The first Thursday of a new year brings a fresh opportunity to highlight some beauty of both the outgoing and incoming calendars. Here are just three such moments from the past week:

1. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are so unseasonably warm it encourages spending time outdoors. We bike to and from the cinema for our annual film watching marathon, and we spend most of our time at Michael and Julia’s open house sitting on their deck.

2. Before the second of our New Year’s Eve movies, someone from the movie theater comes in and describes their upcoming features in an excited kind of way. It feels very homey, and, as Sarah said, alerts us that the staff are film aficionados.

3. Up early for a meeting, I am toasting an English muffin and doing something else at the same time when I turn around to discover that my toaster oven is on fire (we apparently hadn’t emptied the crumb catch in a really long time; that’s now been remedied). Because I am right there, I can blow it out, and the sirens that stop at our intersection not five minutes later are not for us.

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

Final Thursday of the year must mean final three beautiful things of 2011, too. Here we go:

1. A construction crew (I assume) has decorated a small pine tree in the median of the Merritt Parkway.

2. The buzzing that has been a constant in my head since October subsides finally after Christmas. If something has been forgotten/missed/overlooked/left undone, it’s too late to do anything about it, and that’s such a relief.

3. I received some truly lovely Christmas presents this year, but my most favorite was time with my parents, Gramma, Rudi, and Karen and her family. I never get as much of it as I’d like, so I try really hard to savor that which I’m given.

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

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your holidays are full of laughter and light and loved ones.

Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I have forgotten to transfer my cash from one outfit to the next, but don’t realize this until after I place my order. The man at the counter tells me just to give him what I have and calls it close enough. “There’s no reason to get upset about it. Pay me the next time you come in,” he says, even though I have never been in before. But I will be back, Pumpernickels Deli, I will be back.

2. I take my car in to have the blower replaced, since it hasn’t worked since we brought it down to D.C. two years ago. Turns out that a family of mice had made a very weather-proof home once upon a time, and now that the insulation is cleared out of the old blower and the vents, my little car has a defroster — and heat! — again.

3. I paint my fingernails alternatingly red and green. The polish is not quick-dry and so I make a big mess of everything, but the payoff is equally large, as I have cheerful hands and receive compliments from a surprising number of people.

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

Ten days until Christmas!

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. The first Christmas cards arrive.

2. A couple wearing Santa hats pedal past me on a bike built for two.

3. A nearly full moon rises over the Eastern Market Christmas tree.

How about you? What was beautiful in your world this week?

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Merry Tuba Christmas at the Kennedy Center is filled with 300 deep, innards-rumbling instruments. It makes “Good King Wenceslas” and “Joy to the World” that much more fun to sing along with.

2. Having the Burrow slowly fill up with people for a party and then having it empty back out again.

3. The books I’m reading are bumming me out and I decide I need a change. I grab the copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales Mum and Dad gave me for my birthday and tuck it in my bag. I pull it out while waiting for the train and start to read — aloud but under my breath — and instantly feel calmer. Somehow, being read to (even if I am the one doing the reading) just feels right.

How about you? What was beautiful in your world this week?

Hello, December! Fancy meeting you here and now. I need a little more time to properly prepare for your arrival, though, so would you mind terribly doing another loop around the block and come back a smidge later? Thanks.

Three beautiful things from my past week (in November):

1. After my parents leave to take the guys to the airport, Rudi and I curl up in my folks’ recliners and read all afternoon — he from his computer and I from a Christmas-themed library book. It’s just the sort of down time we haven’t had in a long while.

2. The day Karen and I have set aside to meet up is unseasonably warm. We intersperse gingerbread pancakes and book shopping with a stroll along the river (sans jackets!) and chatting over hot drinks outdoors.

3. I spend the afternoon decorating Gramma’s tree with Dad and decorating Spritz cookies with Mum. Everyone feels the encroachment of time, but doing fun things together helps to take the sting out of leaving.

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