I'm thrilled to announce that Calm Cradle Photo & Design has just opened a shop on Society6. Now you can purchase not only prints but framed art; stretched canvas; stationery; pillows; and cases and skins for iPhone, iPod, iPad and laptop. Society6 does all the production work, which translates to lower pricing for you. Yippee!
I've been busy filling the shop with older work as well as new photos, but it will take some time to post my entire collection and rework this website. I hope to keep the shop dynamic by continuously adding new work, so check back often. As always, please contact me if you are interested in custom-sized prints or stationery or would like to purchase one of my photos that has not yet appeared in the shop. From now through 7/14/13 you'll get free shipping on most products in the Calm Cradle Photo & Design Shop. Click on any shop link in this post to receive the discount. (You must order through one of these links to activate the discount. This offer excludes framed art prints, stretched canvases and throw pillows with insert.)
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When I hear lavender, I think Provence. Well it turns out there's a lavender farm just 45 minutes from our house, despite the fact that our climate in good old Zone 7 makes growing the plant a challenge. We met the owner of Sunshine Lavender Farm a few years ago at a local farmers' market and bought several lavender plants from her. Since then we haven't been the best lavender nurturers. So when we received an invitation to attend the farm's Lavender Harvest Celebration the first weekend of June, we were eager to investigate a successful operation. Plus it sounded idyllic. And it was just that—amazingly idyllic. The farm is a private family home open to the public just a couple days each year. My entourage enjoyed wandering the field and smelling the lavender. Lavender hung in the barn loft to dry, while horses, dogs, chickens and kittens enjoyed the good life below. Lavender spilled from vintage bicycle baskets and every other type of container and garden bed. Adjacent to the lavender field sat the sweetest garden shed you'll ever lay eyes on, brimming with products like lavender honey (the bees live here, too), dried lavender for baking and fragrant soaps. Outside the shed, vendors sold lavender ice cream from a local dairy, along with lavender lemonade and other delectable goodies. One day my window boxes will look like this, but until then I'll just have to get my fill of them the next time we're invited to the farm. Planning your next adventure? Click here for more inspiration.
It only took about 13 months, but I've finally managed—on really, really good days when all the stars align—to get the girls to overlap their naps for about an hour. Then I race around trying to finish all the things I started the last time they performed this blessed nap miracle. Nora usually takes a shorter snooze, which means I have my work cut out for me trying to keep her quiet so Cricket can sleep. Lately Nora and I have gotten into the routine of sneaking outside for a few minutes when she firsts wakes up to sniff flowers and find bugs around our little yard. Here are a few things we've had our eyes on lately. Our purple coneflowers are loving the overabundance of rain this season. (It's been pouring for days on end.) They remind me of the garden at my childhood home. Our poor lavender is recuperating in a large pot on the back deck. It turns out lavender plants do not appreciate living next to a downspout or being dug up by a dog or two. Lesson learned. The plate hibiscus is growing so large in the bed around our mailbox that I fear it is actually going to gobble up the mailbox. But that's fine as long as it finishes off the bills in there, too. This shiny little beetle exploring the hibiscus entertained Nora for several minutes...until she attempted to squish it. Are we following each other on Instagram? You can find me here.
One thing I love about Colorado is that if you head an hour in any direction you'll find yourself in a drastically different environment from where you started, both ecologically and culturally. On our early May travel to Denver, which I wrote about here, we couldn't resist taking day trips to two of our favorite and varied spots: Boulder and Summit County. Boulder sits at the base of the Flatirons (above from Chautauqua) and is quite a lovely little place. We started our morning with a trip to the Boulder Farmers' Market, which was packed with organic produce, dairy, flowers, coffee and baked goods (naturally we made a beeline for the baked goods). How I love some Colorado blue columbine. Next we headed to Chautauqua for a short hike—the only type we can manage with the littles at this stage, since one of them is walking and gets easily distracted by things like streams and flowers. Chautauqua has a fascinating history (check out the website) and serves as a gateway to the Flatirons. As you begin your hike, you get an incredible view of the mountains. (Thanks to my sister, Mari, for taking the photo below of Nora and me on Nora's birthday hike.) When you turn around, you're in for a nice surprise: the entire city of Boulder laid out before you. After our hike, we headed to Mountain Sun for lunch, then wandered around the downtown Pearl Street Mall. By that point, it was time to eat again. So we wandered over to one of the most fabulous places in Colorado for some birthday high tea: The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. As usual, it was divine. Really, the Dushanbe is a must when in Boulder. (Here's a detail of the ceiling.) And with that, we were too stuffed full of pastries and unusual teas to do anything but pile into the car and head back to Denver to go to bed. Another day, we headed west along I-70 about 90 minutes into the mountains to our old stomping ground of Summit County, home to five famous ski resorts. We've spent several seasons and many weekend trips there, but it was our first visit since the summer of 2011. The approach is both stunning (below you see the Gore Range with Buffalo Mountain on the left and Red Peak on the right) and death defying (do you know what a runaway truck ramp is?). On the drive, we set a personal best for animal sightings, including a flock of bighorn sheep (below), two herds of elk and the Denver buffalo herd. First we stopped in Frisco at our favorite lunch spot, Butterhorn Bakery, then crossed the street to browse the cutest shop in the county, The Next Page Bookstore & Tea Bar. Both places are just down Main Street from the Summit Daily News, where I worked during the summer of 2008. (You can find a few of my favorite stories from that summer here.)
