Time for a mid-winter check in. Who is someone you're grateful for? Who is someone who has rekindled your spark?

What are you grateful for today, my friends? I am grateful for the beautiful blues and greens I can see out my window, for having gotten through a huge Sunday on only three hours' sleep, and for feeling like I might just be able to cope with today.

As happens, from time to time, I forget my own advice.

It's been a bit of a rough few weeks, mood-wise, for me, and even though I ask everyone else what they're grateful for, sometimes I forget to ask myself and find myself gradually going down that low-mood spiral.

The other day as I was getting dressed, I spied this lovely necklace a friend gave me at Christmas, sitting on my shelf. I put it on, thinking "I am deliberately putting on gratitude". I kept remembering to look for what I could be grateful for whenever it brushed against my hand or I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It's not a lucky charm, no, no, but a physical reminder. Sometimes gratitude doesn't come easily. Sometimes we need all the help we can get.

Do you have something like this, a physical reminder to help you change your thinking?

I wrote a thing for Eternity News and didn't realise it had been published back in December! Thankfully, this advice never gets old. 🙂

“It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy.”

On the twelfth day of gratitude, I’m grateful for the luxury of being able to lie under a tree in my front garden, looking up at a blue sky, thinking about art and life and other such noble things.

One of you lovely Everyday Gratituders said she would be happy to use a fresh 2017 diary this year and just change the dates by hand for 2018. I have a couple of boxes left and I really don't want to trash these beautiful books! So just in case there are other recyclers out there, I thought I'd throw the offer open.

I'm reusing mine and also have repurposed a couple into a gardening journal, a prayer point tracker for my Bible study group and...I'm sure I'll think of more uses. 🙂

If you would like a fresh diary (but with 2017 dates) and are happy to customise it to your own requirements, I'm happy to send to you if you pay postage! $12 for 1-3 copies.

Just send me a PM with your email address and postal address and how many copies you'd like and I'll send you payment details.

On the ninth day of gratitude, I’m grateful for having a splendid garden (that I had nothing to do with establishing) in which I can do garden work. Today I trimmed the hedge in the foreground...still heaps to do as you can see, but it’s very therapeutic!

On the eighth day of gratitude, I'm grateful for days of rest, with nothing much in them, where I feel absolutely no guilt for pottering around, playing online games with friends, and reading with my cat beside me. I go back to work tomorrow but I thoroughly enjoyed this complete day off.

What are you grateful for on this first day of the year?