A Few Thoughts On Gratitude and Thanksgiving

 Expressing Gratitude

Good morning, friends, on this Monday before Thanksgiving. Today, I'm thinking about the concepts of gratitude and thanksgiving. Both are important, not only at this time of year, but throughout the year.

My words of the year for 2025 have been gratitude and grace, and I have to admit that I have become much more mindful of expressing gratitude in my own life. Whether expressing gratitude verbally, in my journaling or through a thank-you note, I have tried to recognize the many things in my life for which I am thankful. 

The words thankful and gratitude are often used interchangeably. And they are closely related. As I looked up the definitions of each, however, I found that while thankfulness can be momentary, as in "thank you for helping me make this meal," gratitude is more of a mindset. Gratitude is felt more deeply and includes an appreciation of one's life and the good things in life even though one's life circumstances may not always be great. That puts a whole new spin on the idea of gratitude, doesn't it? We all know that life isn't always wonderful. There can be so many things, different for each of us, that can cause us worry, pain and difficulty and, in these circumstances, it's hard to be thankful. But if our mindset is one of gratitude, we can realize that even when life is hard, there are still some things that are good. And it is often this goodness in life that pulls us through whatever the hard times may be. 

The apostle Paul seemed to know this when he wrote in I Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV)

 "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

I am still a student of learning to have an attitude of gratitude in all things. All too easily, I can quickly revert back to being grumpy and fault finding when things in life aren't going well. But I'm trying. And having the word "gratitude" as one of my words of the year has helped me to focus more on this important mindset.

How about you? Do you have an attitude of gratitude as we go into Thanksgiving and then Christmas? I hope that each of you dear readers will enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving week and I look forward to being back with you next week!

Until Next Time,

Debbie (this and that)

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

 Christmas Decor and A Little More

Our foyer table vignette

Hi everyone!  I'm sure that you are starting to see lots of Christmas posts popping up on your social media sites. So, allow me to share one more with you! I got started with Christmas decorating pretty early this year and I must say that I am really enjoying all of our decorations. Especially with the time change and the earlier dark evenings, it's so comforting to turn on all of the Christmas lights. Hope you enjoy these pictures of our Christmas decor.

I bought a new tabletop tree for the corner of our living room. This tree is a bit taller and slimmer than the previous one. It also has a remote that can change the color choices and add twinkle lights or fade in/out lights. I've been enjoying being able to change the light choices in the evenings. The tree skirt was created in needlepoint by my mother-in-law who used to do a lot of stitching. I didn't like the way it hung over the table though, so I have scrunched it more around the tree bottom. I didn't take a picture of the way it looks now.

Our mantle with three different scenes created around our rock collection. I like placing objects I love around what we already have on display. To me, it is interesting and meaningful to decorate like this. I've put everything we had on the mantle away in previous years in order to decorate for Christmas. I just don't do that anymore. 

Little Santas and cat figurines on one end of the mantle. 

Christmas bears on the other end of the mantle. You can also see the pet stockings. I use heavier rocks as my stocking holders. 

And the white glass nativity in the center. I removed the bear poster so you could see the nativity better in this picture. I kept getting a glare from the poster cover when I took a picture with it behind the nativity. 

I have some smaller nativities on display in the side window and I also ordered this full size Jim Shore nativity as a new piece this year. The colors are simply magnificent and the seller on Poshmark used such great care in packing and shipping it to me. I'm very pleased. If you have never heard of Jim Shore before, Google him and you will find many very colorful figurines for both Christmas and other times. 

On the side table of the living room I have a three foot tall Christmas tree covered in musical instruments.

Over the years, The Mr. and I have collected many musical instrument ornaments. I am really enjoying this musical instrument tree so much! For toppers on my trees, I used ribbons that I found at Hobby Lobby that color coordinate with the colors of ornaments on each tree.

On the guest bathroom shelf I placed these colorful pieces. The "Baby It's Cold Outside" sign is a new piece this year that will displayed throughout winter.

A couple of weeks ago my friend, Sharon, and I attended an ornament making class at our local library. The ornaments were made out of book pages. Sharon did great at making her ornaments. I'm sorry to say I struggled but I did finally get one to work out. I decided not to hang mine on my tree, however.

To make myself feel better, I came home and did some of my own crafting of ornaments and cards using scrapbook paper and stickers. I'm much more adept at this type of crafting! 

Some close-ups of the ornaments I created. 

And I haven't forgotten that we are still in the Fall Season. As a nod to Autumn and the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I created this vignette on our round kitchen table. It makes me smile each time I see it. It's whimsical and playful and reminds me to be full of gratitude for all that God has blessed us with. 

