets here - yikes!  When Dan and I got married, I left New Hampshire and we lived about a year in the San Francisco area, namely Alamo CA, before Dan retired and we decided to settle for good in New Hampshire.  New Englander that I am and always will be (as I now call myself after nearly 18 years here), I really enjoyed that year in northern California.  I've lived in CA before; San Diego - my parents reside there, I graduated from high school and attended a couple years of college there and I've been back for visits many times, but way back I decided I was a four season kind of gal so I left when I was 20.  When I married Dan and followed him to CA, I had no idea that I wouldn't be living there long so I settled in as if to stay for good and immersed myself in our community, a new kind of growing season and gardening, the local farmer's market, the numerous walking trails in the surrounding Open Space, exploring Napa and Sonoma valleys, the Central Valley where so much of what our nation eats, grows (amazing to see), walking Pacific beaches instead of Atlantic, feeling colder in the winter than I ever did in New Hampshire (I don't know how to explain that), recreating my life as I went from years of working so many hours and raising children to having days to just explore, relax and figure out my new role and plan.  We had a blast!  When we decided to return for Thanksgiving this year and spend it with Dan's daughter and her family, we also decided to spend a lot of time doing things we did in that first blissful year.  And go see the giant Redwoods!  We meant to do that when we lived there but didn't make it so we added five days to our trip just for that.  Here is how our first week played out:

When we left New England for CA, most of the fall leaves were gone so it was so wonderful to arrive in CA just as fall was peaking there.  Now all of this color comes from careful planning by builders and developers - they have planted trees wisely for maximum color in an area that is a coastal desert devoid of green or color in many parts.  And I am grateful!  A lot of this color comes from Japanese Maples and Liquid Amber Sweet Gum trees and they are everywhere.  I was oohing and awwing constantly.

 This is a picture of our former house and front yard.  I took the pictures so rapidly because I didn't want the new owners to see me so all you can really see is the plantings and the fabulous Japanese Maple in bloom.  Our first morning of the trip we had breakfast with two of Dan's former partners and then we drove to our old neighborhood and walked the trails in the open space that surrounds the neighborhoods.  Just like old times.  And we walked down our old street, snuck a couple pictures and reminisced.

Dan and I with his former colleagues at a fabulous restaurant called Chow in the town of Lafayette.  They make excellent chocolate chip cookies in their bakery and sell them too - we bought a dozen and ate them over the week.  For those of you who care as much as I do,  I found out they use chocolate chips made by the Italian company Agostoni, the San Primo 60% chocolate chips - they. are. so. good.  (and you can get them from the website chefshop.com)!  In addition to the breakfast at Chow and walking our old neighborhood trails, we drove all over Alamo, Walnut Creek and Danville and stopped at our favorite places.  That evening we had dinner with four really good friends at Bridges restaurant in Danville.

 Day two we went to both Sonoma and Napa valleys and delighted in the miles of vineyards wearing their fall reds and golds.  As we always did in the past, we stopped in at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) to see what yummy things they have going on and peruse the kitchen ware and thousands of cookbooks.  We drove up and down back roads from Napa to Calistoga and looped back to Yountville to have lunch at our favorite restaurant there, Jeanty, a truly French bistro.  They are famous for their extremely rich tomato soup baked with a puffed pastry on top - incredible!  And you can find this recipe on their website too.

 Above and below - the kitchen gardens for the other very famous restaurant "The French Laundry".  We have never eaten there because you have to reserve months and months in advance.

 Bistro Jeanty

 Above and below - the tomato soup extraordinaire!

 I didn't take pictures of Bouchon, but just down the street from Bistro Jeanty is another northern California institution, Bouchon bakery.  Everything there tastes heavenly.  We bought one cookie and one Bouchon Bite for the road (it's like chocolate mousse meets a tiny brownie).  When we finished up our adventures in wine country, we returned to our hotel near Walnut Creek and went to a movie at the theatre we used to frequent and watched the latest Hunger Games followed by frozen yogurt (yep, just like we used to do).  After, we headed to Livermore to our family where we would be residing the next three nights.

