Greenbelt is a nice park, and the campground is safe and secure, with a staffed ranger station right at the entrance. Take the same precautions you'd take in any public campground and you'll be fine. The College Park Metro is closer to the campground than the Greenbelt Station. Ask at the ranger station about a 200 yard trail to Parkdale School, where you can catch a Metrobus to the station on weekdays. Otherwise, plan on hoofing it 2.5 miles in muggy Washington weather to College Park Metro, or three miles to Greenbelt Metro. Greenbelt has a large parking area though, so if you have a car, you can park there for the day and get around on the Metro quite easily. Actually, there are many wonderful restaurants in downtown DC: far better options than the Smithsonian cafeterias run by Aramark. They run from cheap to high dollar.

yillimuh and probookie, I'm running late but I just have to post: I think we need to schedule mutual house tours! I'm so with you, yillimuh -- most of what I've collected I've 'acquired' from thrifts, and that includes serigraphs and oils worth thousands as well as really well done, unusual paint-by-numbers. The three of us have similar tastes, and probookie, the Lady Godiva is delicious -- who did it? I have many three-dimensional pieces as well, including midcentury textiles and studio pottery/ceramic by PNW artists that was made for hanging and midcentury brass by some of the usual suspects. Even an African wood inlay piece of women going down to a waterfront with big baskets on their heads -- on the laundry room door, palimpsest : ) My taste runs from the most abstract to the PNW Mt. Hood landscape -- I like different things for different reasons. We also have a vintage aerial photo of Grand Army Plaza/Prospect Park and a map from when Prospect Park was being proposed (that we found out here, of all places--no one else wanted it at an estate sale so we got it for a great price!) because that's where DH and I got married. Not too many other sentimental pieces up, other than one piece by DD of the Nutcracker Suite when she was very young that I put in a huge rococo frame : ) I grew up in a world of reproductions -- those mdf-mounted things from the Met -- and posters. As an immigrant from the middle east educated in Europe, my father completely worshipped European high culture. Reproductions were the closest he could get. My American, Bryn-Mawr-educated mother had a few nicer pieces she got during her 'world tour' in the late 40s, but otherwise, that was it. The reproductions actually worked the way my parents intended, which was to have me growing up looking at excellent art, even though they couldn't afford it. Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction" was not only significant in a theoretical way to my professional work later on, but *so* personally resonant for me. I'm still amazed by his insight. I wish he hadn't died when he did.

Awesome suggestions! I've been sparked! @njmomma: I like this example. As the original buffet comes with a mirror, I don't like it. Perhaps a separate vintage mirror would be nice to reflect some light in the space. Then I can hang pictures around it. @yvonne: I have hordes of pottery and you bring up a good idea; instead of buying more art I should hang my pottery on the wall, after taking off the mirror top. We have quite a few family pictures; in our previous home the buffet was flanked by those vintage items. However as this space has less traffic than the front hallway where I was considering for the family pictures, I'll keep the pottery in this location and the family pictures in the front hallway. @holly: I'm refining my mint favorites. I'm looking at reds, oranges in abstracts and landscapes. However previous suggestions of using pottery may put Minted on the back burner. @tedbixby: yes I have considered putting the wicker chairs on either side of the buffet..To the right of the buffet is a dry sink which is normally in the living room but due to the Christmas tree we had to switch it out with a drop leaf table (which is usually to the right of the buffet under the window). @grover: the room functions as it is. There's a dog pen because we have to pen them when we're gone. We don't use a dining room table, so it doesn't need to function as that. And we have an abundance of antiques but less room than our previous house so we have to find a wall for them. I wish we could put them in storage, but these are my husband's family pieces and he's not interested in doing that. And he's not ready to reduce the inventory, so we have to work with the pieces in the square footage that we have.

About the crib bumper legislation (which was introduced last year and signed into law this past May) -- it prohibits the manufacture, sale, and distribution of padded crib bumper pads (and inclined sleepers). However, I don't believe that even the "distribution" provision applies to homemade, home-sewn crib bumpers, which is the case above. So parents and parents-to-be need to educate themselves, and if Grandma wants to sew something, suggest something else. Bumpers aside, I very much appreciated her not overly decorated son's room and the use of furniture from elsewhere in the house on a temporary basis, until her son is older. I can't stand the recent social media trend of hyper-decorated "nurseries" which have the lifespan of a fruitfly, and then the blogger/influencer redoes the room when the kid becomes a toddler, again as a preschooler, again a few years later, etc.