There was still a fair amount of snow in the mountains, which isn't unusual in early May at the valley's elevation of 9,200 feet. Hiking was out of the question and we weren't prepared to ski with the girls, so we made just one more stop before heading back to Denver: the Dillon Marina playground. Not a bad view for a playground. Just don't forget your sunscreen. Colorado has been on my mind lately; several areas have already been hit hard by wildfires this season. So it seems fitting to post (finally) some field notes from our trip to Denver in early May. The shots above and below have nothing to do with wildfire—just regular old sunsets over the Front Range from the condo we rented in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Our impetus for traveling to Colorado during that awkward time of year when winter activities are grinding to a halt but summer is still a ways off was a business trip of Jeff's. But I'll take whatever chance comes my way to head to the Rockies and see my Denver-dwelling little sister. Later this week I'll post about our day trips to Boulder and Summit County, but here I'll focus on our adventures around Denver. Below clockwise from left: A pretty church on 9th...after we got six inches of snow in May. Another perfect sunset. A visit to my favorite—and the most swoon-worthy—bookstore in all the land, Tattered Cover on Colfax Avenue. The pavilion at Cheesman Park. And another view from Cheesman Park, overlooking the mountains. We spent a delightful morning at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Spring flowers were just beginning to bloom around the grounds, which was strange considering that our home in North Carolina was already feeling like a tropical rainforest of neon green foliage. Can you guess Cricket's favorite part of our garden visit? Yep, this pond full of toads...which were doing what toads do in the spring, but I'll spare you photos of that. We took a nice stroll through City Park with my sister and her little dog, known to Cricket as "Doggy Peter," to distinguish him from her two human cousins named Peter. I'm not sure what the girls enjoyed more: exploring the park or feeding Peter treats. We also came upon this tree of nesting cormorants, which surprised me since I think of them as sea birds. Now let's talk about food, because our family likes to eat. A lot. One highlight was our ladies' lunch at Udi's, which opened recently next to Tattered Cover. Another highlight was joining my sister and her friends for their tradition of "Sunday Supper" at Lala's Wine Bar + Pizzeria, which involved a four-course family-style meal for $10 per person, plus plenty of wine and ridiculous stories.
We also checked out several local coffee shops around town. Pablo's Coffee offered the most authentic coffee shop feel. Drip had the best mocha but little ambience. Roostercat Coffee House didn't serve up a great coffee but had a nice outdoor patio with a fire pit, which would have been a cozy spot to hang out had it not been hidden under six inches of snow. A tasty brunch menu beckoned us to Shells & Sauce, an outing made extra sweet by the fact that my sister and her boyfriend offered to take the girls to the Denver Zoo so we could have a quiet meal. De-lish. (They even wore Nora out so much that she took a long nap.) Three years ago, I was honored to be asked to speak at my high school’s Cum Laude Society induction ceremony the night before graduation. Since it’s that time of year again, I thought it would be fun to share with you a slightly abridged version of the advice I gave to the graduates. Here goes: One night, [now] 10 years ago, I sat alone in my tent staring at a paper packet covered in cartoon worms and wondering whether I would survive the night. The front of the packet contained no words. Just yellow, orange and blue worms that seemed to wriggle right off the paper. I emptied the packet’s contents—what I had been assured was anti-parasite powder—into my water bottle and shook it until the particles dissolved. After a few deep breaths, I gulped down the mixture, which tasted suspiciously like Tang. I was in the middle of a two-month stint as a field research assistant in remote Madagascar studying primate behavior, and had managed to pick up some sort of stomach parasite that was about ready to finish me off. The nearest hospital was a three-day trek by car over washed-out dirt roads. But we had no car. Or any mode of communication with the world outside the nature reserve where we were living. So I just curled up in my sleeping bag to fend off the falling temperatures and lay listening to the growing sounds of night in the spiny desert. As I fell asleep, all I could think was: “What the hell am I doing here?” Upon beginning the field work, I figured out quickly that lying on my back under trees that spew human-blinding sap to observe lemurs—the least evolved of all primates—forage and groom, hardly resembled the romantic Jane Goodall-esque experience I had hoped for. Neither did scouring the forest floor to collect lemur fecal samples for hormone testing. I decided I could now safely check primatology off my list of potential careers. Did that make this entire adventure—or misadventure—a massive, reckless mistake? After all, I had been reduced to entrusting my life to the Malagasy version of Tang and still had no career path on the horizon. And if I died out here in the middle of nowhere, my parents would kill me! As it turned out, the Miracle Tang worked. I survived the night and made it home a month later. And, after losing 15 pounds during the trip, I was relieved to be back in a land of clean water, electricity and properly labeled anti-parasite medications. I also began to realize that the experience was far from a misstep off the path to a fulfilling career and an exciting life. It was the path—or a segment of the path, anyway. What I gained from the Madagascar experience far outweighed what I originally thought the opportunity could offer me. Because when I was not studying lemurs, I