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Inspiration

Creative Inspiration Travel + Adventures

Field Note: Salt and Sundry at Union Market

written by LNWC

*sigh* You can really lose yourself in this place. Packed with thoughtfully-curated home goods and gifts, this place is an entertainer’s dream. Or a place for a would-be entertainer to dream about all the dinner parties and soirees they need to have (I might know something about that kind of aspiration). The shop also stocks creative craft tonics, mixers, and bitters, as well as other kitchen goodies like truffle salt and olive oil. Some of the small-batch items are made right here in DC – our city is full of creative entrepreneurs!

Below are some of the items you might find if you stop in at their Union Market location in DC. When I visited last weekend they were getting ready for a store refresh/makeover – I can’t wait to check it out and see the new look!

How lovely is this store?

February 4, 2018 2 comments

Travel + Adventures

You Can’t See Everything. But You Can Plan for Plenty.

written by LNWC

When it come’s to travel planning I’ve had to learn a hard lesson: You can’t see everything.

It sounds like pessimism, and being the sampler that I am it was a tough lesson to learn. But as it turns out, coming to this realization is incredibly freeing. A lot of people tend to approach a new city/country with a list of must-sees/a checklist from friends/family/pop culture/guide books/blog posts. But running around trying to check off each item is a recipe for disappointment and is almost guaranteed to keep you from some of the most unique and memorable experiences.

What’s important to you?

What inspires you? Music? Food? Art? Nature? Then make that your priority. This might change depending on your location, but if you can take or leave something, don’t make yourself do it just to check off a self-imposed tourist scavenger hunt.

All that said, a good plan can make the most of time you do have.
If you want to get the most you can out of your vacation, having a game plan is essential, and there are plenty of tricks that can maximize your time

Book open-jaw tickets instead of round trip. An open jaw ticket is a ticket that flies to one city and out of another. For example, I could fly out of DC to London, then, at the end of my trip fly from Edinburgh back home to DC. This means you can cover more ground without having to backtrack.
Go in the off season. I often travel to Europe during November, and the difference in crowds and wait times adds saves so much time (and frustration). It doesn’t hurt either that lodging, tours, and airfare is far cheaper.
Plan your vacation around days off. If your company offers you days off for certain national/bank holidays, make as much use of it as possible. I’ve often used the Thanksgiving holiday when I had two days off of work. I only needed to take 3 extra days off to complete the workweek – with the two weekends bookending that week, I could plan a 9-day vacation that only used 3 of my vacation days 🙂 Labor Day, Presidents Day, etc, could all give you an extra day that you don’t have to take from your precious pool of vacation days.
Take a free city tour. The “free” (you DO want to tip) city tours that many large cities offer can be a great resource. It helps you orient yourself in a new city and provides a few quick highlights which may help you to decide to go more in-depth or skip an attraction. These guides also usually have great tips for off the beaten track places that you may not normally find. Hit up Tripadvisor to see what others say about different companies – some are certainly better than others.

Finally… plan some time… for no plans.

It’s easy to over schedule yourself – make sure you have some time to just wander and discover a city. Getting lost has provided me with some of my favorite experiences!

December 13, 2017 0 comment

Learn + Make

Sampler Syllabus: Learning to Code

written by LNWC

This blog is called Sampler Field Guide because, well… I like learning a little bit about a lot of things. One side effect of this is that I can be a touch… let’s say scattered… in my interests. On the other hand, I’ve developed quite a skill for researching new interests/strategic Googling/finding interesting tidbits. Here are a few things I found while learning a bit more about the art of coding… hopefully this is the first of many similar Sampler Syllabus installments.

There are a lot of great reasons to start learning to code: it’s an incredibly useful skill that will only become more important as more our lives and careers continue to expand into online and mobile platforms. There’s so much out there to learn, however, that it can be tough to figure out where to start.

When I started looking into options, I discovered that there’s an active community of people online (and in your own metro area!) that are offering their insights, posting courses, and hosting in-person hackathons. Here are a few that I have dipped my toes into/have on the list to try.

Harvard’s CS50

The Internet is awesome, you guys – here we have the full intro Computer Science course from Harvard. Yes, that Harvard. Finish this (free!) course and you will have a legitimate foundation in the theory of computer science, in addition to basic coding. Full Disclosure: I didn’t finish it (yet…there’s hope). But I did start it, and it’s 100% worth viewing at least the first few lectures/short videos to get a feeling for the basics of Computer Science.

One of the many great things about this course is that there’s an active and supportive online community. If you get stuck, you can find plenty of help on multiple platforms including Reddit and Facebook.

While you’re on the EdX site, check out some of the other awesome online courses that you can audit for free. For an additional fee you can upgrade to a certificate course – but for most of us, the free version is just perfect.

Codeacademy

This is a great tool for learning some web basics like HTML and CSS, both which will be useful if you just want to make some tweaks/better understand a website. When working through a course, a typical setup of this tool usually includes an explanation on the left, a middle section where you type your code/get feedback about errors, and a display on the right where you can see what your code does:

Codeacademy is free, with the option to upgrade in order to get access to quizzes and other activities. It all depends on your learning style – but it’s worth trying out the free version to see what you can learn!

W3Schools

I use this site all the time for reference. It also apparently has tutorials, so if it has what you’re looking for, check that out… and let me know how it is? Thanks 🙂

I personally find it be a user-friendly, easy way to quickly reference HTML and CSS, especially:

Meetup.com

Meetup has so many great organizations on one site, and it’s a great place to begin whenever you’re learning something new. They have meetups for language learners, hikers, and, you guessed it, coding.

I’ve yet to check out the coding meetups in my area, but the Women Who Code DC group looks especially promising and inviting.

Hope this helps you on your coding adventures! I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is out there, so I’d love to hear about anything you’ve found (or if you’ve tried any of these)!

October 8, 2017 0 comment

Creative Inspiration Travel + Adventures

29Rooms by Refinery29: Using Technology to Transform Art

written by LNWC

Last Saturday I spent three hours in a funhouse full of interactive art installations that was basically an Instagram playground. You could say that it was an…. #INSTAllation. See what I did there?! The rest of this post is, pun-free, I promise.

The best way to describe Refinery29’s 29Rooms is to see it – which you can do right now through a thousand different perspectives via the hashtag #29Rooms on Instagram. The collection of photos is a great example of using technology to crowdsource art; the way each person interpreted, interacted with, and photographed the room brought out different perspectives that I never would have expected.

Here are a few of my own favorite snaps:

Kat Cunning in the “Dreamers Den”. She crafted songs on the spot using dreams written by audience members. My session featured the Backstreet Boys and jelly doughnuts.

Dare Greatly! Just one of the many positive messages floating around the warehouse.

An ocean created from the bottles we’ve thrown away…

I had such a great time at 29Rooms and came out of it with tons of inspiration! If you’re in the LA area, don’t miss out when it comes your way, find out more here and get updates on Insta by following @29Rooms.

September 16, 2017 0 comment