Miranda Lambert counts her blessings in the country music scene

Miranda Lambert can point to all sorts of things she has now that she didn't have a decade ago when she launched her career in country music.

The singer and songwriter has racked up a string of four hit albums, six No1 chart hits, a Grammy award, 18 Academy of Country Music trophies and seven from the Country Music Association.

On the home front, she's married to a fellow country singer, coach Blake Shelton. She also owns two Pink Pistol merchandise stores, is getting ready to open a bed-and-breakfast in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, where she and Shelton live, and has enthusiastically championed the MuttNation animal shelter near Nashville.

But as she sits on the sofa in the Hollywood office of her publicist recently to talk about the release of her fifth album, (out now), it sounds as though the one thing she's built up in greater quantity than anything she possessed 10 years ago is gratitude.

"I'm so happy to be here and to have this spot," says the native Texan. "I know more at 30 years old what it means than I did at 20. I appreciate it more now than I did then. Now I know how much work it is, how much time away from home it takes and how much pressure comes with it."

Lambert may have thrown her Stetson in the ring by way of the long-shot reality TV singing competition route - she placed third in the 2003 inaugural season of , country's answer to - but she's clearly interested in the long haul, not the quick rise and fall.