was playing with the village children, taking thousands of photographs and keeping a journal on my observations of life in a developing country where children in remote areas never even get the opportunity to learn the language of education or business (in this case French), where the infant mortality rate is more than 10 times that in the U.S. and where endemic plants and animals are tragically and rapidly being destroyed. When I returned to school that fall, I put together a photo exhibit juxtaposing pictures of Madagascar’s children with the broken landscapes they will one day inherit, hoping to elicit from the audience the same question with which I was struggling: What will be left for these children? Seeing the lack of public health services where I had lived further drew me to the field of public health. And I couldn’t stop writing about what I had witnessed, if only to organize the thoughts that haunted my mind every time I ate a meal that did not consist of rice and beans, or took a shower that did not come from a 2-gallon plastic bag filled with water I had drawn from a well and laid out to warm in the sun. Little by little, the lessons I gathered from what I thought was a random summer in Madagascar seemed to weave together a picture of my future that I hadn’t seen clearly before. I realized my interests in writing, photography, health, environment, science and international development were not disparate after all. I did not have to follow a prescribed path deeply into one field at the expense of my passion for the others. I was not flailing, as I had felt I was for most of college! All it took was a few parasites and a couple groups of lemurs to show me that I really was moving forward, on my own path. Following these varied interests led me to: work in the fields of public health and international development; write for numerous publications; intern at National Geographic and other magazines and newspapers; create photographic documentaries, travel extensively, earn a master’s degree in medical journalism and try my hand at freelance writing and photography. I cringe to think what I might be doing now if I had never taken a risk and ventured to Madagascar or to the many other places and jobs I’ve landed along the way. If I had stuck to a path that was safer, one where I seized opportunities only if I knew exactly where they would lead, I would be lost in someone else’s world right now. As you prepare to graduate, you may or may not have given much thought to your career path. Regardless, you will probably feel pressured at some point, by your peers, your parents, your professors or your employers to head in a direction that is of their liking, and which may be quite far from yours. You may be tempted by the careers that many consider the most prestigious. And those careers can be great options for people who are passionate about them. But open your eyes to the limitless possibilities that await you. You owe it to yourself and the world in which you live to find something—or always keep searching for it if it eludes you—that you love, that you are good at and that will give you the opportunity to contribute in some way to the society in which you live. As you head off to college, your world will broaden. You will encounter courses on topics of which you’ve never heard. You will meet professors and visiting lecturers who are the most accomplished researchers or practitioners in their fields. You will befriend students with life experiences very different from your own, and from whom you will learn quite a bit. The opportunities will be endless. But they may also take more effort to find—both inside and outside the scope of your university—and to whittle down to manageable proportions. They can be overwhelming. So here are a few tips that might help you discover your own path—one that balances career and life and brings in an income. (Yes, you have to do something that will get you off your parents’ payroll.) First, be adventurous. Seek out and try new things even when you don’t know where they’ll lead you —whether they are unusual jobs or research opportunities, travel that might be less than comfortable or even dates with people who aren’t your perfect match on paper. Trial and error is your best friend. Second, if you haven’t already, learn to communicate well. And I’m not talking about texting. A strong communicator can talk or write her way to success in any field. You could be a world-class engineer, but it will still be difficult to land your dream job without a convincing cover letter or, in the very least, an introductory email that involves proper punctuation, the word “you” spelled “y-o-u” instead of just “u” and a distinct lack of smiley faces. If you develop a treatment for a life-threatening disease but can’t for the life of you put together a journal article or presentation that demonstrates the strength of your trials, you’re out of luck. And so is the rest of the world. So make sure you can write and speak persuasively. Third, speaking of journals, please learn how to read and evaluate—even in a basic sense—a scientific journal article. I don’t care if you plan to be an English major or if you took a vow of scientific celibacy following your AP biology exam. In the age of infotainment, don’t take anyone’s word for anything. You have easier access to information than any previous generation, so learn how to use it well. Go straight to the source and figure out how to devour it to become a more informed citizen. Fourth, learn to listen to the other point of view—with grace. (I’m still struggling with this one.) Very few things in life are clear-cut, and the grey zone is what makes life interesting. You will open many more doors for yourself if you can be sympathetic and practical than if you are simply arrogant. Fifth, get out of your bubble—whatever your personal bubble may be. There is always more of the world to soak in and try to understand. I can’t encourage you enough to study abroad and stay with a foreign