Thankful Thursday #10

Happy Thursday everyone, I hope you are having a wonderful week. I will be honest and say I was hoping for a snow day on Monday or Tuesday. Not that I really wanted snow, I just wanted to sleep late. But unlike a lot of the US, we didn't get any bad weather.

As I sat down to write this post I wondered what I should be thankful for this week. Nothing extraordinary is happening in my life, good or bad. It is the same old stuff. And I realized that is what is wrong with too many of us, we aren't thankful for the little things in our life. We are always thankful for the big things like jobs, homes, cars, food, family and faith.  But if we were as thankful for the little things we would be happier in general.

So I picked five smaller things to be thankful about this week.

1.  Tucker...my dog.  I'm thankful for all three of my dogs, but I'm just a little more thankful for Tucker this week.  Towards the end of last year we had a scare with Tucker and it was a case of being very close to having to say goodbye to him.  But thankfully he got better and is doing better these days. He is old, blind and sometimes can't find his way to the backyard in time, but he is also faithful, loving and makes me smile.  He follows me from room to room and loves that I now work from home 85% of the time.

2.  No leftovers. Now my nephew might disagree that this is a good thing, but it seems like we have been throwing away too many leftover recently. But as of right now we finished all of them in the frig for dinner last night. So I'm thankful there are none because it means none will be thrown away.

3. Tools. Yes I admit I love tools that make things go faster, but sometimes you don't even realize how something so small/simple can really make things go faster. When I'm working on my cross blocks I always chain piece, and I had read about a little tool that lets you cut your chain piecing apart quickly. I found a version of it at my LQS and thought I would try it. I will admit I really do love it. It makes cutting the blocks apart very quick and easy. Can I do it with scissors or snips, yes, but this let me cut them, and stack them because both hands are free. There are a couple of different versions out on the market, and I've even seen some homemade versions. But what I really like about this one is that it is small (about 2 1/4 x 2), so it doesn't take up much space beside my machine.

4. Morning Coffee. I don't drink a lot of coffee, but I normally have a large coffee in the morning. Most of the time it is an iced coffee because I sip it while driving and not burn my tongue. I look forward to my morning coffee, and am thankful to have it everyday. I know that on the days I don't have one, I'm much grumpier. And every now and then an afternoon frappuccino doesn't hurt either. Hmmmm maybe I will need one of these today.

5.  Selfish Sewing. I've been trying to sew for at least 30 minutes a day as part of the #4X7SewingChallenge and have really liked the results. I decided to focus on my cross blocks for the month. I have already finished 15 for this week, so I will spend some time cutting more blocks and then some time organizing the sewing room. But it is nice getting things done just because I dedicate a small amount of time each day.

None of the items above are major life changing things, but I'm thankful for them because they bring joy to my life in one form or another. I'm linking up with Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl.