Laravel $q->where() between dates

I am trying to get my cron to only get Projects that are due to recur/renew in the next 7 days to send out reminder emails. I've just found out my logic doesn't quite work.

I currently have the query:

$projects = Project::where(function($q){
    $q->where('recur_at', '>', date("Y-m-d H:i:s", time() - 604800));
    $q->where('status', '<', 5);
    $q->where('recur_cancelled', '=', 0);
});

However, I realized what I need to do is something like:

Psudo SQL:

SELECT * FROM projects WHERE recur_at > recur_at - '7 days' AND /* Other status + recurr_cancelled stuff) */

How would I do this in Laravel 4, and using the DATETIME datatype, I've only done this sort of thing using timestamps.

Update:

Managed to solve this after using the following code, Stackoverflow also helps when you can pull bits of code and look at them out of context.

$projects = Project::where(function($q){
    $q->where(DB::raw('recur_at BETWEEN DATE_SUB(NOW(), INTERVAL 7 DAY) AND NOW()'));
    $q->where('status', '<', 5);
    $q->where('recur_cancelled', '=', 0);
});

Updated Question: Is there better way to do this in Laravel/Eloquent?

Update 2:

The first resolution ended up not been right after further testing, I have now resolved and tested the following solution:

$projects = Project::where(function($q){
    $q->where('recur_at', '<=', Carbon::now()->addWeek());
    $q->where('recur_at', '!=', "0000-00-00 00:00:00");
    $q->where('status', '<', 5);
    $q->where('recur_cancelled', '=', 0);
});

You can chain your wheres directly, without function(q). There's also a nice date handling package in laravel, called Carbon. So you could do something like:

$projects = Project::where('recur_at', '>', Carbon::now())
    ->where('recur_at', '<', Carbon::now()->addWeek())
    ->where('status', '<', 5)
    ->where('recur_cancelled', '=', 0)
    ->get();

Just make sure you require Carbon in composer and you're using Carbon namespace (use Carbon\Carbon;) and it should work.

EDIT: As Joel said, you could do:

$projects = Project::whereBetween('recur_at', array(Carbon::now(), Carbon::now()->addWeek()))
    ->where('status', '<', 5)
    ->where('recur_cancelled', '=', 0)
    ->get();

Didn't wan to mess with carbon. So here's my solution

$start = new \DateTime('now');
$start->modify('first day of this month');
$end = new \DateTime('now');
$end->modify('last day of this month');

$new_releases = Game::whereBetween('release', array($start, $end))->get();