family. Learn another language. Volunteer on the opposite side of town from where you grew up. Or take a class that sounds intriguing even if you might not earn an “A.” Sixth, find balance between work and play. Until now, you have had a fairly regimented schedule of required courses and sports practices and family obligations. Now it’s pretty much up to you. And you will struggle for the rest of your life to find the proper balance of your time. Sometimes you will fail and pay the consequences, but always try to regain that balance—it’s worth it, especially once you have a family. And lastly, develop your powers of discernment. Learn to distinguish what is right for you—based on your own strengths, interests and experiences—from the path that is simply popular or expected. High school, I hope, has prepared you well for the future of your choosing. But let the process be one of trial and error. Seek out all types of adventures and learn from them. Learn what you enjoy learning. Learn how you enjoy spending your day. Learn the level of stress that prods you into productivity but keeps you from becoming institutionalized. And learn what you dream of for your future family, so you can find the balance to realize those dreams.
You don’t have to be fighting parasites in the middle of Madagascar to find your path. In fact, your parents would probably appreciate if your path were a little tamer. But don’t sell yourself short. You have already demonstrated in high school that you are prepared to take the world by storm. So do just that. The world awaits you. Congratulations! Perfect summer weather—and the fancy wading pool Jeff brought home—have drawn us into the backyard every day lately. Our plants are exploding after heavy rains during the first half of May, making it feel like we live in the tropics. Deliciously scented honeysuckle has blanketed the back fence. The small dogwood we planted outside the kitchen a few years ago is covered in twice as many blooms as it had last year. And if you look closely, you may even spot some wildlife. Click here to check out more from posts from Around the house.
Happy May Day! As kids, we used to roll cones out of paper, fill them with flowers and leave them on our neighbors' doorsteps on May Day. I'm not sure where that tradition came from, but no one outside the neighborhood seems to know what I'm talking about when I mention it! Do you have May Day traditions? Maybe next year we'll get our act together to deliver flowers to our neighbors, but this year I'm sharing them electronically. Here are a few blooms from around our yard. Enjoy! P.S. Despite the photos, I'm actually posting from Denver....where we are in the mid!
My posts have been travel heavy over the last few months; we've been on the road almost as much as we've been home, which doesn't leave much time for creative endeavors. Believe me, it takes all the creativity I can muster to get our luggage together to fly with two tiny kids. (Crayons? Check. Treats? Check. Books? Check. Sanity? Hmm...) We have one more trip on the books for this month—Colorado!—and then I'm planning to stay put for a few weeks or even months. I've got a long list of neglected project ideas to tackle, and I'm sure the girls would appreciate spending their afternoons playing in the backyard before it gets too hot to venture out. Next week I'll be sharing a post about the one project we've managed to complete lately: our new raised garden beds. Until then, here's a quick DC dispatch. This post was supposed to be filled with gorgeous photos from the National Cherry Blossom Festival. It is not. Our recent trip up to DC happened to coincide with the estimated peak bloom dates. But after a few weeks of colder-than-average weather, we arrived just as the estimated peak was pushed back by several weeks. Regardless, we had a lovely and snowy visit to the city. While there a million activities to do and places to eat in and around DC, I'm going to share with you just a few that we hit up this time. First let's talk about family-friendly food. Cafe Deluxe in Bethesda was packed with families enjoying Saturday brunch...though we may have been most boisterous family present. Guapo's has been a decades-long favorite Mexican spot of my DC relatives (and therefore a decades-long favorite of mine), so naturally we had to introduce the girls to it via take-out. And have you tried HomeMade Pizza? They sell prepared pizzas and calzones to take home and bake. A friend brought over some calzones, along with a giant chocolate chip cookie. We baked them while we got the girls ready for bed, then devoured dinner as soon as the house was quiet. The cookie lasted approximately 30 seconds. Now we must discuss one of my all-time favorite bookstores: Politics and Prose, which I first visited as a kid with my aunt and uncle about 20 years ago. (I’m not really old enough to say that, am I?) It’s always on my list of stops when I'm back in town. Of course this visit was different for two reasons: 1) I had the little one with me and 2) I've become a caffeine addict, preferably in mocha form, since said kids arrived in my life. These differences caused me to make the following discoveries: 1) The store has a great kids' section. We even happened upon a musical story hour, about which Nora was hand-clapping enthusiastic and Cricket was mildly terrified. And 2) Modern Times Coffeehouse, on the lower level, makes an incredible mocha, which is the measure by which all coffeehouses should be evaluated. Oh, and did I mention that Politics and Prose has an espresso book machine? I've been dreaming of printing books on one of those nifty machines for years but haven't finished anything worthy. Yet. Unlike musical story hour, animals are popular with both our girls. We spent a morning at the National Zoo and are still talking about all our animal sightings. I had forgotten how pleasant it is to walk around the zoo, especially on a cool morning before the crowds arrive. Planning your next adventure? Click here for more ideas.
