Getting position while ignoring empty elements

Hi,

Is it possible  to find the position of an element while ignoring all 
elements containing no text. For example, given the following:
<furniture>
<item>table</item>
<item/>
<item>chair</item>
</furniture>

I would like to output:

Furniture
1. table
2. chair

Should I match all the <item> elements and then only process the ones 
containing text or should I be matching only those items that are not empty?
Thanks for your help

David