Shopping spree: What bizarre kids’ products are you missing out on?

If your baby has an iPotty (training potty with iPad attached, obviously), your toddler boys have portable urinals, and you and your daughter are currently wearing matching breastmilk-pendant necklaces, congratulations! You’re taking advantage of some of the completely absurd new and innovative parenting products available today. If you’re a slacker dark-ages parent like me, you […]

Staunton Music Festival: celebrating a living tradition

Staunton hasn’t heard about “the death of classical music.” The little Shenandoah Valley city with the handsome, historic downtown and the rich reputation for the performing arts celebrates a living tradition each summer with the Staunton Music Festival, drawing larger crowds each year for dynamic and innovative chamber music concerts. The 2014 event, August 15-24, […]

Retiring early? Mind the gap!

According to a recent Gallup poll, the average American retires at age 61.1 That’s at least five years away from collecting full Social Security retirement benefits, not to mention pensions, which typically begin at age 65, when available. Collectively, these programs can account for a significant share of retirement income. According to the Social Security […]

From the inside out: Interior life defines a Rappahannock home

It is commonplace for architects to speak of “bringing the outside in”—usually via plentiful glass and a toolkit of other tricks. When Richard Williams describes his firm’s design process on a Rappahannock County home, that familiar goal—connecting inhabitants to the landscape—takes on an unusual cast. “On our first site visit,” he said of his clients, […]

Parts and whole: Design makes this property bloom

To Cole Burrell, landscape designer, a garden is an extension of a house. “There’s a million styles and a million vocabularies,” he said, “but none makes any sense unless it makes sense with the house.” One of his Albemarle projects illustrates that principle with a garden that seems to spring organically from the spirit of […]