10 Happy Things & 35 Great Movies for July
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HAPPY JULY
The news lately is making me sad/angry/scared, so I'm trying to concentrate on the positive - how about everyone else?
10 HAPPY THINGS
As always, this list is pretty random, but hopefully something on it will bring you joy!
1. The all the women in bathroom lines we've befriended before.
2. How gorgeous are the burqas of Iran's fisherwomen?
3. Six relaxing getaways a short drive from DC. Also, the 2025 Kid-Friendly summer guide (so much good stuff in here!). And can mini-golf make us patriotic again?
4. Lots of summer reading, watching, and listening recs are up on my blog! Plus, several new families, engagements, and weddings are also up on blog!
4. Ten surprising parenting tips.
5. I went to Moon Rabbit for a friend's birthday last week and it was so good - highly recommend!
6. How cute are these collage sets? Wouldn't they be perfect for a college dorm room?
7. I photographed a wedding a few weeks ago at Chesapeake Bay Beach Club and for cocktail hour they had a tator tot bar with queso, ranch, bacon, pickled jaleapenos, and other fixing - isn't that the best idea ever?
8. I'm totally obsessed with Melissa's new substack.
9. Sandwiches!! Also, loving this easy vegetarian recipe. And I want to try chicken parm meatballs.
10. Not happy per se, but these two articles really resonated with me:
A. Motherhood Should Come with a Warning Label (gift link)
B. Gertrude Berg - the Forgotten Inventor of the Sitcom
"There’s history, and then there’s what’s missing from history—what got cut in the edit, suppressed from the conversation. Berg’s story faded for many reasons, including the fact that most episodes of her show didn’t air in reruns. Perhaps she simply died too young to be reclaimed by the next generation of women and celebrated as a role model . . . .
But there was also the fact that, despite her remarkable accomplishments, Berg’s life couldn’t be easily packaged as a feel-good story—nostalgia for a more innocent time, the way fifties sitcoms were, decades later, treated as documentaries, their narrow portraits of the American family repurposed . . . as if they were a real, shared childhood memory. . . . It happens all the time, these days, everywhere you look: at universities, newspapers, law firms. Hard times don’t make easy history. But liberatory ideas, like the wind, blow everywhere."
COUPLES & FAMILIES - BUSINESS UPDATE
I'm having a pretty busy summer and am now booking into fall.
August and early September are almost completely full, so if you want to schedule a session before my rates increase on September 15th, I suggest booking soon.
Below is my current availability until October (note that I have no weekend availability in August or September).
Friday, July 18 (afternoon/evening only)
Saturday, July 19
Saturday, July 26 (afternoon/evening only)
Thursday, August 7
Thursday, August 14
Friday, August 15
Thursday, September 11 (afternoon only)
Thursday, September 25
Monday, September 29
Tuesday, September 30
For info on my family rates, click here.
And for info on my couples rates, click here.
FOR WEDDINGS, I'M BOOKING 2025 & 2026
If you're thinking of eloping or planning a mirco-wedding, please get in touch - I have lots of advice/suggestions!
Also, if you're interested in wedding venues/locations, here are some of my favorites.
I thought I'd try something different this month -
35 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY
(MY LIST)
Last week, NY Times counted down the best 100 movies (so far) of the 21st century (gift link), which prompted everyone in my family to start making our own lists (I have many quibbles about the NY Times' list but that's a whole separate conversation). Since world news has been so depressing lately, this proved the perfect pastime to improve our moods. Anyways, I've spent hours and hours debating my choices (Why? I have no idea).
Here's a list of my top 35 with a focus on the Top 10. What about everyone else? I'd love to hear your faves.
1. Captain Fantastic - Hands down the best movie I've ever watched about parenting and how fallible we are when we try our best to love and protect the people we love.
2. Y Tu Mama Tambien - I've seen this movie so many times and each time I get something new from it. The contrasts of privilege (main characters) and poverty (cinematography). The combination of sex, aging, and death thrown into one summer. And the voice overs, which seem like such an artistic risk and could have failed in so many ways. Every time I go to a beach resort I remember the local fisherman's family who lose their livelihood to a big resort, which is the smallest of subplots, but like everything else in the movie - you can't forget it.
3. Boyhood - Okay, so I admit the movie drags a bit at the end. But I love all the vignettes (like the Harry Potter party) and the focus on how childhood's strongest memories are often the smaller and scarier moments that adults either forget or want to forget.
4. Promising Young Woman - This hit me like a brick and I'll never forget it.
5. Before Sunset - Before Sunrise (1995) is one of my favorite movies ever, so I had high hopes for the sequel and it delivered. (Though it was a close call between this and Past Lives - very similar movies - for the top 10).
6. Almost Famous - Something about this movie feels so dreamlike and nostalgic for a time I never even knew. And Kate Hudson as Penny Lane is perfection.
7. Coco - It was hard to choose between Shrek, Inside Out, and Coco, but I loved the visuals of Coco so much. Plus, I enjoyed the lesson that one's public persona is often very different from who they actually are as a person.
8. American Honey - As far as directing goes this is probably my favorite movie ever. The shaky camera angles combined with the use of light and focus is the best cinematography I've ever seen. Also, the way the background noise and sounds create a sense of place - you feel like you're in the frame with the characters. Does anyone else remember the kids who used to travel in buses trying to sell magazines? I do. I could never figure out their scam (and it was clearly a scam), but I remember giving the money anyways with a sad hope for their future. This movie captures all of that. With a roadtrip. So much youth, poverty, hope, and cruelty.
9. Drive My Car - I dragged the girls to see this in the theaters a few years ago and they hated it. But we watched it as my own mother was dying and the movie's slow meditation on grief and healing was exactly what I needed at the time. People are complicated and rarely good or bad. When people who hurt you die it is hard to know how to feel and this movie perfectly expressed that.
10. Barbie - It was a tough call between this and Lady Bird, but ultimately Barbie was so creative and unique and a movie I felt proud to watch with my family. Plus, everyone trivializes it now, but a few years ago Barbie felt like a true breakthrough in our conversations about women in society and I'm annoyed that we seem to have let the dialogue fade.
11. Inside Out
12. Blue Valentine
13. Past Lives
14. The Brutalist
15. Lady Bird
16. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
17. Legally Blond
18. Everything Everywhere All at Once
19. Force Majeure
20. Shrek
21. The Lives of Others
22. Love and Basketball
23. Saltburn
24. The Florida Project
25. City of God
26. Little Women
27. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
28. Twelve Years a Slave
29. Palm Springs
30. Searching for Sugarman
31. Beatriz at Dinner
32. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
33. The Family Man (yes, I know it's super cheesy, but I still watch it almost every Christmas)
34. Lost in Translation
35. The Fog of War
HAVE A GREAT 4TH!
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Darcy Troutman Photography is a Northern VA/Washington DC/Maryland documentary-style family photographer, who believes in capturing real moments. Interested in learning more? Please click here to sign up for my newsletter or schedule a session.