I'll close with this silly pic that The Mr. took of me and my good friend Dolly! We were having a fun afternoon in Black Mountain, NC looking in the shops and having lunch. This cardboard figure of Dolly Parton was in the book area of the local hardware store there. The Mr. takes these photos because he says I need to use them on the blog. He calls it "feeding the beast." He's too funny!

I hope that you are finding fun and laughter in your November days, friends!  And I hope that you enjoyed this photo-heavy post today! Let me know how you are spending your November days in the comments section. I love hearing from you!

Until Next Time,

Debbie (This and That)

What's Your Favorite Time of Day?

 Morning Glory

View outside my window this morning

Good morning friends! Do you have a favorite time of the day? For me, the very best time of day is in the morning when I first get up. There is just something about sitting in my living room in a comfy chair, hot cup of tea in hand, staring out my windows at the beautiful scenery, that just brings me great joy. There is even a scripture in Psalms 30:5 that speaks to morning joy...

Morning is also typically when I read my devotions, read the Bible and work on sermons. It's a great time for journaling as well. When I was still teaching I never had time in the mornings for all of this. The mornings were so early and hectic-getting dressed, doing any morning chores, grabbing a quick breakfast and trying to get out the door on time. I have never been a morning person and school schedules never really worked for me and for my body. I always longed to just be able to have a slow, quiet morning-drinking my tea and enjoying just getting into my day slowly and peacefully. And when you teach, you just hit the floor running when you enter a school building and your classroom. And the running continues for most of the school day. It's a hard job and while I am grateful for my teaching career and all of the joys that it brought me, I am also so very grateful for retirement and for the ability to enjoy these more gentle and quiet morning times on most days now. 

What is your favorite time of day?

I would enjoy hearing from you!

Until Next Time,

Debbie This and That

(Graphics created on Canva.com)

Lake Junaluska and Bailey Mountain Preserve in Mars Hill

 Enjoying Some Local Sight-Seeing

Hi friends! The Mr. and I have been doing some local sight-seeing recently so I thought I would share some of the beautiful scenery we have enjoyed on these day trips. We had occasion on Tuesday to visit some friends in the Lake Junaluska area and stopped by the lake to walk and enjoy the Fall colors. 

Lake Junaluska is a Methodist Retreat Conference Center with many lovely and unique homes situated around the lake and in the area. It has a beautiful walking trail around the lake that is enjoyed by many. 

I always enjoy coming here whether it is to attend our Annual Conference or simply to visit and walk around the lake. The views with the Fall colors and the mountains in the distance are just stunning!

Later this week, we drove to Mars Hill, NC to scope out a trail at Bailey Mountain Preserve. This is a relatively new hiking/walking trail that is located close to Mars Hill University. 

The preserve is located on the old Smith farm and features several old barns which were either located on the property or were dismantled and then rebuilt on this property. 

The trail begins by meandering through a meadow and then into the woods. The first half of the trail through the woods is a footpath that is covered with soft mulch. It's a steady uphill, but not steep, and offers places to sit along the way. The trail eventually turns a bit more rugged. We didn't hike the whole trail but I enjoyed what we did hike.

This tree was huge and located where the trail leaves the meadow and enters the woods. I loved the swing and we made sure to take advantage of swinging for a few minutes as we hiked!

It was an enjoyable time spent walking at Bailey Mountain Preserve and I look forward to going back and hiking more of the trail. Next time, I will be sure to wear my trail shoes and have my hiking stick with me!

We enjoy sight-seeing locally and these two trips were particularly enjoyable for me. 

I also enjoyed a time of retreat last weekend at Hinton Rural Life Center near Hayesville, NC. This retreat center is located next to Lake Chatuge which straddles the NC/Georgia border and is a beautiful spot to rest and spiritually rejuvenate. Since some of the ladies on the retreat requested that their faces not appear on Facebook, which I use to share my blog, I won't show pictures of them. But here are a few pics not showing faces.

 

That's all for now. Life has been busy lately! 

And November is almost here!

Blessings and Peace until next time!

Debbie (this and that)

🍂

A Little More Fall Decor

 Scattering Fall All Around The House

Hi friends!  Since I last blogged I have continued to add Fall items around the house bit by bit. I think that I have finally finished and am officially ready for Fall! I added the October sign you see above to the front door. 

This was how the front door looked at first while I still had the hanging pumpkins on top of the sign.

But then I decided to add more orange to the front door with the Welcome Friends orange pumpkin. This will probably stay this way until October is finished and then I may bring the other wooden pumpkins hanger back to the front door. We'll see. You know I enjoy changing things up a little from time to time!

