I am today, grateful for pinterest. I love this website and a browse is always the perfect thing to fill a spare minte or hour. basically it is a giant set of pinboards that people can pin any image they find on the web to. So you can browse peoples boards or boards for different categories or whatever. Just browsing the iages people have admired is uplifting and inspiring and beautiful and sometimes humorous too.... Love it. So much beauty on the web, all for sharing.

Gadgets! Oh I am sooo grateful for these. The amazing paint scrapper we bought one time. The lovely paint pad that has smoothed my beautiful new paint around. My silicon spatulas for cooking and the egg pods for poaching. The lovely set of kitchen accroutements that all fit together for easy storage and are the colours of the rainbow and inclue a giant bowl, a colander, a sieve, a measuring jug/ small bowl and measuring cups. Lovely things make you smile as you use them and are so much better and easier to use. They are designed and made with much thought and love, someone has really, really put effort in to working out exactly how to make that job go perfectly and with a smile!

I am grateful for paint. We get to choose the colours we live with. We can cover up all manner of wall defects. We have choice of finish. We have all sorts of gizmos for putting it on as well. And our paint contains no lead. I like paint.

I am grateful that F and I have different talents and skills. We work well together and have fun doing it. I am glad we are all different. That we can not possible be the same as someone else....

I am grateful for my lovely dyson hoover. I am so glad it just sucks up all that dirt without clogging up. Our bedroom would have killed an old style hoover. Those dust bunnies under the bed..... I am grateful for the innovators. The people who are able to step outside of it all and find something new and different. I am definitely grateful for them and their inventions.....

I am grateful that I have reached the end of this week. It has been a tough one. We have been short staffed with the holidays and all. It has been necessary for me to do a lot of physical work this week, something I am not used to. It has been hard, but now I am here. And I am now on holiday until early May and I am sooo grateful for this moment. This anticipation is always a lovely moment. I have time coming and I love that feeling that it is here, ready for me to enjoy, right now.

I am very grateful to have a man in my life who understands me and puts up with the nasty me that develops when I am tired. He is a truly lovely chap. And he is mine.

I am grateful for dogs. I love dogs. They are always pleased to see you. They always have time. They always forgive you and if you actually manage to annoy them, it is with good cause and swiftly forgotten. I love that they are always in the moment.

I am grateful for the traditions and places and blood that link us back in time to each other, that anchor us. I think they become more important as we get older. I like them more now than I did when I was a kid. I am glad they no longer feel like being bound, something I need to break out of in order to find myself. I am me, just as I am. My ties make me feel stronger not weaker now, because I understand they do not make me, me.

I am grateful for the occasional shining light that has entered my life. Someone who lives life so fully, despite everything, they just shine. Shine with light and life. They may not be a conventional beacon but they are a beacon all the same. Grateful for these people who are pure in their difference, in themselves and their ability to live life. There is no judgement but their fun, they lighten the lives of those around them.

I am grateful for anticipation. I am sat here, anticipating my KFC. And I know that what I am thinking about is almost as good as the real thing. My mouth is watering and I get to look forward to it all.... I get to extend my enjoyment.

I am grateful for the sea, and waves, and sea spray carried by the wind. The wind rips the top of the waves. I love to watch surfers catching a wave. Cornwall is the surf capital of the UK and any beach you visit, if there is surf, there will be a surfer. I love the different colours and moods of the sea. I love it's slow erosion of the coast, creating beautiful structures. I love the way you can trace history in what it exposes and what it leaves behind, wave cut platforms and bare rock, ancient wood, fossilized. I love that the waves take all and smooth it, from glass to the little piece of an ancient tree I picked up today. I love the way light shimmers on the sea. I am filled with wonder as I wonder why the sea is different colours in different places...... I dream of the world beneath the waves. Yes, I am grateful for the sea, and even more grateful I can see it's beauty. And feel, smell, hear and even taste it to.

I am grateful for love in all it's forms. You can never have too much and you can never love too many people. What you do with your love is important though. I will do good with my love. I also get to be surrounded in the love of those people that belong to me. Oh and the hounds that belong to me too!

I am grateful I have a job. In these trying financial times, this is no small thing. I am grateful that things are going well enough that my employer has work and money to give me overtime. I may not always like overtime - if money were my main desire in life, I would have left Cornwall a long time ago. But in a month with Easter, Mother's Day and two birthdays, I am grateful. And because the alternative is not something I wish to consider!

I am grateful for having a nice family, a good family. I know someone who is not so lucky. not only did she have to put up with her childhood being ravaged by these people but now they are a millstone she carries through life. She cares for them all. And they all drag her down and down and down, with their needs and their messed up lives that they always need her to sort out and be there for.

I am grateful my family are also my friends. They are my support and I support them. I love them all and I miss them. I am so grateful that I have them in my life. That they are mine. That they are the ones who shaped my life, in love, kindness and understanding. I am also grateful for the mistakes we learnt because a 'perfect' life would have made me a very, very 'imperfect' person. They gave me an opportunity to learn. They also gave me the opportunity to make my own mistakes, of which I made very many. But I learn. And always, i love my family.

Grateful for beds and duvets..... and pillows... and snuggly dogs and men who cuddle and snore.

I am grateful for story tellers and all the people that bring them to life. Editors, publishers, printers, directors, producers, costume designers, set artists, actors, actresses, narrators, cartoonists, library assistants reading to kids in a circle........ But with out the story tellers..... and without the stories...... with out the writers muse.....

So please will one of you just get on and publish my friends story so I can get on and READ it already!

After a weekend playing with creative wonders, I am grateful for colour. Maybe if you can only see in grey, colour isn't important, or maybe grey takes on all the richness and variation of our spectrum in a way we can not imagine..... I can't imagine being colour blind. I am so glad I am not.... I am grateful for colour, in all it's variety and wonderfulness.....

I read a book recently called Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde which seems very relevant to this but to start talking about the ideas of colour here would spoil the book so I won't. But it sure has some interesting ideas. I am grateful for good books and writers who find new ways to rewrite the world and the universe....

Today I am grateful for the fact that I am not the Boss. I don't carry the can. I don't take it all home with me. I get to smile when the shit is hitting the fan and at 5.00 I walk out the door unless they offer me overtime.