Last year we suffered through a disastrous renovation that left us with an incomplete, unlevel addition. After experiencing all the turmoil and chaos of construction, we now live in what seems like permanent chaos.

I keep a gratitude journal, but towards the end of last year, as the days got colder and our house, the back end unsealed from the elements, froze in bits and drabs here and there, I alternated between misery and depression. My daily gratitudes just didn't seem to help. For five minutes I would realize how lucky I was, and then it would all rapidly dwindle as I huddled under my duvet, contemplating the wreck that was my bedroom.

Something bigger was needed to pull me out of the slump. There was nothing we could do about the renovations - what was done was done, and we couldn't find anyone willing to come in and fix someone else's mistake. I had to come to terms with that, and for my own sake, I had to do so quickly.

That was when it occurred to me to do a gratitude poster. Since writing my five daily gratitudes down helped me for a while, I reasoned that writing as many gratitudes as possible would have an even bigger impact. And if I could do this project in a way that had permanence, that I could look at and remember anytime I needed that "gratitude life", that would be even better.

So on the last day of 2000, my husband and I and our two children, Sean and Hayley, sat down in our half-demolished dining room, and created our gratitude poster.

We used a large sheet of black posterboard, and my collection of gel pens. I used oil pastels for the title: Gratitude 2000. Then, with a green gel pen, I wrote along the edges, creating one continuous line that served to border the outside of the poster.

Inside this border, each of us began writing our gratitudes. And that afternoon, we each discovered that despite the mess and the dust and the cold, there were so many things we were grateful for in 2000. So many things that were unremembered every time we surveyed the disaster that was our house.

I've hung the poster in my office, where the family tends to congregate these days. It's come in handy many times so far this year; every time I'm feeling down about the state of the renovations, I walk over and reread everything we've written. And I remember that there are still so many things for which I'm grateful.

We are still living in an incomplete house, but there's hope. Earlier this last week a series of synchronicities occurred, and we are now waiting to hear if a reputable builder, a good friend of a good friend, will be able to take on the difficult task of correcting all the mistakes that were made. And in the meantime, my gratitude poster continues to help me get through the worse days.

Belle Wong is the editor of Creativityforlife.com and The Altruistic Web.

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