Time to Refresh Your Spirit

This adorable Kashmir Paisley Pillow from Peter Dunham has me seeing green in a whole new way this week. I love the traditional holiday red and green, but each year I reach a point where I can't wait to stash all the ornaments away and give the house a good cleaning. Then I'll bring home a flowering pot of spring bulbs (preferably scented) from the grocery store. The new year has then officially started for me.

I suggest that after you, too, pack away the last of the tinsel and ribbons, consider a freshening up with a bit of spring for your home. Paperwhites, such as these from White Flower Farm, are a great way to start. There are still plenty of these kits available in my local grocery and hardware stores. A few more ideas in green and white are offered below to get you started.

Zesty Arugula, Fennel and Orange salad recipe from Williams Sonoma

Wee Key Lime Tartlets recipe from Smitten Kitchen

Trivsam bowl from Ikea

Iris dish towel, also from Ikea

Fern wall decorations by Two's Company from Country Living

My guilty pleasure

Choose the White and green bamboo bowls and white salad servers from West Elm

For a more ambitious effort, try a fresh green pair of curtains and 

a crisp new white slipcover, like this example from Country Living

Start a terrarium to sooth your winter weary soul. I love this sweet
IndieBliss Hippo Terrarium from The Fern and Mossery.

Still love this image from our visit to Dumbarton Oaks in late
September. I'm trying to remember how ridiculously hot it was that day!

Museum Days at Dumbarton Oaks

We've been to Dumbarton Oaks on many occasions, at different times of the year. This was the first visit we've made in September.

Now, in the past couple of years, the grounds of this venerable Washington, D.C. estate founded by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss had started to fall into gentle decay. It has been a bit heartbreaking to see the creeping neglect - the weeds, the murky pond scum, the abandoned gardening equipment - overcome the grounds as the recession must have obviously pruned the budget. But for the national Museum Days opening on September 25, the admission was free and the grounds were immaculate. Every blade of grass was trimmed, every weed pulled, every boxwood perfectly clipped. You'd have thought the Queen herself was expected to arrive at any moment.

The highlight, however, surely had to be sculptor Patrick Doughtery's ethereal windswept willow structures ringing the Ellipse. What did they look like? Hobbit houses in a tornado? Wooly mammoths on parade? You could enjoy them on many levels. Best of all, it was possible to walk inside of them, just like the lean-tos and makeshift shelters that my friends and I would make in the woods. Read more about Mr. Dougherty's work in the New York Times.

Another delight are the various small structures on the property. I especially love the three garden sheds in the Kitchen Garden, with their terracotta tiled roofs with lead flashing.

This is a place to return to time and again.