And then, I just started scattering pumpkins around the living room where I thought they might look good. Like these interesting pumpkins around the light tree. They are made from interesting and textured material. I have actually removed the white/black/orange ceramic jack-o-lanterns to the left of the light tree. I'm much more into Fall decor than Halloween decor and I didn't think the jack-o-lanterns fit. I've decided to give them away to Goodwill for someone else to enjoy.

And these wooden pumpkins look good in front of the lamp on our round table. There is also a wooden acorn that I found last Fall season and purchased. I have a few other pumpkins scattered about that I didn't take pictures of this time. I think most readers will have seen them before.

In our dining room I created a little Fall pine tree vignette with orange stick pumpkins in my lighted pine tree and my Fall Is My Favorite truck. I love this little pine tree and I know that you have seen me use it a lot for every season. And, yes, you can see that I have added some multi-color lights to the tree, as well, but I don't have them lighted for this picture. The multi-color lights are battery operated and I turn them on from time to time for a bit more color. I'm already thinking towards Christmas and I love multi-color lights, what can I say?!

Another view of the dining room vignette. I have fun creating arrangements of my Fall items and then looking at them and enjoying them throughout the Fall season. We have had some beautiful weather the last few days and this morning is sunny with gentle breezes. I hope that wherever you are that you are enjoying this season as well. 

Until Next Time,

Debbie This and That

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Blooming Where You Are Planted: A Devotional

Blooming Where You Find Yourself 

A rose captured on a morning walk at the rose garden.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

    whose confidence is in him.

8 

They will be like a tree planted by the water

    that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

    its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

    and never fails to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:7-8

Good morning friends!  One of the pleasures I have enjoyed this summer is looking at my beautiful flowers that I planted in my back porch containers. They seemed to have bloomed more beautifully this summer than ever before. I would look at them while sipping my morning tea and bask in their vibrant colors. 

Imagine my surprise when I began to see the flowers that I had planted in containers popping up at the edge of the patio porch. I certainly had not planted them in this location!

And then on our gravel driveway. Nope, didn't plant them here, either!

And even under the steps of the stairs on the side of our porch! I couldn't even have managed to get them under here to plant them, lol!

And soon, there were little clumps of flowers all over our gravel driveway! And I had not planted ANY of these flowers in those locations! I learned from my sister that when flowers pop up in unusual places like this, where they have not been "planted,"  they are called volunteers. Did you know that? I guess the wind or birds carry the seeds or small seedlings from the plants and then drop them in random places where they  can either take root, grow and flourish or just die without blooming. 

 As I enjoyed these "extra" blooms this summer, it got me to thinking about the idea of "blooming where you are planted." I'm certain that these plants in the midst of gravel, or under the steps of a porch, would have much preferred to be planted in one of my porch pots with lots of wonderful and enriched potting soil surrounding them. And yet, they were blooming in these less than desirable spots in spite of the conditions that surrounded them. 

So tell me......are you blooming where you are planted? Where you find yourself in life right now? Am I blooming where I am planted and where I find myself?

I believe that in today's world, these are questions for each of us to think about and ponder. 

You know we can't always choose what surrounds us on a daily basis. We can't always choose what is happening around us in the world. And let's face it. The world around us can be a pretty depressing place at times. Our own personal lives can sometimes be less than what we would want them to be at times. Sadness, despair, illness, anxiety, personal problems and relationships, money worries and concerns about those we love and care about.....all of these are simply part of what comes with being human. 

But this is not meant to be a downer as a devotion. Rather it is meant to be just the opposite. Because along with the previously mentioned problems that can come with being human, there is also the capacity for finding great moments of happiness, contentment and joy to be found in our daily living! 

And just like these plants that found themselves planted smack dab in the middle of a gravel driveway or alongside a cement porch or hidden away under the treads of porch steps, we can still bloom and even thrive with brilliant colors and greenery!

Today's scripture from Jeremiah speaks about a tree planted next to a stream that sends out its roots to the water so that it can flourish. It likens this tree to people who have faith and confidence in the Lord. That tree didn't have to fear heat or drought or the inability to bear fruit when these horrible conditions might come. It didn't have to fear, because the tree had made sure that its roots were sent out toward the stream where it could draw in the life giving water that it would need to survive, and even thrive, when these less than optimal conditions surrounded it. 

I ask each of us, including myself, to ponder this question today. Are we rooted in the life giving water of Jesus Christ? Are we keeping our trust and confidence in the Lord, rather than in other people or sources? Are we looking for ways to continue to bloom and flourish and enjoy life, even when events around us are less than optimal? 

For me, relying on my faith helps me during both times of stress and times of joy, because I know that my roots are firmly planted in the Lord. 

May each of us have faith to help us continue to bloom and grow wherever we may find ourselves this day. 

Blessings and Peace,

Debbie