Three beautiful things from a rather down week:

1. Trader Joe’s sells bouquets of ten tightly closed daffodils from a dry bucket. When you get home, you’re supposed to cut off the ends and put the flowers in water and then, à la peanut butter sandwich, the next morning you have a vase of sunshine.

2. We’ve largely been spared by the brain-numbing cold that has blanketed much of the country this week (don’t tell the Southerners who live in D.C. that; they were convinced they had it rough), but it did bring us a snow shower one afternoon that disappeared before the ground got cold enough for anything to stick. No shoveling and no ice and pretty snow falling from the sky is about as big a winter win as you’re likely to get. (I apologize to those in the cold to whom that sounds like gloating.)

3. A card arrived in the mail this week from an unexpected source, but was so kind and so appreciated.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Today has been an absolutely craptastic day. I briefly considered that nothing seemed beautiful, but I know that’s not true from the perspective of one less dented in spirit than I, so I capitulated to tradition, against my lesser angels.

Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Our friend Heidi had not an inkling when she returned home from dinner with friends that her her house was crammed with guests who wanted to wish her a happy 50th birthday.

2. I surrender the joy of bashing graham crackers to smithereens to Rudi as we make chocolate-butterscotch bars for tea.

3. On New Year’s Eve, one of the films we watched was On the Basis of Sex, the biopic of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s formative law school and early career years. I was so captured by it (and by its local subject) that I borrowed the documentary RBG from the library. I’m delighted to report that it is also delightful and you will find the justice to be even more captivating after watching it than you thought before. (And it’s nominated for an Oscar in the documentary category, in case you care about that sort of thing.)

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. It’s not getting dark until after 5.

2. I get to the bagel shop just after they open, and they have a single bag of day-olds waiting for me — and warm everything bagels fresh out of the oven.

3. I’ve been baking in the afternoons the past couple days so Rudi and I can have teatime when he gets home from work. (The cookies above are a variation on Gramma cookies I baked today on what would have been her birthday.)

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I went to the store to find new slippers and came home with a cheerful orange dress that should be appropriate to wear to a new job — and that was marked down to $11 in clearance.

2. Although there was a gusty wind and a chill in the air, the sky was blue and the sun was out today.

3. Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, so thanks to Rudi’s mom being born in Russia, he grew up with a “Little Christmas” in addition to the more traditional Western celebration on Dec. 25. He gave me two very pretty skeins of fingering weight yarn and a purple faux fur pompom that you see above.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I got the chance to try the recent ice cream addition to the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, Mount Desert Island Ice Cream. I opted for a cone of Cranberry Bar Bliss, modeled after the Starbucks holiday dessert. The creamsicle-flavored base was studded with white chocolate chips and candied cranberries and ginger. It was delicious.

2. On of my favorite things about walking around D.C. is getting to see all the brightly-hued murals tucked away into corners of the city, like this one, Anne Marchand’s “Community,” on a wall overlooking a park/playground in Shaw.

3. All sorts of flowering shrubs and bushes are blooming right now, including rhododendron and roses.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. My friend’s mother, who is recuperating from complications relating to surgery, got to come home on Christmas Day.

2. There was conversational snow on Christmas Eve.

3. We got a late jump on our drive north Saturday, which meant we were driving through northern New Jersey along the Garden State Parkway after dark, rather than during daylight. After disappointing me after Thanksgiving, the New Jerseyans of that area reclaimed their title of most festive neighborhoods of the mid-Atlantic with their cheerful and abundant holiday light displays.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?