A Year of Gratitude – February 26, 2024

I found my gratitude in my work today. I found myself working on recipes, baking cookies for my children, and taking photos. For me, that’s a wonderful combination and a reason to be filled with gratitude.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to work with food and take photos. I dreamt of writing about food, working on recipes, and using a camera to take beautiful photos of the food I was working with. Here I was, on a sunny day in this old farmhouse doing all of that.

I was finishing up a new recipe I had been working on for an orange butter cookie for our Cookie Recipe Club Members. The farmhouse was filled with the delicious aroma of citrus, butter, and sugar as they baked in the oven. Once the cookies were cool, it was time to take a photo for the recipe booklet.

I had music playing in the room where I was setting up the photo. Penny Lane was napping in the window in the next room. She lifted her head every so often to see what I was doing. I think that she was also hoping for a bit of a cookie. She knows me too well because I did indeed walk into the room to give her a nibble when I broke open a cookie to include in one of the photos.

Music was playing, sunshine was streaming in the window, and my children having lunch together in the room behind me while Penny Lane was napping in the room in front of me. In all my childhood imaginings, I could have never understood that the dream I had would turn out. I dreamt it at a time when there was no internet, when we couldn’t carry a phone in our pocket to take photos and videos.

I couldn’t have dreamed of spending my days writing, cooking, baking, and photographing my day to share with you. Yet here I was doing just that. It made me happy and grateful all at once.

Having yummy orange butter cookies I could share with my children and Penny Lane gave me something else to be grateful for. I stopped what I was doing and just stood in that moment, in the realization of how good these things were. I let it wash over me. I was so lucky to be there, to be here. Knowing that is a real gift.

I hope that today gave you a reason to feel grateful, a moment to be glad that you were in it, and that it treated you gently.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.