We've been home a week and I'm still pining over Charlottesville's mountain farms, its astounding ratio of independent bookstores/coffee shops to humans and its extensive arts scene. Do I see a moving truck in our future? Well, maybe somewhere in the hazy distance. But for now I'll just have to be satisfied by sharing some travel tips. Let's start with the surroundings. One afternoon I knew the girls would refuse to nap at our rental house, so I loaded them into the car for a scenic drive, grabbed my camera and headed out of town on Route 20 towards Barboursville, which is about 30 minutes away. They fell asleep immediately as I enjoyed winding through ranches and vineyards, most of which looked a little something like the photo above. Not a bad nap-time view. When I spotted the tiny roadside All Saints Episcopal Chapel along Route 20 in Stony Point, I couldn't help but pull over to admire it from the moss-covered front lawn. The chapel holds services twice a month. You can't visit Charlottesville without walking around the historic "grounds" (apparently it's not called campus) of the University of Virginia. We were a couple weeks early to witness the full effect of spring in the school's gardens, but that didn't stop us from having lots of fun playing with a garden gate and finding a few early blooms. I'm looking forward to checking it out again in the summer or fall, along with Monticello's extensive gardens. Before heading to campus—er, the grounds—we grabbed a bite to eat and some caffeine at two Charlottesville establishments: Bodo's Bagels and Para Coffee. Both sit across the street from the school in an era known as The Corner, which has plenty of food options. The city's downtown walking mall is about a mile down the road. Welcome to the land of coffee shops (Java Java makes a mean mocha), bookstores (New Dominion Bookshop is the oldest independent bookseller in Virginia), restaurants (Jeff had a delicious business dinner at Commonwealth Restaurant and Skybar; I had my eye on Citizen Burger Bar but didn't make it there, so it's first on my list for our next visit) and boutiques with the cutest baby gifts known to man (O, Suzannah and Petit Bebe). I found a sweet handmade romper for Nora's birthday at the C'ville Arts Cooperative Gallery and could have easily bought an armload (or carload?) of other items. While I was exploring, Cricket had a blast with her cousins at the Virginia Discovery Museum. Just a few blocks from the walking mall, we stumbled upon the Main Street Market a brilliant purple building packed with artisan shops. We hit up Feast! for cheese, fruit and Virginia wine (which was actually quite good); Albemarle Bread Company for baguettes (which could easily have passed as Parisian) and The Spice Diva for sea salt. One word: yum. Go to this market. Some of our family is lucky enough to live outside of Charlottesville, and I couldn't resist including a few photos of the view from their house. Here's one from the golden hour before sunset. And here's an Instagram from midday. Sometimes I convince myself that if I could just set up an office with a view like this one, my novel would write itself in a few weeks. But then I remember I'm a full-time mom to two tiny girls, so my office view has nothing to do with my lack of novel writing. The landscape would still be inspiring, though. I'll be posting a dispatch from our recent trip to Washington, DC, next week. Planning an adventure? Click here for more ideas.
P.S. We're big into hiking but didn't get a chance to explore much of the mountains on this trip. Perhaps we'll head to Shenandoah National Park on our next visit. |
My new book is out! Click to learn more about it.Hello thereI'm Julia Soplop, writer and photographer. I believe there is something profound in bearing witness to moments of joy and pain in others’ lives. My husband, three girls and I live outside of Chapel Hill, NC. You can read more about me here.
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