 Kara collects old tiny colored bottles and I took this picture so I can practice painting glass as soon as I make some time to paint again.  Kara and her hubby Chris are super athletes.  She is a marathon runner and he is a cyclist.  For our first morning with them, she planned a 4 1/2 mile speed walk in the open spaces around Livermore.  Dan and Chris ran errands and she, I and her two kids went on the walk.  It was so fun and I'll tell you a bit about Livermore - it was once just a farm town and is still a true cowboy town; now it has this resurrected and adorable downtown loaded with great shops and restaurants and it's surrounded by new vineyards as well as labs where brilliant scientists work on secret stuff for the US government.  Below are some pics from our walk.

 The grandkids rolling tumbleweeds just like I used to do in Elko Nevada.

 Kara has arranged her books by color - I love it!  Below, after our walk, Ellie, Kara and I went and had pedicures.  I chose blue for the first time ever.

 And again, because Kara and Chris are super stars, they signed us all up for a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning - I was so happy about this!  Kara ran the 10K, Chris, Ellie and I did the 5K and Dan and Tate did the 1mile I think.  I'm not much of a runner because I love to power walk but I ran just about the whole thing and only fast walked a tiny bit in the middle - it felt great.  My thighs kinda hurt the next day.

 Too dark to really tell in the next few pictures but here is Tate crossing the finish line.

 Then Chris ...

 Here I am ...

 And here is Kara.  After, Dan and I went to another one of our old favorites right here in downtown Livermore, the amazing Donut Wheel, owned and operated by a local family.  Really, really, really, good donuts.  We bought some for ourselves and the family of course.

 The flavor of this one brings me back to my childhood and getting a donut that looked and tasted just like this when I went with my dad to the local dump like everyone did on Saturday mornings and after we got donuts.  Good times ….

 Part of the group waiting for the Thanksgiving feast to begin.  Below, the Thanksgiving table.

 I made the rolls and two pies, pecan and Raspberry Goddess.

 Kara clipped little signs on each of our water glasses and after dinner we had to talk about our gratitude in reference to the subject each of us was given.  Obviously, mine was about good friends.

 Raspberry Goddess Pie.  We didn't eat pie until after we got back from the movies.  Just like I have done for decades on Thanksgiving day, after dinner with full bellies we went to a movie - I saw "Creed" - I enjoyed it very much as I am a Rocky fan since 1976 when Sylvester Stallone came on the scene.

 Our kids' front door.

 Fall color in their yard.

 Hanging out with the grandkids watching Liv and Maddy and admiring my pedicure on Friday morning before heading in to the city to spend the night all together at Ghirardelli Square.

 We took a back way in to San Francisco and went to Sausalito for lunch at the fabulous Mexican restaurant called Copita - their mini tacos are to die for!  Right next to the restaurant is a stair case (picture above) leading up to another street way above - the climb is very steep and long so of course we had to climb it.  Below is the view from the top on the street looking back down and at the water in the distance.

 After lunch we drove through the Marin Headlands - breathtaking views!

 Phoenix beach at the headlands above and the cliffs nearby below.

View from the headlands - Golden Gate bridge and San Francisco.

 The view from our hotel room down in to Ghirardelli square - a band was singing sacred Christmas songs, "snow" made from soap suds was flying all through the night air - we headed down to listen to music, eat chocolate and stroll.

 FYI I have on a pair of guy's (men's) Levi 501's that I bought on this trip.  I had read on a fashion blog recently that they have been remade a little and are supposed to be flattering on women too so here I am modeling them.  Dan bought a pair as well.  I have gotten used to the bit of elastane or whatever stretchy material that is now woven into all women's jeans so it took me all day to get used to absolutely no give in the material but they were comfortable in spite of that and I wore them two more times the following week (with other shirts of course ;).

 We spent our last day of this portion of the trip with our family in the city taking the trolley to Union Square and watching the grandkids ice skate and doing a bit of shopping.  We parted ways as they took the ferry to Alcatraz and we headed back to Alamo to join two more friends for dinner.  The following day, Sunday, we attended church in our old ward (congregation) and then headed north for Redding where we would spend the night and prepare for the next leg of our trip - the Redwoods!  Stay tuned - as in tomorrow.